Musya: The Classic Japanese Tale of Horror (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
263A playthrough of Seta's 1992 horror-themed platformer for the Super Nintendo, Musya: The Classic Japanese Tale of Horror.
Musya was a fairly early, largely ignored, SNES release that focused on a theme that wasn't typically explored in games brought to the west in the 8 and 16-bit eras: that of horror from a distinctly Japanese perspective. Far removed from the western notion of horror, Musya can be unsettling in some unexpected ways.
You play as a spearman (the weapon is actually called a yari, and was typically used by ashigaru in the Muromachi and Sengoku periods of Japanese history - think of Nobunaga and his giant spear from the Koei games and you'll have a rough idea) who, being the sole survivor of a vicious military battle, awakens to find himself in a remote village. As he was recovering, a woman was dragged into the underworld by the dark, nasty things that typically inhabit such places. And so, bound by sense of duty and honor, Imoto goes after her.
It's a pretty classic setup for a Japanese horror story loaded with monsters functioning as disgusting personifications of human inadequacies. It serves the same essential narrative purpose as Western works do that have been derived in some way from The Divine Comedy. Go to hell, face unspeakable horrors, risk your mortal soul, blah blah blah.
Musya is a straightforward action game that has Imoto running around with his 6-foot spear attempting to stab holes in all sorts of evil minions. As he defeats bosses he will gain access to scrolls that can be used to conjure offensive and defensive magic spells. And that's really all there is to it.
The graphics look great - I've always really loved the vibe this game gives off. It looks like an old SNES game, but the style and the art is quite well done. Despite their fairly mundane nature, the backdrops are all quite well detailed and suit the tone. The monsters are all on the small side, but they're suitably gross and disturbing, running the gamut between inflatable eyeballs to disembodied spirits, tengu to spiders wearing women's heads. The music is also quite well done - much of it is reserved and understated with traditional Japanese instruments featuring prominently in many of the tracks. It does its job well, overall - I especially love the first stage theme. The sound effects are pretty weak though - the yells are all pretty muffled and distorted, and the spear making contact with enemies sounds a bit like a fart.
Unfortunately, the game play just doesn't hold up. The controls are super awkward and stiff, and the physics don't feel right - Imoto goes soaring through the air, only to plunge downward at ridiculous speeds - and often directly into a bottomless pit. The enemies aren't knocked back or stunned at all by hits, so you'll often get nailed because you can't move until Imoto's spearing animation finishes, and the bosses can often be beaten by standing in place and wailing on them - as long as you do more damage to them than they can to you, you're set since your life will refill after the fight. The game is overall one of those that is ridiculously hard and seems impossible until you realize that you should just avoid most of the enemies; once you do that, you realize that the game is entirely too easy. That's not a good way to balance things.
Finally, the game's worst offense is probably the lazy reuse of stages - stages 4-6 are only slightly revamped versions of 1-3 with new bosses.
It's really too bad that the game play was left so unpolished, because this is one that had a lot of potential. It really does look and sound nice by 1992 standards, and the story is pretty cool with a presentation that overall makes the game worth a look, but the game play really undermines the experience.
It's not really surprising that Musya has been largely forgotten. Nobody wanted to play it when it was new, and it seems nobody really wants to play it now.
Oh - and one final thing that has always annoyed me about this game is the romanization of its title. It's not pronounced "Moose-yuh" like it looks like it should be. If you romanize it to reflect its phoenetic pronunciation for English speakers, it should read "Musha." Like the Compile shooter.
And why the hell does the game have two different subtitles? The box says, "The Classic Tale of Japanese Horror," while the title screen says, "Imoto's Saga." So which did they intend? Who knows.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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