Product Info
Title:
Famicom Mukashi Banashi:
Shin Onigashima
Developer:
Nintendo
Publisher:
Nintendo
Genre:
Adventure
Price:
2600.00
Description:
Adventure games were extremely popular on the Famicom, thanks to the
port of Yuji Horii's Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken ("The Portopia Serial
Murder Case"), released in 1985. As an early cartridge game, there was
no ability to record your progress, so every time you stopped playing,
you had to restart from scratch (or just leave the system on). The save
capability of the FDS alleviated this problem, so Nintendo released their
own adventure games for the hardware.
The first, Shin Onigashima ("New Island of Ogres", named after an
island visited by Momotarou in Japanese myths), was the first of two
games in their Famicom Mukashi Banashi ("Famicom Fairytales") series,
which takes all sorts of characters from various Japanese folk tales and
mishmashes them in a humorous setting. It’s also a very Japanese game
– the text is displayed vertically, read right to left, and even the numbers
are displayed in kanji. The story initially focuses on an old woodcutter
and his wife, who discover two children in the forest. Donbe is a young
boy with blue hair, who looks a little like a caveman. His character is
based on the story of Momotarou ("Peach Boy"), except he's born from
a bowl of noodles rather than a peach. Hikari is a girl born from bamboo,
and based on the story of Princess Kaguya. Their village is attacked by
demons who steal the souls of the old couple, so the two children set
off on a journey to both save their adoptive parents and discover their
secret origins. You can switch between the duo, with Donbe best suited
for physical tasks, while Hikari is the smarter of the two. Be mindful,
though, as “game over” sequences can be triggered if you make the
wrong choices.
Shin Onigashima excels thanks to its comedic setting. One of the
recurring characters is Kintarou (the super strong "golden boy"), except
he wears sunglasses and speaks in broken English. At one point you
sneak into a demon fortress with a tengu,
who has a rather silly crush on Hikari. The
duo is joined by three companions – Ringo,
a dog; Matsunosuke, a monkey; and
Ohana, a pheasant, who later went to star
in Heisei Shin Onigashima for the SFC.
This was the first FDS game spread
across two releases that needed to be
bought separately. The second is the latter
half of the game – you can't start the
second disk without beating the first one.