Wii Virtual Console Review: Samurai Ghost

Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Console: TurboGrafx 16
Release Date: April 1992

As the title implies, you play as a dead samurai named Taiga no Kagekiyo who has been resurrected and must now battle demons and monsters until there are no more demons or monsters to kill. That plot is worst than Pong’s, and Pong had no plot.

For a brief moment you might think this game could be good because Kagekiyo’s sprite is big and detailed, and the background graphics are full of vibrant colors, but as soon as you take a single step forward reality kicks in. This is one ugly piece of shit. Kagekiyo walks like if he had shit in his pants. He’s always leaning forward for no reason and has the crappiest sword movements. His legs and arms seem to be disconnected from his torso, which never moves, ever. The enemies also look like ass and they animate even worse. Some have up to two frames of animations. I believe Namco didn’t give a shit about the quality of Samurai Ghost or didn’t know how to work the TurboGrafx 16.

Your only weapon is a sword. You can do a forward slash, a ducking slash, a jumping slash, a downward slash when in the air, and you can also hold the sword in front of your face for as long as you hold the action button. Sounds cool, but every single enemy will hit you regardless of how you approach them. If there’s a cat in front of you and you duck to slash it, it will hit you. If a bird comes flying at you and you jump to slash it, it will hit you. No matter what you do, you will get hit. This game is not hard, it’s fucking frustrating and impossible.



Sometimes when you kill a graphical error that’s supposed to be an enemy you’ll get an orb. There are like 10 kinds of them, with different colors and kanji symbols inside. I honestly couldn’t tell them apart and had no idea what they were for. One makes you do a spin jump attack, another makes you throw an energy wave, and the other 8 don’t do shit.

Apparently the guy that was supposed to add sound effects and music to the game was sick that week, and they used effects from Galaga. Every time Kagekiyo jumps you hear an annoying bleep that makes no sense at all. I’m no expert on samurai, but I doubt they produced such sounds. The music is horrible and the few speech samples sound worst than those on the Sega Genesis. Absolutely no effort was put into the game’s audio.

Once in a while you’ll get transported to a pink cloud field where a giant statue throws a crapload of orbs and other shit at you. These are the bonus stages. The music here is less horrible but makes no sense since it’s lively, unlike the rest of the game. It’s one of the most ridiculous bonus stages ever.



The bosses are even lamer than the regular baddies. One of them is a skeleton with a sword, another one is a floating alien playing a string instrument throwing neon bunnies at you that turn into poisonous mushrooms when hit. The last boss is a lightning bolt-throwing dude that then turns into floating feces and then finally into a blue fart cloud. Seriously, I’m not making this up.

Samurai Ghost is actually a sequel to a beat ’em up arcade game called Genpei Tōma Den only released in Japan, and Namco should have never released this crap anywhere else. I can’t even begin to imagine the first part of this mess. The team responsible for this disaster should be put behind bars for cruelty against video gamers and disrespect to samurai.

Fun Fact: Did you know Kagekiyo and a few of the bosses made cameos in the Japan-exclusive Namco X Capcom? Me neither.

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