Genpei Tōma Den

About Genpei Tōma Den

Genpei Tōma Den (1986) is Namco's Japan-only arcade hack and slash game in which the resurrected samurai Taira no Kagekiyo fights through a demon-ridden Japan, acclaimed at home and later released abroad as The Genji and the Heike Clans.

Genpei Tōma Den in Depth

The player is Taira no Kagekiyo, a samurai killed at the Battle of Dan-no-ura in the Genpei War. In this alternative history, he is resurrected to defeat his enemy Minamoto no Yoritomo and the heads of his clan, Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Saito Musashibo Benkei, whose tyranny has thrown Japan into turmoil and filled it with demons. He travels the Japanese countryside fighting enemies as they appear, in three styles of play: the standard side-scrolling Small Mode, Big Mode with huge characters, usually for boss fights, and Plain Mode, seen from overhead.

Most stages have torii gates that carry the player to another stage, and in Small and Plain Mode stages there are often several, leading to different routes across the map, while Big Mode stages have a single torii at the end. The journey also passes the Sanzu River, which in Japanese Buddhism separates this life from the afterlife and is often compared to the Styx, and mythological figures such as Emma-o, god of the underworld, appear.

Making Genpei Tōma Den

Namco released Genpei Tōma Den in Japanese arcades in October 1986, and it was received in Japan as one of Namco's best arcade games. Game Machine reported it among the best-selling arcade games of November 1986, and it won several Gamest awards, including sixth place for the Grand Prize. Readers of Gamest's 1991 mook The Best Game voted it among the greatest arcade games, and the staff called it "an immortal masterpiece". An X68000 port followed in 1988, praised by Oh!X for new levels and secrets, and a PC Engine version in March 1990, which Famitsu inducted into its Gold Hall of Fame as "a port that does not spoil the taste of the original". Its first release outside Japan came in Namco Museum Vol. 4 in 1997, where reviews were mixed: IGN found it the strangest game in the set, and PlayStation Official Magazine – UK found it too hard. A sequel, Genpei Tōma Den: Kan no Ni, released in North America as Samurai-Ghost, followed on the PC Engine in 1992.