The Mysterious Murasame Castle

Overview

The Mysterious Murasame Castle, or Nazo no Murasame-jou in Japanese, is an action-adventure game for the Famicom Disk System released by Nintendo themselves. It superficially resembles a medieval Japan variant of The Legend of Zelda with its top-down view and branching paths, but has far more of an emphasis on combat than exploration and puzzle solving. The goal of the game is to explore strange goings-on at five separate castles and defeat the bosses at the end of each one.

The Mysterious Murasame Castle was actually the second original game created for Nintendo's Famicom Disk System device; the first being The Legend of Zelda. Though it was never released on the NES in North America or Europe, it was eventually released on the 3DS Virtual Console in both regions in 2014, twenty-eight years after the original release.

Legacy

While The Mysterious Murasame Castle did not receive any direct follow-ups, the game was eventually ported to the Game Boy Advance. However, the game did receive a sequel of sorts as the inspiration for a special mode included in Samurai Warriors 3. Murasame Castle mode evokes the gameplay concepts of the FDS title as presented through the gameplay of Samurai Warriors. Plotwise, it is a sequel, and sees Takamaru and a partner from the Samurai Warriors roster fight their way toward and through five castles, each with a boss from The Mysterious Murasame Castle at the end, with the final boss being Murasame himself.

In Nintendo Land, the game serves as the theme behind the minigame Takamaru's Ninja Castle. Bearing no resemblance to the FDS title beyond its setting, it is a shooting gallery-style game in which the player must use throwing stars to fend off ninjas.

A television drama of the same name was produced by Fuji Television in 1986 with a plot loosely based around that of the game.

In 2013, Platinum Games director Hideki Kamiya said he was interested in reviving Nazo no Murasame Jou, if the opportunity ever arose.