My blogs will be jumping all over the place, covering many different topics in video gaming, stretching from popular topics and titles to the most obscure. This is an example of the type of obscurity I will be featuring, an RPG game released only in Japan for the Family Computer or Famicom. The Famicom may sound obscure it’s self, but is just the name for the Japanese version of the NES. A name changed for the rest of the world that I agree with. My brain has a clear distinction between consoles and computers and that would’ve most certainly messed up my head. If you’ve heard of this game before, you are probably Japanese and will laugh at my attempts to understand this game. For American gamers around my age there’s a good chance the first country you ever heard about other then the USA was Japan. Everywhere you looked on the NES and it’s games it said “Made in Japan”. This coming from someone who basically lives right down the street from Canada. There has always been a certain mystery and romance when it came to Japan, a feeling that still exists in me today. There is a totally badass community online that translates games into different languages and of course Japanese to English is the most popular. Hissatsu Shigotonin sadly is too obscure even for them to have made a translation, making this a truly difficult, if almost impossible game for me to play. Any Japanese only RPG will be difficult as they usually have more text then any other kind of game. The story won’t be there for you, menu’s are impossible to navigate, and it will take a lot of trial and error in getting through to the next part. Why blog about this game at all you might be asking? Well, one of the reasons I choose this site was to help write wiki pages for obscure games. My biggest tool in researching these games is google translate on Japanese websites, such as their version of wikipedia. Anyone who has tried to translate Japanese before knows that even in english the sentences are very hard to make out. This is a challenging but fun process and a great way to unlock more mysteries of the gaming universe. all right, let’s get to the game.

Overview

Hissatsu Shigotonin roughly translates to Deadly Work People. I found this name to be pretty strange, but once I started understanding what this game was all about, it made sense. It was released December 15, 1990 exclusively in Japan for the Famicom. It turns out Hissatsu Shigotonin is actually biased off of the popular Japanese historical drama TV series of the same name. The story of both focus on a group of ordinary "work people" who live double lives as assassins. It is an alternate Feudal Japan history (1603-1863) featuring fictional characters with elements of a parallel world. You must uncover a mystery though out the game, which comes though the story in episodes like the TV show. The player controls Nakamura Mondo, a fictional character who is also the star of the TV show. The game is biased on the original 84 episode run/first season of the TV series from 1979-1981 but features characters all the way up to the game’s release date. The show continues to this day with Assassins as a subtitle. This seems like a really cool concept for a weekly episodic series. The story has an almost assassins creed feel. I’m sure the idea of everyday people turned into warriors has been around in stories forever, but the setting and time period makes it stand out. Japan’s feudal era is one of the most intense of all the time periods in earth’s history. It was a time of Samurai, Ninja and technology that eventually killed off said Samurai and Ninja. One of the biggest draws of the era is the is the fantastic culture that knew of the outside world, but worked hard in maintaining isolation making them truly unique. The main character, Nakamura Mondo, is a corrupt cop known for accepting bribes who is disrespected by his superiors, and mother-in-law. He ends up bringing together a group of people that have all been wronged in some way, formed to solve mysteries and assassinate targets. The heroes play by the same rules as the villains, as they are not afraid to use underhanded tactics to get the job done. Each episode of the show usually climaxes with the killing of the target, sometimes in an almost humorous manner such as a flower through the skull. I was able to find a random episode but no dubs or subs, which is a bummer since I wanted to learn more of the story. It seems to hold up well to time, has a campy feel to it and comes off like a live action anime. Check out this trailer for one of their many movies to get a better idea of the style, think Al Bundy the Samuri and his gang of misfits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbJh875TVH0&list=PL42D1C1A0C6AAFC2E&index=1

Work People

Nakamura Mondo - A corrupt cop who thinks for himself, gets crapped on by everyone in his life. A pretty average middle aged man with a Robin Hood sense of heroism.

Kajiya no Masa (Blacksmith of Government) - Went from being a florist to a blacksmith when called upon. Has has had many lovers that usually end in tragedy.

Kumihimoya no Ryu (Dragon of Kumihimo-ya) - Craftsman, who despite thin feminine features and bright flashy clothes, is actually a tough roughneck.

Kazari no Shu (Decoration of Xiu) - A decorator who likes to hide and attack from the shadows. Joins to avenge murdered best friend.

Yuji no Shamisen'ya (Yuji of Shamisen shop) - Sells Shamisens, a bow and string instrument.

Nenbutsu no Tetsu (Iron of Nembutsu) - Ore miner who has mastered the art of Judo Grip attacks

Oriku (Acrostic) - He is the son of Yuji. The word acrostic is a type of poem.

Nandemo Yanokayo (Do-Anything Kayo) - A jack-of-all-trades, he co-owns a pawn shop.

Nishi Jun'nosuke (West Order Koresuke) - Son of a doctor, goes to medical school.

Gameplay

Just a friendly reminder, no english in sight here folks. The opening is pretty sweet, with the theme of the show playing in all it’s 8-bit glory. It shows each member of the “Work People” before taking you to the start screen. The game looks great, being a later game in the NES line-up. Coming out nearly 7 years into an astonishing decade long run for the Famicom. Japan got the Famicom in 1983. It wouldn’t be rebranded as the Nintendo Entertainment System for release in America until over 2 years later. This was actually a strategic move that payed off big time in the long run. A little thing called “The North American Video Game Crash of ’83” would’ve been a death sentence for the upstart console. Leading up to the crash, in America more and more games were being released everyday. A lot of them being done in a rush by amateur game makers. This caused the market to be flooded with crappy, broken games. Imagine an app store’s game section nowadays but without a way to search by most popular or best rated. The game credited as the proverbial straw the broke the camel’s back was the massively hyped, rushed P.O.S. that was E.T. for the Atari. The game tops almost every list of worst games of all time. To make matters worse, millions of copies were produced, in anticipation of high sales for the popular E.T. franchise. Word quickly spread of the broken game and millions of copies went unsold nationwide. Companies were forced to eat the money and they literally buried hundred thousands of unsold E.T. cartridges in a landfill in New Mexico. Long thought to be an urban legend, the copies were found in the landfill in 2014 by people making a documentary. Even when the NES did release in America in late ’85, it was only though F-A-O Schwartz stores in New York and Los Angeles at the beginning. Once people started hearing about it, there would be an address to write into. Nintendo would then send you more information about the console, including a line-up of future games. Once there was a demand, the NES had a full nationwide release. Nintendo saved the american video game market, something we should never forget. Anyway, this is the gameplay section for god’s sake… but I knew I wasn’t going to make it far in this game. The story starts with what looks like a kid bullying townsfolk, not really sure. Then it goes to a Final Fantasy 1 style, overhead view of a room. Looks as though Mondo is getting nagged at by his wife and mother-in-law, a common theme of the show, that is pretty funny. Soon a man shows up to tell me something and takes me to an office. At this point you can walk around the room that you are trapped in, and talk to each person. No clue what is being said but there are multiple options to chose when talking and it’s pretty much unplayable. He’s done it ladies and gentleman, that’s as far as I can get. I’ve clicked every option on all 5 people in the room. Nothing changed, and I’m just stuck in this room. That sucks, but pretty much knew how that was going to play out. Between figuring out how cool the show is and seeing just a little bit of gameplay I’m left wanting more. Sadly this game will probably never get translated, unless I learn how to code and translate it myself. Here’s the YouTube video of everything I did in the game. It seems I’m not the only one that can’t get out of that first room.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdtLF5xf-bs

Final Thoughts

I hope you enjoyed trying to uncover this mystery as much as I did. It may be strange to write about a game that I can’t even play, but learning about the show was well worth it. I will be doing other Japanese only games in the future. Sometimes with a full translation, sometimes the game type doesn’t really need translating, and others will be unplayable just like this one. I’ve wanted to uncover Japanese games for quite a long time, and I’m really glad I started. Thanks for reading, and game on!