Sengoku is not a great game. It's a 1991 beat 'em up with a transformation gimmick (you can transform into a dog, who I can't figure out a use for, a ninja who flippin' flips everywhere whenever he moves, and an ornate Samurai dude.) As a game it's...ok...kind of stiff and clunky but not unfun. What it does have going for it is that it is very very crazy.

Sengoku's plot is that some magical warlord is returning to Earth and trying to take it over. You play a 90s Cool Dude (tm) with yellow pants, a sweet jacket, and knee and shoulder pads, as well as fingerless gloves. Your goal is to stop the baddies by punching and kicking them. Sometimes you get a sword though. Sometimes you can shoot stuff. Sometimes you turn into a dog. It'e kind of unclear what's going on much of the time.

Beyond the incomprehensible premise, Sengoku features a bizarre cast of enemies from Japanese lore, and was clearly used as a tech demo for a bunch of Neo Geo special effects. Sprites scale in the background, get rotated squashed and stretch, and just have weird animations and effects when they die. It's very flashy compared to most beat 'em ups, but not in an impressive way, because there are very few frames of animation. It's just...weird.

In addition to all the weird effects, the game often whisks you up into the clouds to fight even weirder enemies. It is both disorienting and bizarre and it gives the levels a very strange flow. I was surprised when I defeated the first boss and was sent to stage 2. I had assumed it was just going to be one continuous left to right scrolling level because there are a lot of minibosses and the jarring transitions make it impossible for a stage to have "flow."

There's not a ton more to say about the game, except that it's available on the major consoles through the ACA series so if you're in the mood it's kind of worth checking out just for how strange it is. I wouldn't call it a great game, but at least it's different.

I loved this game when I was a kid and sought it out one summer anytime I went to a new arcade. I was young enough and the transformation gimick was entertaining enough to keep me coming back. I also never had enough money at one time to beat it, which kinda killed my interest in other beat-em-ups. It's obscurity kinda added to the mystique (there were a few years there where I had forgotten the name and it drove me crazy trying to find information about it online) but unfortunately it doesn't get mentioned much in discussions about Neo Geo games. I'm glad to see it mentioned even if it's just to honor the true Japanese insanity that it had on display.

man... wtf did I think Sengoku was before this? Is there another title with the same name?

Thanks for the post, this is really interesting. Gonna check this out in the near future, been going on a tear through beat-em-ups recently.

@geraltitude: There is a 2011 PC strategy game.

Also a bunch of other games have the word in their names, like Cladun Returns: This is Sengoku.

@geraltitude: Sengoku Basara maybe? Without looking up what it actually is, I think that series is Dynasty Warriors but more anime. I recall seeing some funny combo videos a decade ago.

@redhotchilimist, @bigsocrates: ah thanks! It was the 2011 PC game I was thinking about. Sengoku comes up periodically on Three Moves Ahead, so that's where the name got burned into my mind.