AdamAdmar

Welcome to Somewhere Over There!

I am no longer anime speed lines


sarahssowertty
@sarahssowertty

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Mystic Warriors (Konami, 1993)

PSN
EU
US

Switch
EU
US

The Japanese and US revisions are included- while not noted in the manual, there are differences including massively-increased health amounts for bosses in the US release, and subtitles for the speech in the Japanese release- and you can switch between two and four-player cabinets via the game settings. Additionally, the original game had a lot of slowdown with multiple players, but this version includes an option to tone this down significantly, making the game run at the same speed whether you have one or four players.

SKULL Enterprise, an evil mega-corporation, has been builing an evil ninja army and is hell-bent on taking over the world. However, five brave ninjas- Spyros, Kojiro, Keima, Yuri and Brad- rise against the evil ninja corps after one of their own is captured. Across the city, the rivers and even the sky, these ninjas will fight to save their friend and crush the ambitions of SKULL Enterprise. It's sure to be mega-hit!

Well, well, well, this one's taken its time, but 30 years after its initial arcade release, Mystic Warriors is finally home, probably one of the most requested Arcade Archives releases. This is a spiritual successor to the popular Rolling Thunder-style run-and-gun Sunset Riders but with the theme completely changed to modern-day ninja action (although there's a cute nod to Sunset Riders in the first stage as a movie at a drive-in theater). There's a few changes here, though- you can now take three hits before dying, you have a melee attack that does a lot more damage to vehicles and bosses, there are a few power-ups like a screen-clearing bomb and a barrier and the characters have a lot more differences between them including their spread of shurikens, the size of their projectiles and whether they have proper rapid-fire or a more limited form.

I'm preaching to the choir here but Mystic Warriors is excellent, one of Konami's best from the era and it's so good to finally have it available at home. The game mechanics of Sunset Riders have been refined a little with some very nice additions and the presentation is just as vibrant and colourful as its predecessor, maybe even more so. If anything, it almost feels like an American comic book or Hollywood movie interpretation of ninjas, with everything being vibrant and over-the-top, which is helped by the excellent voice clips- the opening "SKULL CAPTURED YOUR FRIEND!!" is a perfect way to start the game, and there's some genuinely dramatic moments here, as ridiculous as it is. It does get quite difficult- the elevator sequence near the end of the game in particular is really tough- but it's an incredibly entertaining entry in the genre. Highly recommended.

Additionally, this does sort out a lot of emulation errors that were present in previous versions of MAME, mostly related to transparencies, in particular any fade-outs are properly rendered here, plus the ending is displayed correctly (which IIRC is still an issue to this day in MAME). The only real problem I've noticed is that the music is a touch off- try messing around with this port's sound settings to get a better balance.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @sarahssowertty's post:

I just want you to know, it's a little deflating putting up these writeups of Arcade Archives releases and have a reply just be "where is game X", not even talking about this week's game. That might be more common on like a proper news site, but this is my little domain, so it'd be appreciated if you refrain from that in the future.

Holy shit, I grew up loving Sunset Riders on the Mega Drive, how have I gone this long not hearing about this game??? (The answer: I'm both old enough to remember 90s arcades, but too young to have actually played anything older than Metal Slug in their prime. 😭) Watching a bit of the longplay and yeah, I'm definitely gonna have to give this a whirl. It's sure to be mega-hit, indeed!!

Anyway, thanks for sharing this as always! I know I don't always comment on your Arcade Archives posts, but they're genuinely elucidating as someone who has at best a scattershot knowledge beyond the popular classics and whatever weirdo rabbit holes I fall down in my own PCB collecting, ahaha.

Thank you so much! You are of course never obligated to comment, but knowing that these posts are interesting and useful puts a smile on my face, it's nice to know! And honestly, that tends to be the reaction to Mystic Warriors, I imagine it didn't get as much distribution in arcades as Sunset Riders so it's always a surprise to people. This particular era of arcade games were often stuck, I feel- too cutting-edge to make it to the SNES or Mega Drive without too many sacrifices, but not enough to justify a PS1 or Saturn conversion with exceptions of course.

Yeah, you know, I think that's exactly it! It feels like a lot of games from like 1993 to 1996 or so (basically, pre-Namco System 12 and similar platforms that were more accommodating of console ports) are in that exact no man's land and that's probably a big reason why so many games fell through the cracks for me. It tends to be my favorite era to play and collect for since they're such contained, unique experiences for the most part, it's either MAME or the real thing and that's it, those are your only options for playing them. Like I'm the weirdo who owns arcade boards of both Magical Date AND the (very slightly) expanded re-release that never got ported, Magical Date EX and even though EX is like 95% the same game, just with a slightly different minigame lineup, I'm still happy to own it because it's this little piece of arcade history (and dating sim history, more pressingly for me personally) that can't be experienced any other way. It's a very expensive route to go, buying the actual boards, to be sure, which is why I don't do it super often, but I'd be lying if I said that platform exclusivity didn't make the process of hunting them down and then playing them that much more gratifying, ahaha.

Oh sure, I can understand that! if you want a Magical Date you really have to go all-out for the EX model, haha~ I was reliant on home ports too so that era is definitely one you have to dig for to find out about, that's what makes it so fascinating.

The one who gets captured always does their best, we salute them! And yeah, it's been a while but I'm pretty sure MAME still has trouble with at least one bit of the fade-out effect at the very end, and I checked and this release does fix that~

This is one of those Konami games that always felt like their attempt to launch a cartoon that would fit alongside all the shows they'd made games for.

And now I'm wondering how a Mystic Warriors cartoon would've gone down back in the day.