Konami almost made a game! Whoa! Actually, they got someone else to make it, but it’s nice. What’s even nicer is that this is a sequel to a classic game that no one knows about because it never made its way outside of Japan (random note: stupidly, you can get the classic game alongside this, but you need to get the deluxe edition of this game and it’s not available otherwise… which is fucking stupid… also it’s not translated).

Getsu Fuuma Den was a bit similar to Castlevania, but it also had a world map to explore, NPCs to talk to, and dungeons where you’d have a cool “behind-the-back” view of Getsu Fuma. It was pretty darn cool, and it never got a sequel up until now (with a sequel planned for PS2 that was canned). You may have seen Getsu Fuma in a few places, like the shitty Castlevania smartphone game, or as a few cards in Yu-Gi-Oh, or as one of the playable characters in the also-japan-only game Konami’s Wai Wai World (also a great game). He’s been around, but generally, it’s been a dormant series since the Famicom. So I was pretty hyped when this was announced… and then the release was shadow-dropped during the last Nintendo Direct, so that’s fun.

Let’s see if it’s a good revival!

This was such a surprising release. It just popped up randomly in a Nintendo Direct without ever being announced first but, not only that, it also came out right then and there. For those who don’t know, Actraiser is one of the ultimate SNES classics. A game that combines side-scrolling action platformer gameplay with city building simulation and is good in both aspects. It’s great. The sequel was great too, but very different, focusing entirely on the action segments and making those really cool and unique, but having no city-building.

My headcannon for why this even exists is that Yuzo Koshiro, the amazing composer that made the music for the original game (and a lot more, look him up), recently made an Actraiser-inspired track for Korone of Hololive (which is awesome, btw), and decided he wanted to make one more, but had nothing to put it in, so he bullied Squeenix to remaster the original game and add a level to put the song in. Prove me wrong (yeah this is probably not real but I think it’s funny so that’s what I’m going with).

Well, this is a remake of one of my favorite games, so let’s see if they did it justice!