The 16-bit Arcade and Console Era (1990-1995) - Mystic Warriors

RELEASE DATE: 1992

DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Konami

BEST VERSIONS: Arcade

One of Konami’s best original games of the early 1990s is, without a doubt, Sunset Riders, a western-themed run and gun game that shifts effortlessly between platform-based shooting and shooting galleries towards the backgrounds. It’s fun, it’s 4-player and it’s incredibly gaudy, featuring cowboys in bright neon outfits and outlaws who look like they shop in the trendiest boutiques the wild west has to offer. While the arcade version is the one to play (and if you haven’t, you absolutely should!), The Sunset Riders enjoyed two home ports for the Genesis/Mega Drive and SNES in North America and Europe that both had to make some compromises and has since been re-released in its original form for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.

Lesser-known is the follow-up game, Mystic Warriors, which Konami released on new hardware which would go on to power many other games that appeared in 1992 and 1993. Like Sunset Riders, Mystic Warriors is peak 1990s in its colorful characters and outrageous outfits. It also plays quite similarly, offering run and gun mechanics through platforming stages and exciting set piece battles like downhill skiing, floating down a river on bamboo reed rafts, riding on mine carts or taking to the skies and battling atop airplanes that are, for some reason, swarming with ninjas. Mystic Warriors even improves upon the formula by lengthening the game, allowing players to select their preferred character (instead of assigning him/her to the coin slot) and giving each player a life bar that can be restored with food items, easing the challenge a bit. But for whatever reason, Mystic Warriors never got ported to home systems, and it also has yet to be re-released in any form for modern consoles.

The premise of the game is that a ninja organization called the Skull Gang has started down the path of world domination and seems to have recruited most of the world’s ninjas. Five heroes stand to resist them, but actually, scratch that – one of them (selected randomly from the characters not in use) gets kidnapped by the Skull Gang at the beginning of the game and the other four have to rescue him/her from the evil organization’s clutches.

The resulting mania takes place over a series of loosely connected levels through many different environments as the ninja team traipses across Japan, slaughtering hundreds of enemies with shurikens and kunai and taking down big bosses who attempt to slow their progress. The enemies aren’t shy about using anything at their disposal to slow the game’s heroes, including snowmobiles, train cars, motorcycles and even monster trucks. One of the more interesting aspects of the Skull Gang is that some of their heavy hitters aren’t actually ninja, but instead wield technological weapons like flamethrowers, flying mechs, water jet cannons and a four-armed robotic suit. But there are also scenes where the ninja heroes will battle more traditional foes, in one case bowing before the conflict begins.

The game’s five heroes all play very similarly and are mostly distinguished by their (sometimes outlandish) outfits. The blue-clad Spyros and the yellow-wearing Kojiro are both stoic ninjas who would normally be the heroes of a game like this, but there’s also Brad, a black monk with a flattop and shades, and there’s Keima, who’s decked out in kabuki clothes with red horns, white face makeup and long blue hair that goes down to his feet. And then there’s Yuri, the lone female who wears a revealing bodysuit with a prominent thong in the back and giant pink socks on her calves. While one of these characters is removed from play at the beginning of the game, players can swap between the other four on continues, and the storyline and ending of the game are subtly changed by which ninja is captured, resulting in a nicely melodramatic cutscene that fits the strange tone of the game perfectly. The music is also great, scored by Junya Nakano (who’d eventually wind up at Square Enix working alongside Nobuo Uematsu) and Yuji Takenouchi (a composer and sound designer who’s worked on From Software’s Souls series and contributed to many other titles).

Short of finding Mystic Warriors in an arcade, the only way to play it today is through HAMSTER’s Arcade Archives series on the PlayStation 4 or Nintendo Switch. It’s definitely worth the price - it’s a tremendously fun game and every bit as good as Sunset Riders, particularly with co-op play. Here’s to hoping Konami re-releases it and all of the subsequent games that were based on its hardware (Gaiapolis, Martial Champion, Metamorphic Force, Monster Maulers and Violent Storm, all of which we’ll also discuss!) in a compilation down the road.

We’re moving on to the 1990s console and arcade games to cover one of the golden eras of video gaming as gaming shifted to 16 bits at home and true 3D in the arcades!

We’ll cover shoot ‘em ups, run and guns, fighters, brawlers, RPGs, platformers and, of course, strategy games, sports games and more. Take some time learn about great games you may have missed like Power Blade, Ranger X, Thunder Fox, Liquid Kids, Alligator Hunt, Arabian Fight, Crystalis, Popful Mail, Alisia Dragoon, Kid Dracula, Little Samson, The Space Adventure, Rocket Knight Adventures, Rolo to the Rescue and even oddities like The Haunting Starring Polterguy and The Ooze!

If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC, console and arcade games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.

Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 3. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!

If you missed my previous series on the hundreds of 1980s console, arcade and PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.

Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 3. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!