Happy Friday, everyone. Today we’re going to talk about a legend in Japanese media: Takeshi Kitano.
Takeshi Kitano, also known as Beat Takeshi, is a Japanese celebrity who apparently has more talents than I care to count. He’s an actor, singer, director, poet, painter, film editor… seriously, is there anything he didn’t do? He rose to fame in the early 1970s as part of comedy duo Two Beat, but would later go on to do solo work on stage and television, most notably the show Takeshi’s Castle. But perhaps what he was most well-known for is his film directing. He starred in and directed several movies, mostly action flicks or crime dramas, the most famous being Sonatine, which put him in the spotlight of the international audience. He is considered one of the most influential people in the film and acting industry, with some even dubbing him the next Akira Kurosawa.
But he’s not perfect. Kitano did at one time abuse his power. How? When video game developer Taito approached him to make a video game based off of him and his TV show, he chose to become directly involved in production. This led Taito to create something that simply had the Beat Takeshi branding and nothing based off his work. Kitano offered several ideas, one of which was to make the game a Grand-Theft-Auto-esque life simulator, but Taito turned down many of them either due to their inappropriate nature or the Famicom’s limited memory capacity.
The game was released for the Famicom in December 1986. According to at least one programmer, Kitano’s ideas for the game were spawned following an hour-long discussion at a bar, where Kitano allegedly had a little too much to drink. Now I’m curious, how did Kitano’s game turn out?
As the game begins, you’re presented with a title screen. As you move to the left, you will start the game. First of all, the graphics are fine. Everything is easily identifiable with enough detail, and the characters have that signature Taito style. The music, however, is atrocious. Too many high notes! It’s also a 10-second loop that repeats forever, with just a small section of different notes every few minutes.
Now, onto the gameplay. The game is a free-roaming platformer and you have to… um… you gotta… uh… umm… well… what are you supposed to do, anyway? The game starts out with you getting yelled at by your boss, but after that you are given no indication of where to go or what to do. I roamed the city for about an hour trying to figure out what to do. You can go to a movie theater and watch a movie, you can go to a bar and grab a drink, and you can go to a restaurant called Grilled Mormons. But none of those things seemed to accomplish anything apart from giving my character alcohol poisoning.
Oh yeah, before we go any further, let’s talk about that restaurant. When Takeshi no Chōsenjō was translated to English for ROM emulation, fans discovered that it was actually called Grilled Mormons, indicating that you could actually eat Mormons. Never have I seen a game that promoted cannibalism. But anyway, while it does indeed say that in the untranslated Japanese version, it is actually a play on words. “Mormon” comes from the word “morumon”. The word “morumon” is derived from the word “horumon” which is some kind of beef or pork in Japan. So it seems Takeshi Kitano changed the word around for the sake of a tasteless joke. Okay then.
So, after roaming the Tokyo streets for an hour and not really getting anywhere, I finally looked up an online walkthrough. Here’s what you are supposed to do: you have to locate a treasure island somewhere in the Sourh Pacific, but you have to follow a specific order of events in order to find the map to get to it. This finally brought the game’s biggest flaw to light. You have to follow sequenced events exactly how Takeshi Kitano programmed them into the game. You cannot go off the sequence once, or you could risk not being able to finish the game due to later events not triggering. More on that later.
This wouldn’t be so bad if you even had the slightest guess what you are supposed to do, but there’s no indication of what to do ANYWHERE. Not only that, sometimes you have to do a certain action (such as singing a certain song at a karaoke) more than once to trigger the next event. You have to be that precise! Have I mentioned you aren’t given the slightest clue of what to do?
Some of the tasks are just downright crazy. For example, you have to look inside a plant outside of the boss’ room and find your secret stash of money. Would you think to look inside of something that just looks like it’s part of the background? Also, you have to go to a pachinko parlor and lose every ball you purchase. In a real video game, you’d expect to have to win. But no, not here. Plus, after an old man comes in and gives you a map, you have to beat him to a pulp immediately afterwards. I guess elder abuse isn’t as frowned upon in Japan, according to Kitano.
That leads me into my next criticism. Remember when I said if you don’t follow a certain sequence of events exactly you could risk being unable to beat the game? Well, guess what? There’s a part where you have to divorce your wife AND pay alimony, or she’ll plant a bomb in your plane to the South Pacific and it will explode in midair. My wife’s a terrorist, who knew? Also, if you don’t kill the old man in the karaoke, he’ll stop you from getting to the treasure right near the end of the game and kill you. Yeah, you gotta be that precise. Again, there’s no indication anywhere of what you have to do to achieve the ending with no problem; that becomes a huge obstacle in actually enjoying the game.
And here’s what’s probably the most infamous aspect of Takeshi no Chōsenjō: the map. After the old man gives you a piece of paper, you have to reveal the map by either A) soaking it in water, or B) bathing it in sunlight. If you choose the former, you have to wait five minutes. If you choose the latter, you have to wait an hour. After the time is up you have to cry into the microphone on the second Famicom controller. I admit that’s a pretty innovative gameplay mechanic, but again, how in God’s name is anyone supposed to know to do that?
But lack of intuitive gameplay aside, is the game at least well put together? Well… I’ve played worse, but it has some issues. There are Yakuza members roaming the streets of Tokyo, and they’re almost unavoidable. Even if you jump over them they’ll be able to punch you immediately when you land. If you’re lucky you’ll be able to avoid them probably a quarter of the time, but their hit rate is very high. They sometimes gang up on you too! When you begin the game you only have four hearts, which can drain fairly quickly due to all the gangsters in the street.
Oh, and guess what happens when you die? Game over! And you got to go all the way back to the beginning! That means completing the same crazy and rigid tasks all over again, no matter how far you got into the game.
Also, the end level in the caves is downright impossible. You have enemies coming at you in many different directions, and if you don’t avoid all of them you could potentially get killed within seconds. Seriously, there is no conventional way around all these pirates and skeletons! The only way to get through them, that I know of, is a glitch where you repeatedly pause and unpause the game, where they will all reset to their default positions. It’s never a good sign when you have to cheat to win.
So that’s Takeshi no Chōsenjō, one of the most frustrating games of all time. But is it really one of the worst games of all time? Well, sure, the gameplay is not intuitive, the enemies are hard as nails, and the end level is beyond frustrating, but if you knew what you were doing, the game is at least functional. The game mostly does what it’s programmed to do, does it well, and was pretty innovative for its time. It was heavily based on things that happened in real life, like domestic abuse (in a Nintendo game!!!) and violence on the street. Plus, it’s an open world game, which was kind of a new thing back then. This led many gamers to believe this was a precursor to the Grand Theft Auto series… though that might be a tad bit of a stretch. However, the player shouldn’t have to guess what to do without any hints whatsoever, nor should they have to use glitches to finish the quest successfully. That’s just bad game design.
So yeah, Takeshi no Chōsenjō is functional and innovative, but also very unfair most of the time. The sad thing is, I think Kitano knew this. He has stated that he hates many forms of media, including anime, social networking, cell phones, and video games. This led many people to speculate that Kitano purposefully designed the game to punish the player. This is further reinforced by the fact that there’s a label on the box warning that the game should not be attempted by casual gamers or those who have a solid understanding of video game logic. If that be the case, he definitely succeeded.
So in the end, Takeshi no Chōsenjō is a very mediocre romp. If you know what you’re doing, you may get some enjoyment out of playing it, but I would probably watch a walkthrough or print a guide before attempting it. If you think that will ruin the experience for you, then just don’t bother.
Rating: 3/10
Oh, and fun fact! This game came out a day before Sherlock Holmes: Hakushaku Reijō Yūkai Jiken. Is that game it’s true spiritual successor?? Who cares?