Samurai Deeper Kyo (GBA): Not Quite First to Arrive, But Definitely Last to Leave

Launching in Japan on March 21, 2001, with a worldwide release a few months later throughout June, the Game Boy Advance has an interesting & kind of contradictory history behind it. It was the long awaited "true" follow up to the long-lived Game Boy, which first launched all the way back in 1989 (the Game Boy Color in 1998 was more of a color-supporting stopgap update), yet the GBA itself would only really be seen as Nintendo's main handheld for a scant few years before the release of the Nintendo DS in 2004/2005 (depending on the region), which almost instantly overtook the GBA as the handheld of choice, especially since the DS could also play GBA games. While the GBA would continue to see releases alongside the DS for a few years, it didn't take long for the GBA (& the Game Boy name itself) to be relegated to mostly just licensed tie-in games for movies, TV shows, & the like, with only the rare outlier, like an Yggdra Union or Summon Night: Swordcraft Story. That "relegation" does technically apply to the subject of this review, as we'll be looking at a tie-in to a TV anime, but depending on where it came out it's either one of the GBA's earlier releases... or one of its very last.

Japanese title screen, but all that's different
is the copyright & the logo being slightly smaller.

Debuting in the pages of Weekly Shonen Magazine in mid-1999, Samurai Deeper Kyo by Akimine Kamijyo was a little different from the usual Magazine fare by being more focused on wild & over-the-top action, something you'd expect more from a Jump or Champion manga than Magazine. Still, the tale of the wanderer Mibu Kyoshiro, the feared samurai Demon Eyes Kyo that co-inhabits the same body as Kyoshiro, & the mysterious Mibu Clan (and rumored Crimson King) that seemingly runs all of Edo-Era Japan in secret found itself an audience, resulting in a 38-volume run that ended in mid-2006, during which a 26-episode TV anime adaptation by Studio Deen would air in Japan throughout the second half of 2002. Said anime, though, was wildly different from the manga, with all of the normally human (if still super-powered) villains now being revealed to be demonic creatures called Kenyo that came to Earth via a meteorite that crash landed during the Battle of Sekigahara; it's easily one of the most wildly different anime adaptations of a manga ever made. However, it's this anime interpretation that would define Samurai Deeper Kyo outside of Japan for the most part, as while TokyoPop did release the manga in English during the 00s (with Del Rey Manga finishing things up in 2010 after Kodansha pulled all of its licenses from TP), it was Media Blasters' DVD release of the anime throughout 2003 & 2004 that easily became more well known.

Media Blasters would keep the anime in print with a boxset re-release in 2005, but the next re-release was the most interesting one of all. In an effort to expand out to other mediums, MB eventually decided to also license the Game Boy Advance game based on the Kyo anime, one that had come out in Japan back in December 2002, more or less alongside a 2D fighting game for the PS1 that would remain Japan-exclusive. Media Blasters would do the localization work for the game itself under the Anime Works Game Shop name, but since it wasn't a video game publisher it had to find a partner to handle that, eventually finding one in the form of Destineer (via its Bold Games label), a company that actually had prior anime game experience after releasing two Fullmetal Alchemist games for the DS in North America. Media Blasters would release the GBA game as a bonus with the anime boxset re-re-release, while it's not really known if Destineer ever actually released the game as a standalone product, though today it's readily sold as such online (good luck getting it for cheap today, though!). However, the most interesting thing about this whole endeavor is that, while the game originally came out in Japan in late 2002, the English release in North America wouldn't happen until February 2008(!), making it the last individual release for the Game Boy Advance anywhere in the world; Europe would receive a handful of double-packs later in 2008, but those were all re-releases. So, while my expectations aren't exactly high, let's see how this experimental endeavor for Media Blasters worked out (MB would only ever release one more game, though that was digital-only), and judge whether Samurai Deeper Kyo for the Game Boy Advance is a good "final game" for the console... and, let's face it, that's not exactly a high bar to pass, considering some other "final games" for other consoles.

Mibu Kyoshiro is a sword-wielding drifter wandering around a Japan that has seen the end of the Sengoku period with the Battle of Sekigahara. During his travels he comes across a woman who initially asks for his help, only for her to reveal that she's actually a bounty hunter named Shiina Yuya, and that she's actually after Kyoshiro due to him once creating some havoc at a local inn. Before she can make her move, though, a Kenyo appears wanting Kyoshiro for himself, before something changes with the man both sides want. Instead of seemingly meek & innocent Kyoshiro, before them now stands Demon Eyes Kyo, a legendary swordsman who allegedly has killed 1,000 men. After dealing with the Kenyo, Yuya decides to travel with Kyo, since they both want revenge; Yuya for the man who killed her father, and Kyo for Mibu Kyoshiro himself, who sealed Kyo away inside his own body. While searching for his original body, Kyo & Yuya wind up being joined by a spear-wielding man calling himself Benitora & the legendary Sanada Yukimura, who Kyo has a past with, all the while dealing with the Junishinsho, a group of warriors who hope to revive Oda Nobunaga in the Sea of Trees... the same place where Kyo's body is located.

Samurai Deeper Kyo for the GBA was planned & produced by Marvelous Entertainment (now Marvelous, Inc., owner of the Bokujo Monogatari/Story of Seasons series) & developed by Natsume Co. Ltd., better known today as Natsume-Atari (& completely separate from the Natsume Inc. that publishes lackluster Harvest Moon games today), with the latter having a long history of beloved titles such as Shatterhand, Pocky & Rocky, Wild Guns, The Ninja Warriors (Again), Gundam Wing: Endless Duel, & all of the pre-DS Medabots games, as well as developing more "recent" fare like Omega Five, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, & expanded remakes/remasters of some of their classic titles; Natsume even developed one of the FMA games for DS that Destineer published, coincidentally enough. With a catalog like that one would actually kind of hope for something promising, if maybe very straightforward, so what kind of game did we get here?

In short, we get an overhead hack-&-slash game where the goal for each stage is to simply slice & dice away at the seemingly endless horde of Kenyo (& sometimes ninja-esque creatures called Ninyo), until you're told to continue on to the next section of the stage, and while some stages are nothing but this there are also stages that feature a larger boss of some sort at the end, especially in the latter half of the game's 13 stages. For variety you have four characters to choose from when starting a new game, though you'll be forced to play as certain characters for certain stages, regardless. Demon Eyes Kyo is powerful & has good defense, but can only really fight at close range with his sword. Benitora is about as powerful as Kyo but has the lowest defense of anyone, though his spear gives him better range. Yukimura has less attack power than Kyo or Benitora, & likewise has limited range, but has the best defense. Finally, Yuya is 100% all about long-range combat with her guns & knives, though she comes to a complete halt while attacking; everyone else at least moves slightly forward while attacking. Beating Story Mode with all four characters also unlocks Kyoshiro, who's purposefully the weakest character of all, but has a sillier story to experience; in terms of gameplay, though, he's just like Kyo.

As for controls, simplicity is the name of the game here. The A button is your attack, and everyone has a four-hit combo to use at any time; Yuya's is technically five hits, but it's a minor difference. The B button makes you jump, though there is absolutely no platforming to found in this game & instead is primarily used as a cancel to end your combo early & create a knockdown situation; however, a four-hit combo also knocks down, so I very rarely used B. Finally, the R trigger activates your character's special attack, which becomes available after filling up a super meter, which naturally fills as you attack & defeat enemies. Kyo uses his "Mumyo Jinpu-ryu Satsujin-ken: Mizuchi" attack, which sees him swing his sword with a much longer reach, instantly killing foes in its path & heavily damaging bosses. Benitora's "Shinkage Ryu Ougi" has him stab anything around him in a 360° barrage, doing the same overall damage as Kyo. Yukimura simply executes a flash-like move which looks to only damage foes extremely close to him, while others simply get stunned for an admittedly long time. Finally, Yuya's special is much like Benitora's, only with it being long range. Everyone also has three additional weapons to unlock, with the second one simply increasing attack power, while the other two give their respective characters unique benefits, like increased items drops, minor healing after killing a number of enemies, increased attack range, blowing up defeated foes, etc. However, I will fully admit that these bonus weapons are extremely easy to miss, as the two you can unlock through Story Mode can be skipped over without ever knowing beforehand (they both require you to take certain paths in specific stages), while the remaining one can only be obtained in Arcade Mode, which unlocks after beating Story Mode once & is literally just the same thing as Story Mode, only without cutscenes between stages.

Admittedly, this makes Samurai Deeper Kyo for the GBA sound like a repetitive chore of a game, but Natsume was able to stave off that feeling more than you'd think by doing one thing: Making sure that the action never really lets up for a single moment. From the very first stage, this game makes sure that you are constantly fighting enemies, and even when the game tells you to advance there are usually still enemies around you to fight, sometimes even jumping in to fight you AFTER the path opens up! The end result is a nonstop pace where you'll definitely put some good use to that A button, only occasionally giving it a break whenever you use a special attack, as they each have their own mini-cinematic. It, interestingly enough, actually manages to keep the game from feeling like the repetitive drone it might sound like on paper, if only because you rarely get the chance to actually think of that fact while in a stage, since the game has no problem tossing enemies at you like crazy, with the latter half of the game easily pitting you against upwards of eight enemies on screen at a time. The game also literally keeps count of how many foes you defeat over the course of a run, so by the time you fight Oda Nobunaga himself at the very end (who's fused with a tree, because why not?) you'll have easily killed a little over 2,000 enemies by that point, or roughly 154 grunts/stage; that's literally double the number of men killed that made Demon Eyes Kyo so infamous in the first place! However, I'd still hesitate to call this game a "blind button masher", as while you certainly will do the latter like crazy it's still best to think about how you handle combat. When you start having the screen filled with foes crowd control becomes imperative, because a single attack can interrupt your combo, red Ninyo are literal suicide bombers & can rack up damage quickly, and while is the occasional power up & health refill you can either find or get dropped by enemies, there are also some power downs that enemies can hit you with, as well. The end result is a game that won't necessarily challenge you too much on the default difficulty, but playing lazily can get you killed before you know it.

Still, there's no denying that Samurai Deeper Kyo is an immensely simple & repetitive game, when you really get down to it. In some ways, it's really no more complex than a basic Tiger LCD game from the 80s or 90s, only with way better visuals, audio, & aesthetics. Speaking of visuals, the game is very bright with its color usage (likely to compensate for the original GBA's infamously non-lit screen), sometimes resulting in slightly garish backdrops, but overall they come out fine enough; that being said, though, the last few stages all take place in the Sea of Trees, with no real background differences. Character sprites are admittedly a bit small, so as to allow a bunch of them on screen at once, but they also look to be pre-rendered, giving them an admittedly interesting visual feel. However, enemy variety is very small, with only three types of both Kenyo & Ninyo (green, blue, & red), as well as just two types of "Jukaibito" (cloaked people who live in the Sea of Trees) in the last 1/3 or so of the game, and outside of bosses that's literally all you ever fight in the entire game; at least each color has a corresponding attack type & pattern, for some variety. Cutscenes are rather basic, with static images of the characters during conversations, though the rare still image from the anime every now & then looks very good.

The music heard throughout, apparently composed by Iku Mizutani, is generally rock influenced during normal gameplay, which does fit the hectic & nonstop action, while menus & cutscenes tend to get more subdued tracks. While none of the songs will exactly stick in your head over a long time, I did manage to get one or two stuck in my head a day after playing the game, so they are good (or, at least, "good enough") songs. The game also has a GBA-fied rendition of the anime's outstanding OP theme, "Ao no Requiem" by Yuiko Tsubokura, which was converted over extremely well. There's even a touch of voice work, with Media Blasters replacing the Japanese voice cast with the English dub's cast from NYAV Post, though only for Kyo/Kyoshiro (Dan Green), Yuya (Veronica Taylor), Benitora (Wayne Grayson), & Yukimura (Chris Kromer). It's admittedly just a single line heard whenever anyone performs their respective special move, but at least they're all unique & the audio quality is actually really good, making it easy to tell what everyone's saying; the on-screen text for each special's cinematic is kept in Japanese, though.

There's really not much else to be said for Samurai Deeper Kyo on the Game Boy Advance, as it really is a "What you see is what you get" kind of game, for both good & bad. This is a game where you'll be simply pressing the A button over & over & over & over & over & over & over ad nauseam for the most part, but I'll still give Natsume credit for managing to keep the game as engaging as it can be by simply throwing hordes of foes at you at any time & never really letting the pace die out when in stages. It's really in the little details where the gameplay manages to shine just enough, whether it's the subtle differences between how characters play, the focus on crowd control, the unlockable weapons, etc. Sure, the story here is handled so loosely that it might as well not even exist & the music (though catchy) won't stay in your head for more than a day or so, but there have been much, much worse anime video games out there, and it is easy to see why Media Blasters chose this as the company's first attempt at localizing a video game (i.e. it was much simpler than doing, say, an RPG). In terms of the history of "final" video games for various consoles, Samurai Deeper Kyo obviously doesn't even aim for the heights of titles like Metal Slader Glory: Director's Cut (Super Famicom), Shadowrun (Mega-CD), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (N64), Samurai Shodown V Special (Neo Geo), or even Worms (Atari Jaguar), but at least it gives the GBA a much better curtain call than the likes of Spider-Man: Web of Fire (32X), Bomber Raid (Sega Mark III), or a sort-of-throwaway yearly entry in something like Madden NFL or Just Dance (GameCube/Xbox & Xbox 360, respectively).

Game © Akimine Kamijyo・Kodansha/Project Kyo © 2002 Marvelous Inc.