I played it back when it was released and I remember it being pretty good. Lots of weird magic you can shoot.
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I understand this is (loosely) based on Journey to the West, but it’s hardly alone in that regard. There’s also Black Myth Wukong, but that one didn’t interest me.
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Just got the first three volumes of the Magic Knight Rayearth manga in French!
They’re paperback, but with these nice, almost soft-touch slipcovers? Don’t think I’ve seen that before! Also my French reading level should be enough for a comic for children … I hope ;)
Was listening to IC 262 recently, with the really touching Reiko Kodama tribute, and was feeling inspired to check out the Saturn game (also saw the game come up in discussions about Working Designs, with the recent changes to the Lunar Remastered scripts), so when I saw these at the thrift store I had to pick them up! (Only problem is they only had volumes 1-3, but looks like there are 6 in total).
(Also, before I saw these I always heard it as “Magic Knight Rare Earth”, so I was surprised to see the actual title–wonder if they’ll explain what a “Rayearth” even is?)
(Also now I’m imagining a kind of nerd who’s really pretentious, but instead of going on about “I read the novel before watching the movie” it’s “I read the manga before playing the video game”)
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Good cut. You could get this entire paperback book series for about $7 at any Half-Price Books
These are gorgeous. Rayearth in French feels good
When I first saw this, I thought “I bet you could have a whole thread of Journey to the West games,” but at least according to Wikipedia, there are only 15 (it’s fun to guess), not including Dragon Ball games. And I’d say some of those are loosely inspired, because that list includes Mega Man: The Wily Wars. There’s gotta be more than that. But outside of Black Myth and Enslaved, here are at least some notable non-Dragon Ball Journey to the West games:
Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Daibōken (Techno Quest/VAP, 1986)
Infamous kusoge for the Famicom, repopularized by Game Center CX
Cloud Master (Taito, 1988)
A simple, difficult arcade STG with a lot of different releases (1989 Master System box art here because it’s excellent)
Legend of Wukong (GameTec/Ming Technology Co., 1996)
This one’s interesting – it’s a Taiwanese-developed late-stage Genesis release that became an early example of newly pressed vintage console releases when it was translated and published commercially in the US by Super Fighter Team in 2008
Monkey Hero (Take-Two Interactive/Blam!, 1999)
Glad I did this exercise, because I completely forgot this existed. A Take-Two developed polygonal, top-down Zelda-like that was exclusively released in North America and Europe for the PlayStation
Saiyuki: Journey West (Koei, 1999)
Categorically the sickest looking of these games, Koei did their tactics thing with Journey to the West, also in 1999 (2001 in North America) for the PlayStation. I would like to play this now
Monkey Magic (Sunsoft, 1999)
'99 was a big year for Sun Wukong on the Sony PlayStation. Later that year in Japan (or early 2000 in North America), Sunsoft released their own take on Journey to the West as a side-scrolling platformer. This one’s based on the anime of the same name, so it’s an adaptation of an adaptation
According to Wikipedia, the first Journey to the West-inspired game was Capcom’s SonSon in 1984. Before Black Myth, the latest was the French-developed Unruly Heroes in 2019 – but if I had to guess, I’d say the Wiki list isn’t comprehensive
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