Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Daibōken

“China’s Story Begins Now.”

“Let’s get into the continental spirit
with ‘Saiyūki!'”
Enlightened art by @EmilyHammersley.

We’ve covered some notable kusogē on the Bad Game Hall of Fame in the past, as “bad games” websites worth their salt all inevitably do. Logically, our journey started at the very beginning, with the very first game to be associated with the mocking portmanteau. Thus far, we’ve tackled one entry in the unofficial “Treasure Hunters Trinity,” with two more Famicom fossils still left to unearth. Hell, one might argue we’ve already seen the worst of the worst ’round these parts, as we’ve even gone and written about the oft-proclaimed, almighty “Emperor of Kusogē” itself. But today brings us another contender to that dubious throne — a game in which you play as no less than a veritable King. I suppose we should bow in the presence of bad game royalty, and bask in the discomforting glow of its dull, flickering light. And so we embark on another cursed journey: A trek which spans the Eastern Hemisphere, providing little more than the vague directive to head westward.

Hell, one might even dare to call this troublesome travelogue a “Journey to the West!”

For those not clued into the gag, here: Journey to the West (西遊記 in its native Chinese) is the title of perhaps one of the most popular and influential novels ever written, with its original publication [by an anonymous author] dating back to 16th century China. Y’all ever watch the original Dragon Ball? The whole franchise started as an homage to this story. Ever played Enslaved: Odyssey to the West? Yeah, reckon that subtitle should make a little more sense to you now. But of course, Enslaved wasn’t the first video game to base itself on the folkloric exploits of the so-called “Monkey King” Sun Wukong: I believe that honor is owed to a 1984 Capcom arcade title, SonSon? But alas, that’s still not the title we’re here today to discuss, either.** Jump ahead two years in time to 1986, and to the debut software offering of one VAP Inc. — an already-established Japanese entertainment company, looking to dip their toes into this new-fangled video game fad. The end result of their efforts and investment came to Nintendo’s Family Computer in the form of Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Daibōken (元祖西遊記スーパーモンキー大冒険) — roughly translated as ‘Original Journey to the West: Super Monkey Adventure.’ And boy howdy, what an adventure consumers had in store for them.

Despite its notoriety as a formative Famicom kusogē, documentation for the development of Ganso Saiyūki has remained something of a mystery for the better part of the last 35 years. Appearances and references to it within Japan’s popular culture evidently did little in the way of compelling its original creators to open up on the subject of its production — a likely low point in their professional histories, and perhaps even a personal sore spot for some. But come 2018, one of the game’s three developers stepped up to confess their role in it, and kindly helped to solve many of the mysteries behind the enigmatic cartridge. Needless to say, this article will come equipped with all the pertinent details of the game’s construction, and brief histories on the companies and major players involved. Naturally, we’ll also be undertaking the virtual expedition for ourselves, and recording our meditations on all the highs and lows. At journey’s end, we’ll try and get a handle on how the game was received in its time, its lasting legacy, and the surprising places some of the parties involved would later wind up in their careers. So come now, ye seekers of enlightenment: Vulture Peak awaits!

** For what it’s worth: I played SonSon for the first time in my life in the process of writing this article. And as it turns out, it’s a ton of fun! Super intuitive arcade action complete with uncomplicated co-op play. Gets a high recommendation from me.

“The Long Journey Begins…”

“The Ultimate Role-Playing
Game Adventure!!”
Japanese magazine advert.

I suppose we should probably begin with a brief breakdown / refresher as to what the originally-written Journey to the West was all about? To start with, there’s the fact that its based (very loosely, obviously) on the real-life journey of one Chen “Xuanzang” Hui; a Buddhist monk who travelled from Tang dynasty-era China to India in the 7th century, in order to bring back a collection of original Sanskrit-language Buddhist texts and translate them for the benefit and enlightenment of his peers. The whole round trip wound up taking him seventeen years, at the end of which he was encouraged by the Emperor Taizong to write a travelogue of his journey (despite the Emperor’s own earlier issuing of a travel ban, which should have prevented Xuanzang’s expedition in the first place), eventually becoming the book Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (大唐西域記) published in the year 646 AD. The story of Xuanzang’s continent-spanning quest quickly became the stuff of legend, and embellishment by oral story-tellers would run wild in the centuries to follow; where one of the most established additions soon became a monkey companion who evidently travelled alongside the wandering monk. And thus, a seed was planted for future generations to reap the fruits of.

In the year 1592, Journey to the West was published to provide a further fictionalized and fantastical retelling of Xuanzang’s mission. While authorship of the book is historically debated (it is most often attributed to publisher Wu Cheng’en, though compelling arguments have been made that the original writing credit is owed to 12th century Taoist Qiu Chuji),^[1] the intent of its writer was clearly to incorporate elements of popular folklore and establish a more narrative structure; making for an altogether more entertaining read, and serving as a satire of then-contemporary Chinese bureaucracy. But in the interest of not getting tangled up in 16th century politics, let’s just get to the story synopsis: The monk Tang Sanzang (standing in for Xuanzang) is tasked by the bodhisattva Guanyin (the Buddhist goddess of mercy and compassion) to undergo a pilgrimage to India, where he must obtain their sacred sūtras and return them to the Tang Empire. Knowing that the adventure will be perilous, however, he is not ordered to go at it alone. In addition to the white horse he initially rides off on, his first companion becomes Sun Wukong — the self-proclaimed Monkey King and one-time challenger against all of Heaven itself; now relegated to the role of Tang’s protector, and boasting too many magic powers to even begin counting. Just know that the key ones are his ability to transform and clone himself, a ‘Somersault Cloud’ he can fly atop, and a magical staff known as the ‘Ruyi Jingu Bang’ which can shrink and expand as needed.

Sun Wukong is quickly established as the story’s most central and proactive protagonist, who is able to outwit and overpower pretty much every opponent and obstacle in the party’s way — a real “Monkey Sue,” if you will. Still, there are other supporting characters who help to keep the dynamic fresh across the novel’s one-hundred chapters; some of whom join Tang Sanzang and Sun Wukong along the way, typically after being bested in combat. First, there’s the dragon prince Bai Long Ma, who swallows Tang’s horse whole before Sun beats him into submission, and who promptly transforms into the ‘White Dragon Horse’ in order to serve as Tang’s new steed. Next, the party encounters Zhu Bajie — a proper glutton of a pig, who constantly attempts to shirk his duties to the group in favor of food and women. Finally, they pick up the sand demon Sha Wujing, who serves as a mostly dependable straight man and general support character. For cultural reasons completely beyond my comprehension, Japanese adaptations of Journey to the West typically reinterpret Sha Wujing as a kappa demon? So, y’know: Just bear that fact in mind for later. In any case, the motley crew work together to overcome challenging obstacles and defeat countless foes on their journey to India — frequently having to rescue the powerless Tang from danger along the way. Getting into any more detail than that for right now is gonna be as lengthy as it is pointless, so just trust me to mention any particularly relevant story beats / characters as they pop up during the eventual game review.

To neatly condense another 400 years of history: Journey to the West became a smash hit in China and abroad, cementing itself as one of the “Four Great Masterworks” of Chinese literature (alongside the likes of Romance of the Three Kingdoms). Japan in particular became a country where Journey to the West proved especially popular, with its place within their culture enduring well into the modern day. Say, speaking of Japan: That’s where an entertainment company by the name of ‘VAP Inc.’ (Video Audio Project) was founded in 1981! They quickly set about producing and distribution for musical acts, television programming, feature films and anime; all fields in which they still maintain a huge presence to this very day. As a matter of fact, it’s a safe bet that some of your favorite pieces of Japanese media exist under their purview. A few of my favorite bands – the likes of Galneryus, Maximum the Hormone, and Sendai Kamotsu** – have been part of their record label operations. They’ve had hands in compiling the DVD releases for the likes of Dirty Pair, Golgo 13, Lupin the Third, and too many more to count. They’re also affiliated with the likes of All Japan Pro Wrestling and Pro Wrestling Noah, for my fellow grappling connoisseurs out there. What I’m trying to establish here is the fact that VAP are pretty major players in the Japanese media landscape, and that where there are opportunities for them to make money in newly-emerging mediums, they will surely be seen making the attempt. And come 1986, the time had finally come for them to try their hand at publishing video games.

See, the operative word there is “publishing,” as opposed to “developing.” Again, the company’s main function lies in establishing contracts with artistic talent; covering funding for the production of their associated works, handling the promotion and marketing thereof, and ultimately arranging the manufacture and distribution efforts for the finished products. In much the same way that VAP as a collective weren’t expected to produce their own original music or draw the individual cels for their associated animations, they would similarly outsource matters of game development to contracted studios. And in carefully selecting their first collaborator in their software publishing ventures, they eventually (perhaps even accidentally) landed on another relative newcomer to the field: Techno Quest Inc., established in 1984 as a subsidiary of the legendary Taito Corporation. But what makes this choice truly odd is the fact that Techno Quest weren’t really a game development studio — weren’t originally intended to be one, at the very least. Rather, they served as one of Japan’s first “CG production” companies, employed by other studios (typically in the industry of animation) in order to render cutting-edge computer-generated graphics and 3D models. So, how exactly did they wind up in the business of developing video games, anyway?

It’s here where the first-hand accounts of one Shunichi “tks” Takase become an invaluable resource, in providing a brief history of Techno Quest’s operations. After a youth spent watching anime and playing computer games (he recalls owning the likes of the ‘Sord M5’ and Sony’s ‘SMC-777’ PCs), he found himself employed at a recently-founded Techno Quest thanks to a recommendation by one of his university professors.^[2] The teacher in question was no less than Sadao Tsukioka: A prolific animator with a career dating back to as early as 1960, where he debuted with his contributions to – get this – Toei Animation’s animated film adaptation of Saiyûki / Journey to the West (later localized as ‘Alakazam the Great’ for international audiences, as one of the first Japanese animated movies to seeNorth American distribution). As if that weren’t enough, he’d also play the role of episode director for the 1967 television anime Goku no Daibōken — yet another animated Journey to the West adaptation! In any event, Tsukioka in 1984 was serving as an advisor to Techno Quest, as well as arranging contract work between them and his former employer at Toei. Takase, for his part, was still more interested in taking on a career in the animation industry himself; and so he likely saw joining Techno Quest as a potential stepping stone to that eventual goal, as well as a way to keep in contact with his sensei.

Takase quickly underwent on-the-job training for CG production, specifically in roles as a production assistant and planner.^[2b] It should be noted that actual job orders came around fairly irregularly at Techno Quest; due to CGI still being a largely unknown quantity to the larger Japanese media industry, it being a prohibitively expensive service to invest in, and the fact that not even companies in the know were all particularly interested in incorporating computer graphics into their broadcasts and products quite yet. But this wasn’t a major concern for Techno Quest at the time, thanks to their biggest supporter and benefactor: Taito’s own founder and Ukranian entrepreneur, Michael Kogan. So long as he was still around, saw the potential in CGI, and was content to continue bankrolling Techno Quest; the staff could basically operate with impunity, and bide their time between the rare bits of contract work that came their way. Pretty sweet deal, truth be told! Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, and the company would be confronted with some bad news on the morning of February 5th, 1984: Mr. Kogan had died while away on business in Los Angeles. And just as suddenly as the man’s passing, Techno Quest had lost their financial backing, and now faced the daunting prospect of having to become an legitimately sustainable business. The decision quickly reached by Techno Quest’s staff was that CG production alone wasn’t gonna keep the lights on — not while the field itself was still largely unknown to the sort of clientele they were targeting.

“The red barbarian is scrambled to intercept
the mysterious system.”
Japanese MSX cover art for Rolling Blaster.

And so came the pivot: Techno Quest would now produce video games, in order to transition their familiarity with computers toward a more popular / profitable medium.^[2c] The first product of this new business model would be 1985’s Rolling Blaster: A proper odd duck of a computer game, which required consumers to own expensive [and obscure] models of LaserDisc-capable MSX machines (or a stock machine with an add-on LaserDisc player peripheral) in order to play it. In developing Rolling Blaster, Techno Quest were able to assemble a relatively simplistic scrolling shooter program, and augment it with the ability of the MSX to play full-motion video in the system’s background layer; thereby allowing them an opportunity to show off their CGI chops, and play back cutting-edge 3D visuals as the backdrop to each stage. Where Rolling Blaster‘s core gameplay is nothing to write home about, the novelty of the constantly-running FMV footage genuinely was, and the title could effectively position itself as a technical tour de force. Just one small problem: Practically no one owned the hardware necessary to run the damn game. Only nine Laserdisc-enabled MSX games in total saw release between 1984 and 1986, none of them seemed to be particularly successful, and Techno Quest were effectively left selling a product to the most absolute niche audience imaginable. Needless to say, that wasn’t quite a step towards the profitability they were hoping for — visually impressive as their debut game may well have been.

It’s around this time where VAP attempted to get in contact with Taito about commissioning their own first video game product, only to discover that the company didn’t actually yet have a dedicated “consumer development team” — a division dedicated to directly producing home console games.^[2d] At this point, Taito themselves were still relying on third-party contractors to develop conversions of their arcade games for the likes of personal computers and the Family Computer, and thus couldn’t help out VAP when they came knocking at their door. What happens next is only vaguely described by Takase, and perhaps only vaguely understood by him as well: VAP were at this point either referred to Techno Quest directly by Taito, or seemed to otherwise accidentally stumble on them while looking for developers with consumer development divisions for hire. In either case, Techno Quest heard out VAP’s request, and decided to take on the project with their being strapped for cash and all. Lacking any other viable candidates, Takase was thrust into the role of ‘Planner’ on the project, and given a grand total of two newly-hired contract employees to work under him: Graphic designer Kaoru Nakajima, and a programmer known as “Mr. O” — a fellow computer game enthusiast, who brought with him a love of the Commodore 64 version of Ultima and a want to reproduce several of its features in his very own game.

It’s not entirely clear where the concept to incorporate the Journey to the West premise into the game first originated from. If the order came from VAP themselves, it was possibly due to the success of the 1978 live action Japanese television adaptation of Saiyûki — retitled and rebroadcast internationally as Monkey. It was certainly one of the more popular media adaptations of Journey to the West in general, and its continued reruns on Japan’s ‘Nippon TV’ station likely meant that its popularity still remained high come 1986.*** If it wasn’t VAP’s idea, then perhaps it was Takase’s own pitch — maybe a way for him to pay homage to the past works of his mentor in Sadao Tsukioka? Maybe it came from the elusive Mr. O, who saw the potential to extrapolate and translate its story into the sort of RPGs he was so interested in? Or maybe it was just the simplest / most popular concept that everyone involved in its creation could agree upon — the winner of some final vote tally after restless nights spent tossing ideas around as to what the hell Techno Quest could potentially center a video game around. Whatever the inspiration may be, work ultimately began in 1986 on bringing the title to Nintendo’s Family Computer, in order to market it to the largest audience available at that moment in time.

The game’s production proved challenging for the three-man team, especially considering the fact that two of the three involved had no real game development experience. While Nakajima had at least one or two games under his belt (including an earlier 1986 Famicom title, Baltron), Takase and Mr. O were still mere enthusiasts, who would quickly discover a hard truth of the industry: “Saying ‘I like games’ and being able to make games are two completely different things,”^[2e] as Takase would succinctly put it. We can assume from this statement that Takase’s own contributions to Rolling Blaster seemed to have been limited to production on the FMVs, rather than matters of actual game design. As such, the team’s collective ambitions for what would become Ganso Saiyūki were quickly stymied by their comparative inexperience, and the daunting task of having to develop for the Family Computer hardware at the same time as they were still just learning how to do so. In particular, they seemed to have a hard time working within the machine’s memory limitations; discovering that after creating the game’s impressively expansive overworld, they wound up not having the available allocation for too much of anything else:

“Although I created content, I didn’t have enough memory to store it … A huge map with hundreds of screens. That alone used up almost all of the memory capacity, and almost no other specifications I was thinking of could be included. The memory of the NES at that time was a very tiny environment with 256Kbit of characters and 256Kbit of programs & data, and it was necessary to use various techniques such as compression normally to gain capacity. But at that time, we didn’t have that skill.” ~ Shunichi Takase^[2f]

For as much of a struggle as development may well have proved, Techno Quest were still contractually obligated to VAP to have the game prepared in time for a deadline. And VAP, for their part, would promise to push said product to the moon; putting the full weight of their promotional power behind it, as only a major media conglomerate of their scale and reach could. It’s one thing for a studio’s first game to stumble getting out the gate – to be expected, even – but to have to do so in front of an audience of potentially hundreds of thousands of consumers is a particularly daunting prospect. As Takase would recall: “Usually, such works die and never see release. […] However, in the case of Monkey, due to various circumstances, the work that should have died somehow came out as it was.”^[2g] With development eventually wrapping up as best it could, and with copies of the cartridge printed and ready for mass distribution across Japan, all that was left to do was to sit back and watch the game embark on its very own journey on the day of November 21st, 1986. Ganbatte, Ganso Saiyūki!

** Seeing as I’ll probably never have another excuse to talk about Sendai Kamotsu on this website again, let me take full advantage of this opportunity: Sendai Kamotsu is the comedy alter ego of the über-popular visual kei group Nightmare, who you most likely know as performing Death Note’s first OP (“The WORLD”). Where Nightmare is dark and edgy in all the ways you’d expect a visual kei band to be, Sendai Kamotsu allows them to play total goofballs in ridiculous facepaint, as well as portraying them as flagrant homosexuals — featuried in songs and music videos for the likes of “Gei School Otokogumi!!” and “Saturday Night Gay Bar.” Are their over-the-top caricatures meant to be somewhat mocking and offensive? Probably. Is their music catchy as hell and their PVs fun to watch? Most definitely.

*** Naturally, it would later be VAP who handled production and distribution for DVD compilations of the Saiyûki television show, decades after its initial airing. Kudos to them for not letting the whole Super Monkey Daibōken experience sour them on Journey to the West in general, I suppose.

“Oh No! I’ve Died!”

“Om Mani Padme Hum.”
Japanese Family Computer cover art.

Y’all have no doubt heard the expression “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” But did you know that apparently, the saying first originated in China, and went something more like “A journey of a thousand li starts beneath one’s feet?” I suppose that’s an even more pertinent version of the idiom when it comes to discussing Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Daibōken. In keeping with the original novel, the game spans the stretch of Tang Sanzang and Sun Wukong’s legendary trek from China to India; beginning with the pair already assembled [with Bai Long Ma already in tow as well], stood on a decidedly sparse island ostensibly made to represent the ‘Five Elements Mountain’ range, and prepared to embark on the long journey ahead. As a matter of fact, the game kind of takes it on faith that you’re already intimately familiar with the story (or, at the very least, have already read the accompanying instruction manual), and drops you in with no real sense of directive or direction. All you get in-game is a brief titlecard reading “ながいたびがはじまる..” (“The long journey begins…”), before being left to figure all the rest out for yourself. And boy howdy, does the game choose to open up with a doozy of a puzzle for first-time players.

The game immediately introduces you to one of its staple bits of trickery: Having to locate invisible teleport tiles on the overworld, which will transport you to designated points across the world the moment you step on them. It’s up to you to figure out where they’re located, by effectively checking every odd tile that your party can walk on — occasionally hinted at through divots in the likes of otherwise impassable mountains and forests, but just as often placed within the middle of innocuous ranges of empty space, typically around shorelines where the rivers and ocean meets land. What makes this design decision all the less intuitive is the fact that there are also clearly-visible, inexplicable staircase tiles that appear across the map — tiles which serve the same purpose as the invisible teleports, but which are obviously far easier to spot and keep track of. What’s more surprising though is simply how sparse these teleport tiles are (both visible and invisible), relative to how large the game’s map is. No matter which way you approach it, you’re going to be doing a lot of walking over the course of the adventure. A lot of slow, aimless, generally tedious walking.

I feel like I skipped a beat here by not describing how gameplay works on the overworld screen: The frame centers on your traveling party – depicting all your currently-recruited members, walking in formation with one another – and features a rather substantial heads-up-display across the bottom of your display. On this HUD, you can chart the current time of day, the individual healths of your party members, and your current levels of thirst and hunger. All of these metrics and meters are significant, as the passing of time is a major aspect of the game: In addition to your hunger and thirst ticking down with the clock – where running dry eventually starts to deplete your health – there are a couple of instances where gates on the map open and close depending on what hours you approach them during, and which can leave you waiting out the day-night cycle until the appropriate time. Generally speaking though, you can primarily just focus on the larger window with your characters and immediate surroundings, and observe the time of day from the varying degrees of brightness level / shifting color palette on the game world. It’s an admittedly neat little system Techno Quest developed here, where most Famicom / NES contemporaries with “real-time” mechanics would simply switch between a “Day” state and “Night” state with little to no warning (à la Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest).

For better or for worse, you’ll inevitably be spending the majority of your time on this overworld screen, and its novelties can quickly wear thin. As alluded to earlier, movement across the map is slow and plodding, and can also be stopped in its tracks by frustrating bits of collision with scenery. Where it’s easy to get caught on the edges of narrow passageways through mountains, it’s just as easy to inadvertently trip over barely-distinct obstacle tiles in the open — rough patches of small rocks or vegetation that blend in with surrounding open spaces. And given the sheer size of the overworld (it’s meant to represent the length of 3,000 kilometers between China and India, after all), you can be sure you’ll be running into plenty of these unforeseen stops over the course of your quest. Again, credit where credit is due: The fact that the world map is as expansive and densely-detailed as it is constitutes an impressive feat for the first-time developers. It comprises a span of 768 screens (counting inaccessible ocean and mountain ranges), contains a number of unique tilesets, and demonstrates clear distinctions between its different geographical regions contained within. Not even the likes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy on the same console (and both released within a year of Super Monkey Daibōken) could boast such large scale and variation in terrain. Add to that the fact that the world reacts and changes with the time of day [in-game] and manages to incorporate a couple of other dynamic elements, and you’re looking at a proper technical showcase for the era! It’s just a shame, then, that most players find it no fun to actually plot a course and travel across.

It’s here where I should note something you’ve all probably already guessed: There’s nothing in the way of an in-game “map screen” — an option to bring up some condensed overview of the whole overworld. What you see on-screen during navigation is what you get, and it’s on you to either draw your own personal charts or consult an outside source. Given how absolutely massive the game world is, I can’t really recommend attempting to conduct your own land survey. I will say that having played through the game myself a couple times over the course of the years, I can commit the critical paths through it to memory well enough by now: If you know where you’re headed and the direct-most routes to get there, you really only wind up visiting a third or fourth of the traversable landmasses. But of course, players back in 1986 weren’t exactly privy to that crucial information, or provided much in the way of guidance by walkthroughs and FAQs. To successfully undertake the in-game pilgrimage from Chang’an to the Griddharaj Parvat, players would be made to comb every corner of the provided world; complete with empty swathes, dead ends, and even a couple of devious booby traps — all with the most minimal of in-game guidance provided to them, mind you.

The only indications you’ll get as to where you are in the world come from visiting houses scattered across the map, where the NPCs that can reside within might tell you which direction you should be headed in. These will typically amount to single lines of text indicating something like “This is South China” or “Flaming Mountains are West,” or sometimes providing vague hints like “Cross the time gate” and “Seek the Phoenix” (referring to a small handful of hidden tiles that can restore your status across the board). Often, they’ll also have something in the way of food and drink to offer you too, in order to replenish those meters of yours. Sometimes, there won’t be anyone and / or anything at all inside, with a handful of houses homing hostile ghosts that serve to ambush you. It’s a total gamble what may lie in store for you, but it’s a chance you’ll always want to take, in order to get a sense of place within the world / to top off your thirst and hunger. And truth be told? I genuinely think it’s a great bit of design! I’ll take these simple one-room houses over your standard RPG towns any day of the week; cutting out all the pointless flavor NPCs, streamlining the process of replenishing your resources, and doing away with characters who would provide you with absolutely cryptic nonsense in the place of straightforward direction. With Super Monkey Daibōken, you’ll be in and out of houses in a matter of seconds, and typically leave them better off than when you first entered.

Speaking of how tedious towns can be in old-school RPGs: There actually are a few cities you’ll be able to visit on your journey, though they also don’t operate like your standard hubs of commerce and healing. Instead – on entering a city – you’ll get a quick indication of where you’re visiting, a prompt on screen with some combination of the letters “A” and “B,” and be thrown into a fight shortly thereafter. All this happens pretty quickly, so you might not realize the function here immediately. Where knowing where you’re located is straightforward and helpful enough, those strings of A’s and B’s are actually the game providing you with passwords, so that you can continue your game from said city directly from the game’s title screen. A player might be confused by this at first, seeing as there’s no ‘password entry’ option available when you start up the game (as a matter of fact, there are no menu options to speak of at all). What you’re actually meant to do is input whichever sequence of buttons corresponds to your point of progress right from the title screen, before pressing ‘Start’ and being swiftly taken to that location on the map. You’ll have to immediately deal with whatever fight awaits you within a given city (unless you got your password at a friendly house, which there are also a few of serving as checkpoints), but once you’ve cleared that you’ll be right back on the overworld, complete with a full party and full meters across the board. Of course, seeing as every password is some combination of A, B, and / or A+B simultaneously; you can also just guess passwords at random from the title screen if you like, and see if you ultimately stumble upon one close to the end of the game. Perhaps Techno Quest should’ve implemented some directional inputs as well, to prevent such easy brute-forcing?

… I realize now that we’ve thus far neglected to actually talk about your party — that we’ve forgotten to even address the matter of combat thus far! Well, the two are part and parcel to one another, so let’s go ahead and get into it. While wandering around the overworld – within screens flagged as containing potential hostiles – you will suddenly be stopped in your place and tossed into a side-view perspective, whereupon you will be attacked by some number of enemies (between one and three at a time). In these encounters, you will be given control of Sun Wukong [ideally], and made to clear the screen before you can return to the overworld. Given the simplicity of the Famicom / NES controller, your range of combat actions is naturally pretty well limited: You can run left and right (scrolling the screen with you), attack with your staff, jump up in the air, and additionally jump again in mid-air in order to mount your Somersault Cloud and hover where you please. Additionally, you can press the Start button to transform Sun Wukong into a clone of Bai Long Ma (represented as a white dragon), where your staff attack will be replaced by fireball projectiles. However, this ability is effectively useless, as damage taken will drain your thirst and threaten to deplete it almost immediately — recalling the dragon just as quickly as it’s summoned. As a matter of fact, you’ll find that most actions and tactics you might try to employ all fall under the same category of “effectively useless,” as combat in general winds up being a confusing and unpleasant chore. Let us count the ways.

Whether or not your frustratingly short-range staff attacks actually hit enemies seems to be something of a crapshoot. Whether or not you even perform an attack when you press the A button is something of a crapshoot in and of itself — as is the same with attempting to jump, pause the game, or any other input you may toss at the cartridge. By my best guesstimation, there appear to only be certain frames on which your inputs are actually recognized, due to either some programming oversight or inability for the game to process player commands at the same time as it‘s executing other given actions within the code? In effect, you’ll end up dropping most of your attempted inputs entirely, forcing you to have to spam every given button multiple times in the hopes of actually doing what you want to do. When you combine this with the wonky collision detection where it comes to your attacks connecting with enemies, you’re left with a recipe for disaster — a combat system so utterly broken, it honestly defies logic. In most scenarios, it would render the chances of surviving battles a near impossibility. But there is one saving grace — one tactic which can serve to save your otherwise doomed journey. This salvation comes in the form of a controller with a ‘Turbo’ functionality, which gives you the chance at lucking into a perfect tempo for constantly and consistently attacking.

Whether intended by the developers or not, you’re able to avoid damage from enemy contact / projectiles while Sun Wukong swings his staff. With this in mind, you can establish a rhythm for attacking wherein you are not only constantly able to output damage, but to avoid taking incoming damage as well. Past a certain point, this strategy becomes absolutely vital, as enemies later in the game are able to spam their own constant streams of projectiles at you en masse, to where your health can otherwise be drained completely in a matter of seconds. The fact that you are also able to move freely while attacking allows you to chase enemies across the screen with impunity, and provides you the best method you’ll get at finishing battles with your life intact. There are a couple of downsides, however: For one, there’s no guarantee that your turbo button will lock onto the right frame tempo on your first attempt at pressing it, so you’ll often have to spend the first several seconds of a fight attempting to time it right. Secondly, every enemy in the game seems to take a minimum of six hits in order to kill, which means combat will still serve as a drawn-out chore that can take you several minutes to clear given more mobile varieties of enemy. Thirdly – and perhaps most confoundingly – Sun Wukong (and his dragon transformation) is the only playable character capable of performing attacks. And if he up and dies on you, your playthrough is effectively over. While having non-empty thirst and hunger meters will allow your health to recharge over time, a knocked-out party member can’t benefit from it, and will remain KOed until you restart the game [or resume from a password].

Let’s talk about your party members for a second. Where you begin with Sun Wukong, Tang Sanzang, and Bai Long Ma available to you; you’ll encounter Zhu Bajie (‘Hakkai’ in the English patch) and Sha Wujing (‘Sa Gojo’) in random encounters within designated areas of the map, where after protecting them from enemies in a battle, they will join your traveling party. The benefit to keeping them alive is that they will actually join you in combat, even if only after felling a designated amount of the present enemies. In their role as supporting characters, they will walk along the bottom of the screen colliding with enemies, dealing damage as well as receiving it in equal turn. In this way, they can effectively trade some of their own health in order to provide their supplemental attacks, as well as sponge up some incoming projectiles from enemies. Unfortunately, this also means they’re liable to die pretty quick when it comes down to it, and you’ll have to put the legwork into speedily defeating your enemies if you want your pals to stick around to support you in future encounters. They also serve a grand total of one further function: If Sun Wukong is defeated, you’ll be given control over one of the support members in his place, giving you the very small chance of managing to finish a given encounter. The problem lies in the fact that – as mentioned earlier – none of them are capable of performing standard attacks, and as such the only way to defeat enemies while playing as them is to engage in Hydlide-style “bump combat” where you trade health with the baddies.

It cannot be understated how absolutely ineffective this design renders your alternate characters in combat. It’s such a curious choice, too, given that Hakkai and Sa Gojo both visibly carry their own weapons (a “nine-tooth iron rake” and Sa Gojo’s very own magic staff, respectively). As an added bit of frustration: Bai Long Ma’s sprite is identical to Sun Wukong’s dragon form, but curiously lacks the ability of the latter to shoot fireballs? I can at least get Tang Sanzang acting as a “last resort”-type character incapable of attacking / only able to trade hits with his foes, but the fact that all four of your supporting party members are relegated to this role is seriously confounding. If you let Sun Wukong fall in a fight, the best you can hope for is to survive the rest of the encounter with at least one of your other party members still alive (they have a nasty habit of dropping like flies the moment they get tagged in), to be within short reach of a house / city with your next password at the ready for you, and to pray that you don’t trip over any other encounters on the way there — a prospect which would spell your remaining party’s inevitable doom. Without a doubt, the random encounters are the single most ill-advised and frustrating aspect of Ganso Saiyūki’s entire design, and likely the most devious obstacle in the way of a majority of players’ ability to progress / complete the game. It’s a shame, too, as there are a small handful of boss battles in the game that are comparatively fun and easy to overcome!

The first boss you’ll encounter along the critical path of your journey is the Silver-Horned King: A nearly full-screen spanning sprite who walks back and forth, and requires hopping onto your somersault cloud in order to go to bat on his helmet. For reasons of poor collision detection (?), the only location where he’ll receive damage is specifically the right side of his head. At the same time as you wail away on him, you’ll be joined by clones of Sun Wukong — seemingly representing the protagonist’s ability to create doppelgangers from strands of his own hair, but which inexplicably only do damage to you instead of the boss? I guess the implication is that Silver Horn is somehow responsible for spawning them in this instance and siccing them on you? For whatever it’s worth, this absolutely isn’t taken from the original novel, or any other adaptation that I’m aware of. I almost wonder if the clones were actually intended by Techno Quest to help you out during the fight, but somehow got incorrectly implemented to the extent that they’re accidentally presented as a threat instead? In any event: After defeating Silver-Horned King, you’ll eventually stumble on the Golden-Horned King’s hiding spot (shortly after navigating a perilous / tedious stone maze evidently meant to represent the Taklamakan Desert), where upon you will square off against a palette-swap of the Silver-Horned King before him. Only this time, he has an army of archer enemies at the ready, who are just as easily negated by ascending on your cloud to the optimal attacking position and busting the goldie-lookin’ chainmail’s^[♫] head open.

The next boss you’ll encounter is the Princess Iron Fan, who actually serves as a departure from the two kings: You’ll find her hiding inside a seemingly innocuous house, at which point she’ll ambush you with a similar pattern (and sprite proportion) to standard projectile-shooting enemies. In this way, she’s actually quite easy to defeat, and generally serves as part of a pretty underwhelming encounter given her status as one of the more popular antagonists to emerge from the original novel. Discovering and defeating her is absolutely vital, however; as she precedes a section of the map known as the ‘Flaming Mountains,’ which seem to exist in a state of perpetual volcanic eruption and drain your thirst / health for as long as you’re in their vicinity. What the game fails to articulate is the fact that Princess Iron Fan carries a mystical ‘Banana Leaf Fan’ (quite contrary to her own nickname), which has the capability to quell the volcanoes at her whim. Naturally, in her role as villain in the story, she only fans it a single time once a year in order to extort villagers living around the base of the mountain range, despite the fact that a second or third fanning in quicker succession would calm the lavas permanently. Ultimately, Sun Wukong defeats her and forces her to yield the fan to them, uses it to freeze over the mountains before returning it to her, before leaving the Princess to atone for her sins and eventually seek her own enlightenment. Of course, in the Ganso Saiyūki video game, you simply beat the hell out of her and instantly negate the localized damaging effect without explanation.

The last boss in your way before reaching India is actually the first enemy Sun Wukong defeats in the book, and who finds himself utterly misplaced / miscast within the game. For he is the ‘Demon King of Confusion,’ and his role in the original story is to take over the Monkey King’s domain (the ‘Water Curtain Cave’) while he’s temporarily away studying magic. Naturally, Sun Wukong uses his newly-learned powers in order to make short work of the demon, and liberates his land for his primate pals to reside in once again. With all this in mind: Inserting the Demon King as the final obstacle in the way of the pilgrimage’s destination is a particularly odd choice? A more logical option could’ve been the Bull Demon King – who is frequently given something akin to the role of “main antagonist” across adaptations (including the aforementioned Alakazam the Great animated film) – or perhaps even the Jade Rabbit Spirit who kidnaps / attempts to impersonate the princess of India toward the end of the adventure? But alas, the game gives us the Confused King instead, and pits you against his floating head and hands as the rest of his body blinks in and out of existence. Your best bet is to keep after his head in particular – using your constant attacks to nullify incoming fireball attacks coming at you from every other angle – and eventually whittle him down to nothingness. The remainder of your path seems to play out with nothing in the way of further enemy encounters, and you’re provided a pretty much straight shot to India from there.

With this in mind, the question is begged: How long should a player expect this journey to take them, all told? Naturally, this is a pretty difficult answer to lock down, as the answer really does depend on one’s approach. If you’re going into Ganso Saiyūki the way most modern players would, with a map in hand and a track for the most direct possible route: I’d give them about an hour, give or take twenty minutes? If you know what you’re doing, whittle that estimate down to something like thirty. Once you figure out how to minimize your number of encounters and where the pitfalls are deployed, you might make the claim that the adventure is ultimately a pretty straightforward one, slowed only by bad luck and potential to mistime the game’s two gates opening up for you. That’s all well and fair I suppose. But how might the unprepared fare, left to puzzle out the path forward for themselves? For them, the undertaking may prove a true test of devotion — a proper expedition totaling potentially untold hours of trial and error. I can imagine Super Monkey Daibōken taking multiple days to legitimately navigate, assuming one doesn’t just give up part-way through. A player in 1986 would surely get their money’s worth from the cartridge (4,900円 MSRP, incidentally), if they had the right mindset and appreciation for it. At the very least, a true commitment to the pilgrimage hopefully shouldn’t leave you bored, as the game never does stop pulling gameplay variety out from its bag of tricks.

I’m a big believer in the ability of games to make you feel like you’re embarking on a real adventure, and the idea that charting the uncharted can make for a supremely rewarding interactive experience. It’s an idea I’ve certainly touched on before on this site (my personal justifications for enjoying Virtual Hydlide come to mind), and one which I’ll gladly invoke again here: Where some may find frustration in accidentally landing in some dead end of the map, and being made to retrace their steps back through hostile territory, I try to see an opportunity to have lived and learned. Wisely though, Ganso Saiyūki still goes the extra mile in trying to populate these “pointless” corners of the map with unique terrain and native varieties of enemies, in order to further their illusion of a large and diverse world. If my count is right, there are twelve varieties of enemy you’ll face off against, each with their own variations on attack patterns and localized domains on the map. Some appear only at night, others during the day. The backdrops you’ll fight them in front of are contingent on where you’re located and given the hour of your encounter, so the battle screen gets to serve as an ever-changing tapestry for your… well, still admittedly boring encounters. But it’s the thought that counts, damn it! Techno Quest made the conscious decision to prioritize their aesthetic scope over the actual functionality of gameplay, and there has to be some sort of merit to that fact!

I believe there’s a genuine sense of discovery to be felt in decoding some of the more cryptic aspects of the game’s navigation. While I’d still prefer it if the teleport tiles were all plainly visible, there’s at least a sense of accomplishment that comes with recognizing where they may be hidden and figuring out where they may land you. Hell, I can’t even get mad when they wind up dropping you off in the middle of nowhere; or in the case of one devious transferral, onto an empty and inescapable island that you can’t return from. That latter scenario is an absolutely mean trick to play on unsuspecting / thoroughly-exploring players – and I totally get how frustrating it may be to the vast majority of victims – but it’s also the sort of insidious trap that’ll keep a player on their toes for the rest of the game to follow. It might even inspire one to troubleshoot and problem-solve their way into accidentally discovering one of the game’s most notorious exploits: The ability to walk through / over any impassible surface, by pausing the game and unpausing with a directional input held. In doing so, your party will promptly walk onto the next adjacent tile when you unpause, regardless of whether or not the game intends for you to be allowed to. In figuring this [unintentional] cheat out, you can bypass much in the way of the game’s walls and mazes, and even cross large bodies of water in order to shortcut quickly past the game’s intended path. Of course, at that point, you’ll be effectively skipping most of the game in general, and I’m left to wonder what you’re really left to get out of it at that point? Still, I won’t lie: I absolutely use this exploit in order to skip the Taklamakan Desert labyrinth every time I play.

I can’t just go ahead sugarcoating every perceivable flaw in Ganso Saiyūki, though: The constantly-dropped inputs mentioned earlier are certainly a major mark against the game, as is the generally busted collision detection in combat. The size and formation of your party on the overworld can often make it confusing as to where you’re technically made to be standing, and which obstacle tiles precisely you may be stuck against. A lack of assortment in background music detracts from the game’s sense of variety, and can quickly lead to a sense of repetitiveness and monotony during your travels. I also reckon that the repetitive nature of combat would serve as a turn-off to most, even if it all functioned properly as intended. There’s also the fact that the game marketed itself as “The Ultimate Role-Playing Game Adventure,”** despite the fact it has little to nothing in the way of expected RPG hooks — between leveling, equipment, or so much as a general inventory. Still, to give credit where it’s due: The system for switching between overhead overworld navigation and side-scrolling action-based combat was a novel approach for the time, pre-empting the likes of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link by several months. I suppose the only problem with its implementation here (besides said combat not being particularly fun) is the fact that it is preceded by jarring and sometimes prolonged blue screens, made to mask the game having to swap the associated assets in and out of system memory. As a matter of fact, you’ll get these impromptu “loading screens” pretty frequently — between entering and exiting houses, talking to NPCs, and ultimately upon being slain in combat and waiting to be told “Ah, I’m sorry!” as part of your ‘Game Over’ screen. That line of text is evidently pretty infamous in Japan, to the point where a PS2 comedy strategy-action game Akudaikan 2 ~Delusion Den~ openly copies / parodies it.

There’s also the matter of Ganso Saiyūki’s ending, which is apparently just as infamous as its game over screen. On defeating the Demon King, warping to India’s designated landmass, and entering into the final city; the game again cuts to blue, and leaves you waiting for a solid second or two. After that, you’re summarily informed on a line-by-line basis that “The long pilgrimage is now over,” that “China’s history begins now,” and that the Buddha will be further instructing you to “Take these sūtras, and bring them to the people.” With all that said and done, the game cuts again to the word “End,” where it will linger for the rest of eternity / until you eventually turn your Famicom off. All in all, a fairly standard underwhelming 8-bit era game ending — nothing that strikes me as particularly offensive or out of the ordinary? Look, I’ve run into enough of these text-only endings in my time that nothing really surprises or shocks me anymore. As long as a game doesn’t just cut to its standard game over screen on completion, and makes it clear enough that you’ve fulfilled your mission, I can generally accept it. Doesn’t mean folk have to like it, but I just reckon I fail to see what makes Ganso Saiyūki’s ending so evidently egregious?

Now comes the part of the article where I try to suggest fixes and improvements that could’ve been made, while pretending as if Techno Quest would’ve had the time or know-how on how to implement any of them! I admit that this section kinda feels especially pointless in the context of this game, seeing as the first-time developers really were tossing everything against the wall that they could to see what stuck — genuinely attempting their best at innovating and impressing consumers, even as they repeatedly missed the mark. But hey, with 35 years hindsight, it sure is easy for us to point out what could’ve been done better. Naturally, the first thing I’m gonna start with is no less than a complete and total overhaul of combat: Sun Wukong shouldn’t be the only viable choice for players, and each of the four primary combatants (yeah, we’re still leaving out Tang Sanzang) should have their own unique attacks and abilities to be deployed. Rather than transforming into a dragon, Sun Wukong should probably be able to either clone himself or shrink himself down in order to avoid damage, allowing him to shine as a more dynamic / technical fighter. His rod should also probably extend far further as part of his standard attack, demonstrating its ability to serve him as a long-range weapon. Zhu Bajie could then serve as your party’s tank, able to stomach more in the way of damage with a trade-off in speed and to his attack range. Give Sha Wujing something to do by allowing him to swim underneath the ground as homage to his “sand river monster” origins, and let Bai Long Ma shine as your dedicated ranged attacker by shooting his fireballs.

For as much credit as I do give to the overworld portions of the game, there are certainly a few ways to improve its accessibility. At the risk of sounding like a broken record: Swapping out the bulk of those invisible teleport tiles for more in the way of staircases would be an appreciated move. But in lieu of that, the game would benefit from simply adding more in the way of teleports in general, in order to make traversal that much quicker for those who seek it out. While I’d honestly keep the size and shape of the world largely as is, I’d argue it could add a few more time-dependent or boss-contingent barriers, just to flesh it out that much further? While I’m at it, I’d carve out a couple more viable paths for a player to travel by; allowing some locations and bosses to be skipped over, at the cost of potentially missing out on some party members joining or obtaining other useful items. I reckon all these suggestions I’ve just made would actually be pretty easy to implement, too, considering that hooks / precedents for them already exist in the game and all.

If Techno Quest were able to really invest heavily in overhauling Ganso Saiyūki, one of the most substantive changes they could make would be the inclusion of more proper RPG elements. Where I don’t personally believe there’s really all that much to gain for incorporating experience points / a leveling system, it’d certainly have been keeping with trends of the era. What I’d be more interested in seeing implemented would be the acquisition of enchanted items and weapons, in order to augment combat or further aid in traversal. In the same way that obtaining Princess Iron’s fan helps clear a path for you through the Flaming Mountains; I can envision some of the magical fruits from the original story (such as the ‘Peaches of Immortality’) granting further increases to maximum HP, stealing the ‘Five Sacred Treasures’ from the Gold and Silver-Horned Kings to claim their powers as your own – where the ‘Purple Gold Red Gourd’ could be especially practical for swallowing and sealing boss enemies – or even something like having to track down a number of the sacred sūtras before India will allow you entry. Ultimately, what I’d have wanted out of the game were more homages to the Journey to the West canon, and incorporating more elements of the lore within the progression — as either essential or optional quests / inventory.***

Perhaps all those suggestions constitute as “expecting too much” from the fledgling developers. At the very least, we know that Techno Quest were limited in what features they could include within the game’s memory / cartridge allocation; and as such, adding much in the way of anything more than what we got may well have proved impossible for them. If that’s the case, then I reckon I can condense my suggestions down to just a single request: Fix the wonkier collision and input issues in combat, and call it a day. And honestly, that’s all the game really needs, in my humble opinion. Yeah, that’s right: We’re dealing with another so-called “legendary kusogē” that I actually kind of dig on, personally! For me, the exploration of the world is properly captivating, and I completely buy into the feeling of embarking on a trip without a map on hand — plotting the route in my own head, and inventing my own detours along the way. I think a given player’s enjoyment of the game is gonna hinge more or less on how entertaining they find the simple act of traveling, in and of itself. And the way I see it, that’s just not the preference for most modern players, who’ve been trained to expect tangible rewards and collectibles for every dead end they meet. With this in mind – and combined with admittedly busted combat – I begin to see a clearer picture for how Ganso Saiyūki‘s current-day critical consensus polls so lowly.

I do my best to put myself in the shoes of consumers contemporary to a game’s release, and compare older titles to the likes of their past competition. And by that set of metrics, I can genuinely envision players in ’86 getting some mileage out of Super Monkey Daibōken, and comparing it favorably to the likes of some of its peers. It’s certainly far from the worst the Family Computer had to offer, and honestly not too far off from other then-recent releases which achieved more in the way of “middling” reception. In an era of particularly cryptic design coming hot off Tower of Druaga (Is this something like the unpteenth time we’ve mentioned Druaga here on this site?), Ganso Saiyūki stands out as being comparatively simple, deriving more of its challenge from testing players’ stamina over their problem-solving abilities. In an era where the “Action RPG” was still in its infancy, Techno Quest took a stab at what a genre hybrid might look like, and somehow landed on the same idea that Nintendo themselves would just a few months later. For a game developed by first-timers, its ambitions and scale far exceeded expectations — as well as the team’s own actual ability, as it turns out. And if you happen to have a turbo button handy, you can trivialize the combat and possibly even derive some semblance of satisfaction from wailing on the heads of lizardfolk and muscle bulls. All in all, I just can’t bring myself to hate on the poor thing too harshly, though its most major technical faults are plainly evident. I can’t recommend that everyone undertake the trek to play it for themselves, but it should certainly be a prerequisite for those inclined to judge it.

** I would hope that it’s not too controversial for me to categorize Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Daibōken as a more general “Adventure” game? It certainly doesn’t have the hallmarks of a traditional RPG, and the overworld navigation keeps it from being classified as a straight “Action” game, so I kind of wound up shrugging my shoulders and checking it in as an Adventure here in the inter-site tagging system.

*** Where the immediate that comes to mind [for me] as an example for this sort of design precedent is Hydlide, I think one of the all-time most novel implementations of it came in the form of JVC’s 1991 release of Star Wars on the NES. In it, you can either seek to thoroughly obtain all the party members and weapons that Luke would acquire over the course of the movie (including meeting the likes of Obi Wan and Han Solo, and being given his lightsaber), or skip over then entirely on a mad dash to the Death Star. It all depends on how much work a player is willing to put in, and how valuable the rewards seem to them. Honestly a masterwork of game design, in my opinion, and an example I really like to hold up when it comes to making exploration and discovery worth a player’s time.

「エッチする女ﾉ子がほしい！」

“The definitive edition of Journey to the West!”
Cover to Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Daibōken – Complete Strategy Guide
(Tokuma Shoten, 1986)

With the finished game delivered to them, VAP spun up their marketing machine and prepared to promote Ganso Saiyūki like no video game they had promoted before… which, considering they had never actually promoted a game before, might not sound like all too major a campaign. But it truly was a substantive blitz, given their means and their advertising know-how. Beyond the expected full-page ads across games magazines, they also aired TV commercials in the 15 to 30 second formats, which additionally promoted a ‘天竺ファミコンゲーム駅伝 (Tenjiku Famicom Game Ekiden)’ — a national tournament centered around the game. This would come to alternatively be known as the ‘スーパーモンキーラリー (Super Monkey Relay),’ held over the course of early 1987. It’s worth a reminder that while events like this held in the States were once relegated to the rare likes of the Nintendo World Championships or what have you; these sorts of competitions were something more like a standard practice in Japan (at least for more heavily-marketed titles) — an effective means of generating interest and publicity for new releases, and an additional method for publishers to foster relationships with / encourage continued name recognition in consumers. In the case of VAP’s Super Monkey Relay, it also marked a rare instance of the game’s own developers appearing at such an event, which Shunichi Takase would later reflect on with an apparent sense of embarrassment:

“On behalf of the staff, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to everyone who bought [Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Daibōken] at that time. All the [Techno Quest] developers were made to stand at a table at the venue of the event ‘Super Monkey Relay,’ and we were given a strong batsu game of expressing our aspirations while being exposed to the cold stares of the attending children. So please, forgive me! (Laughs)” ~ Shunichi Takase^[2h]

It’s worth covering the details of this curious tourney a bit more: Ten locations across Japan held local qualifiers, where teams of two competed against each other in order to secure the fastest completion times for the game — implementing an additional rule where teams would have to reach designated checkpoints on the map, where they’d swap their player as per the relay race gimmick. The winning teams in this first leg received CD / cassette radios as take-home prizes, and the invitations to compete in the second round at Tokyo’s Hilton International Hotel on March 29th and 30th. Here, the teams were treated to complimentary Italian dinners, treated to a performance by a debuting idol on VAP’s record label (Mari Fujiki), and ultimately made to compete against one another in a race to the game’s finish line. By this point, the event officiators were aware of the “pause to walk through walls” trick, and had prohibited its use in the tourney. However, they were evidently not privy to a suite of other established exploits, one of which apparently trivialized combat encounters by allowing you to remove enemies from the screen entirely (something to do with pressing A and Start simultaneously at key points in battle?). In any case, the winning time was recorded as 30 minutes and 19 seconds, with the 1st place team receiving a Sharp model of big-screen TV for their valiant effort. You can read one participant’s further recollections of the event as part of this article hosted on the ‘Kusoge Brothers’ website, including a humorous anecdote about immediately re-selling / returning their copy of the game in the wake of the tournament.

But wait! There’s still more promotional material I wanna cover! See, there was once this studio known as ‘わんぱっくコミックス’ (Wanpakku Comics),’ which illustrated and published combinations of video game strategy guides and manga. If you’re already familiar with the company; you’re either most likely a huge nerd, a subscriber of theirs from back in the day, or have otherwise seen snippets of their adaptation of the original Metroid posted online. For reference, it’s the one where Samus is seen hiring ladies to fawn over and cling onto her as part of a commercial she produces to advertise her services as the “galaxy’s strongest cyborg warrior,” unintentionally implying that she is a lesbian who likes to be surrounded by harems of cute girls (which, that much is most definitely canon). In any event: Wanpakku Comics was likely commissioned by VAP directly to produce one of their strategy manga for Ganso Saiyūki, as a means of further promoting the game’s release. The resulting sixteen page comic was published in the 20th issue of their ‘Family Computer Technics’ / ‘必勝テクニック完ペキ版 (Winning Technique Perfect Version)’ series; alongside illustrated guides for the likes of other titles including Pro Wrestling, The Wing of Madoola, and Super Xevious: GAMP no Nazo.^[3]

“If the physical strength reaches zero, the character is knocked out. If all of them are out, the game is over.”
Excerpt from Wanpakku Comics – Family Computer Technics, Volume 20. (Tokuma Shoten, February 25, 1987)

What’s notable about Super Monkey Daibōken’s associated manga, however, is the fact that it has largely nothing to do with the actual game; instead serving as a more general homage to Journey to the West, featuring characters and scenarios from said source material that don’t occur in the game itself, and providing only the most basic of instructions for the game’s controls. It becomes abundantly clear that the Wanpakku staff just saw the job as an excuse to pastiche the original Saiyūki, and go wild with the impressive artistic skills at their disposal. And you know what? Good for ‘em, I say! It’s a charming little piece of work, which I’m happy to share with y’all in the form of a downloadable PDF file. Granted, I haven’t actually gone through the effort of translating it (or paying for someone else to), so you’ll have to settle for it in its original Japanese. But it’s worth a once-over anyway if you ask me, if only for the novelty of reading an immaculately-illustrated manga ostensibly based on an infamous Famicom kusogē. Man, the 1980s really were just a wild time to be into video games, weren’t they?

Alright, that’s enough in the way of tangents: Let’s return to the subject of Ganso Saiyūki’s release, and the matter of its critical reception. Somewhat surprisingly, Famitsu would wind up skipping reviewing the game, despite prominently featuring it in other capacities across several of its issues — including a two-page feature spread on the game in their tenth issue.^[4] Instead, in seeking the closest thing to a “then-contemporary” score for the game, we’ll have to look to Family Computer Magazine and their May 1991 issue. Yes, this is seriously the earliest scored evaluation I could find for Ganso Saiyūki, and I can’t even claim I have a proper scan of the pages in question. Not only that, but the sum of its coverage amounts to a reader-contributed “Game Report Card,” averaging together scores submitted to the magazine by its fans and subscribers. All told, the game would settle at a rating of 16.31 / 30 points total; culminating grades given in the individual categories of “Character, Music, Control, Enthusiasm,** Value, and Originality.”^[5] And while that may translate to the game scoring something like the equivalent of 2½ stars (out of five), and read today like a “sub-par” grade; I’d contend that it represented a fairly average score for the era, and players were generally ambivalent toward the game rather than outright infuriated by it. At the very least, the game hadn’t quite yet established its reputation as an all-time stinker on the Famicom, and there were likely those who had played it and derived some genuine enjoyment from it in its day.

And to be clear here, there had been a decent number of consumers who purchased a proverbial ticket for the digital adventure — somewhere in the ballpark of 300,000 cartridges sold, according to Takase.^[2i] For a Japan-exclusive release, these represent pretty decent sales figures, and most likely a profitable investment for VAP all told. The game also briefly rated as one of the top five Famicom titles in highest demand around the window of its release, according to Famitsu’s ‘Reader Communication PRESENT’ feature for the month of November, 1986.^[6] That said, the game would evidently fall off that chart pretty quickly, as word of mouth likely began to spread of its middling quality. Whatever the circumstances may have been: VAP had more or less accomplished their mission of debuting in the video game industry with a moderately-sized splash, and intended to keep that train running for the foreseeable future (until around 1997, incidentally). Almost a year to the day of Ganso Saiyūki’s release, VAP would publish their second game to the Family Computer Disk System: An oddball by the title of Kick Challenger – Air Foot. It’s a goofy game in which you play as a two-footed tomato, wherein you control each foot individually in order to attack enemies and traverse the sometimes harsh terrain of the Kingdom Vegitafruit. I wound up enjoying my short time spent playing it, but there’s a wrinkle to its production: Though the developers of it are [currently] unknown, you can be sure that it wasn’t Techno Quest behind it this time around.

Though Takase doesn’t cover the specifics of Techno Quest’s dissolution in the wake of Ganso Saiyūki’s release in his published recollection, there are clear enough inferences to be made. At some point, Taito had finally gone and established their own consumer development division for directly producing console games, and brought on Takase to work within this new branch [while evidently still employed under the Techno Quest banner].^[2j] Kaoru Nakajima was made to join him in working for Taito’s new division, where he’s confirmed by Takase to have contributed to their 1988 title Dr. Toppel’s Expedition; before parting ways in order to join up with Konami, where he apparently worked on the 1990 Aliens arcade game. Curiously, his name [or any similar alias thereof] isn’t actually listed in the established staff credits for either of these titles, where he’d presumably have participated as a graphic artist again? That being said, his name does appear in the credits for what is surely a future Bad Game Hall of Fame inductee; 1989’s Jinmu Denshou on the PC Engine, as developed by the studio Manjyudo. As for the mysterious Mr. O; Takase seems to leave him out of the “future endeavors” sections entirely, perhaps pointing to his promptly exiting the industry after his work on Super Monkey Daibōken? Either that, or contact between the two was simply lost, as he went on to work for other software companies.

Thanks to the fact that Shunichi Takase serves as the teller of Ganso Saiyūki’s story, it’s his continued career in the industry which we’re able to provide the most details of. In his time at Taito’s ‘Central Research Institute,’ he would be put to work on various console and computer conversions of the Bubble Bobble series, while evidently under the direct guidance and tutelage of their original designer Mitsuji “MTJ” Fukio.^[2k] More specifically, Takase would serve in planner / programmer roles in converting Bubble Bobble to the Famicom Disk System and MSX, Final Bubble Bobble on the Sega Mark III, and finally, the Famicom version of Rainbow Island. He also reports working as a debugger for seminal beat ’em up The Ninja Warriors, indicating similar roles across any number of other Taito titles of the era. It’s this period in his career which he credits as truly teaching him the ins and outs of the games business (moreso / rather than his work on Super Monkey Daibōken), and which he describes as being Taito’s golden era. But alas, nothing gold can stay, and Techno Quest were ultimately made to close shop come March 1988 (according to Toei Animation’s “CG History in Japan” timeline).^[7] This left Takase in a position where he would be made to either transfer to Taito’s larger operations, or to ply his trade elsewhere. Though he would describe himself as “not particularly dissatisfied with the good workplace,” he would confess that his self-confidence had grown in the four years since joining Techno Quest, and that he desired to “take on the challenge of a new environment.”^[2l] As such, he gave a tearful goodbye to his former employer, and pursued work at ASK Kodansha.

It’s at ASK that Takase would work on a pair of unconventional RPGs, the first of which being 1990’s Necros no Yōsai on the PC Engine. On this title, he would serve as director, and work alongside a former school colleague / long-time friend of his: Michitaka “REDFOX” Tsuruta.^[2m] Together, they’d work on creating a role-playing game with an unique and innovative battle screen for the genre, incorporating animations with cinematic cuts and framing — a technique inspired by Michitaka’s previous work on a 1988 Famicom adaptation of Captain Tsubasa (localized as Tecmo Cup Soccer Game in North America), which utilized in-panel animations in capturing the feel of the manga / anime it was based on. For what it’s worth – and given my inability to actually play it for myself [given a lack of English translation] – Necros no Yōsai appears to be a fairly novel RPG for the era, between its unique battle presentation and apparent comedic tone. But it’s Takase’s second game for ASK that I’d really like to cover in a bit more depth, as it actually happens to be a personal favorite of mine already having discovered it a couple years ago. This title in question would be 1991’s Hyaku no Sekai no Monogatari: The Tales on a Watery Wilderness — otherwise known as ‘The 100 World Story.’ And for what it’s worth, I’ll contend that it is one of the greatest party games ever made, and one which I’ve been lucky enough to play with some of my dearest friends. (Don’t think I’ve forgotten about smoking all y’all on the ‘Dragon Buster’ board, Retro Pals!)

Where I can only whole-heartedly recommend experiencing the game for yourself first-hand (complete with English translation patch, if needed), I’ll provide a brief summation: 100 World Story is a cross between a board game and RPG, where up to four players take turns navigating randomly-generated worlds, competing to be the first to complete a given primary quest. Along the way, you’ll make stops at towns to take on side quests and purchase items / equipment, get into battles with a wild assortment of goofy enemies (including flying babies and gunslinging cowboys), and generally work towards accumulating as much gold and experience points as possible. Depending on how competitive or cooperatively you want to play, you can either form parties with other players to work together, or directly engage them in battle in order to try and knock each other out. Allegiances will invariably form and collapse over the course of a given session, as everyone ultimately wants to emerge as the hero of the story and winner of the game. The stories told by the game itself are also liable to twist and turn, as random chance can determine whether or not your main quest can branch off into one of several different paths and outcomes; allowing for unexpected turnabouts and comebacks, or just as suddenly stopping the game when it’s least expected. All in all, it’s something of a masterpiece of party game design, where the RPG elements aren’t too complex as to bog down play or too simplified to feel like they’re just tacked-on. And knowing now that its director was the man who had been most largely responsible for Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Daibōken just five years prior? That somehow just makes it all the more endearing to me, personally! What a wild development.

Takase and Michitaka have continued to work together in the years since; eventually leaving ASK in 1994, picking up freelance work for a time, eventually starting a studio called ‘Spiral’ together in 2001, and seeming to generally keep themselves busy into the modern day. It’s a truly awesome thing that Takase was willing to open up about the details of his career, and to help document the history of Ganso Saiyūki in the process. What’s especially great about that latter point is the fact that Super Monkey Daibōken’s reputation had become something of a one-note joke over the course of the past thirty-two years — a game known mostly for just one or two tortuously-repeated bits of trivia, which have been beaten into the ground in the same way as excruciating summations of how Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic became Super Mario Bros. 2. Still, I suppose it’s hard to blame folk for running with what precious little points of reference were available for the game, and I do reckon it’s something like my duty to cover them here as well in the interest of thoroughness. Just don’t expect me to describe “how Imajin became Mario” any time soon, capeesh?

Ganso Saiyūki‘s notorious “easter egg” was likely first discovered and shared with the Internet at some point between 2000 and 2002. It appears as if a ROM hacking group operating a website known as ‘麟閣頁 (Rinkaku Page)’ were among the first to utilize emulation in order to observe the game’s internal sprite banks, and report their findings on a dedicated page for the game. What they found was a hidden message from Kaoru Nakajima, which translates roughly as the following: “Designer: Kaoru Nakajima. 26 years old, born 1960 in Toyokawa City, Aichi Prefecture… I wanna lick some pussy! I want a perverted miss. I like vagina and the clitoris!” Needless to say, the shock of discovering this message hidden in a game ostensibly for children was quite sensational, and quickly became synonymous with the title in question — to the point where it’s been unofficially canonized as the game’s supposedly “most notable” feature. In addressing Nakajima’s secret message, Nakase tried his best to salvage his former co-workers reputation: “When I learned of his trick, I burst into laughter instead of getting angry (I have a good idea of when and where he prepared it). He is mild-mannered, harmless to humans and animals, and is a really good person. He’s a nice guy with a natural perm, large build, was always wearing camouflage, and loved his black cat […] There are lots of interesting stories about his antics – especially the off-color humor – but I will omit them here for the sake of his honor.”^[2n] I stand with Takase in believing that the hidden message is well-hidden enough to have been entirely harmless, that it’s amusing in how absolutely juvenile it is, and that Nakajima’s entire reputation (as well as the reputation of the game itself) probably shouldn’t center entirely around this singular rude gag.

The second major spotlight shone on Ganso Saiyūki came with its appearance on the legendary television program GameCenter CX, where long-suffering host and game player Shinya Arino embarked on a playthrough of the game in a feature for the show’s third season.^[8] However, upon being immediately flummoxed by the game’s lack of direction and generally obtuse design, it was decided that a new recurring segment would be established for the show: “Ring-Ring Tactics!” would serve as a means of encouraging viewers to write into the show with tips on the game and words of support, with the chance for Arino to call their phones on air in the hopes of receiving further personal guidance from them. Slowly but surely – and with very little practical advice actually emerging from the fan outreach – progress would be made, and the game’s mysteries would eventually be solved. Ten episodes, 452 postcards, and a cumulative hour’s worth of combined segments later; Arino would finally clear the game, landing on its infamous ending screen and being taken aback by just how underwhelming a reward it was for all his hard work. With a final titlecard dubbing it as “the ultimate crap game,” Super Monkey Daibōken’s place in the show’s history was firmly established, as well as exposing the game to an eventual global audience (thanks to fan efforts to translate the show).

What I would personally rate as the second-most significant development in Ganso Saiyūki‘s continued legacy (with Takase’s tell-all obviously being the first-most), however, came on September 15th, 2015. This was the day that ROM hacker / translator ‘Pluvius’ would release their English translation patch for the game, thereby allowing players outside of Japan the chance to play the game for themselves with the benefit of understanding the game’s NPCs’ various directions and dialogue. It was a development reported on by a handful of websites, who happily (?) declared that “You can finally play the worst Famicom game in English.”^[9] While this was undoubtedly a pretty low-key and largely unimportant bit of gaming news, it did mark a moment in which retro games enthusiasts were suddenly made more likely to try the game out for themselves, and to possibly draw their own conclusions on it. Granted, most who did wind up playing it came away with the same impressions they had going in — that it truly was one of the worst titles the Famicom had to offer. But perhaps there are a few other folk like me out there, who were similarly able to look past the game’s negative reputation and discover a piece of software worthy of their respect and appreciation. A goofball like me can dream, can’t they?

And so, the journey of this article comes now to its own conclusion. I can optimistically hope that I’ve convinced at least one or two of you out there to consider potentially re-evaluating Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Daibōken for yourselves. At the very least, I’d like to believe that I’ve helped to convey the story of its development to a larger audience, and perhaps cleared up some misconceptions of its gameplay along the way. In embarking on this adventure, I’ve certainly come away with a deeper appreciation for the maligned title — amending my already existing partialness to it with the newly-discovered details of its production, and getting a better sense for the men involved in its creation. As always, my goal in writing these over-long essays is to try and convey the realities of the games industry, and to encourage sympathy and understanding for the developers involved — to better appreciate the trials and tribulations that they must endure. The story of Techno Quest’s brief and turbulent existence is truly a fascinating one: A company made to pivot as suddenly as they did drastically, and which did their best to showcase their ambition and commitment through the medium of interactive media. And though Super Monkey Daibōken may fall well short of most conventional marks, there’s an underlying earnestness to it that cannot be denied, and a passion put behind it that shouldn’t be discredited. Ganso Saiyūki’s story begins now: Take this sūtra, and bring it to the people. Or perhaps we should close with the words of an anonymous author? “A team of horses cannot overtake a word that has left the mouth.”

** Truth be told, I’m at a loss as to what the best translation for this category should be? The given title for it is ‘熱中度,’ which Google so graciously attempts to translate as “Heat Stroke.” Using my trick of putting surrounding words around the phrase and forcing machine translation to try and recontextualize it, I wound up with words like “Excitement” and “Enthusiasm;” which I take to mean as the category existing as some metric for either how novel a game’s mechanics are, or some other general measurement of entertainment value. While the translation may be contentious, there’s one take-away I hope we can all agree on: Creating arbitrary categories for scoring individual components of a game are stupid and inconsistent, and it’s a good thing the industry has largely moved past doing so.

Acknowledgements

Once again, I’ve only gone and covered a historic kusogē with precious little in the way of precedent / available information on the English-speaking web. But that still doesn’t mean I did it all by myself. And so, it’s in this section where I’ll be acknowledging a handful of particularly helpful pages I found online, but which I wound up not being able to cite as “proper sources” — where several of them served more as incidental reference, or otherwise directed me toward other citable sources. Still, I do like to give credit wherever it’s due, even as the specifications of my essay format don’t necessarily provide a conventional method for me to do so. I don’t know why I’m over-explaining this segment so lengthily: Just click on these cool links below, and see where I cribbed some of my notes from.

• • (🇯🇵) Famicom Story: “Author Official Recognition & Apology!! The Mysterious National Tournament ‘Tianzhu Famicom Game Ekiden’ […]”
  • (🇯🇵) Game Game Shita Mono: “Ganso Saiyuuki: Super Monkey Daibouken”
  • (🇯🇵) Kusoge Brothers: “Ganso Saiyuuki: Super Monkey Daibouken” (Archive)
  • (🇯🇵) Rinkaku Page: “Good Hacking (Coffee Break)” (Archive)
  • GameFAQs: “Guide and Walkthrough by MrPopsicle43”

One more very special acknowledgement before I go: The subject of this article was actually chosen by supporters of the Bad Game Hall of Fame’s Patreon, as part of a poll run toward the end of October! This is significant on account of the fact that I actually managed to get this all written in a fairly reasonable timeframe (in time for the game’s 35th anniversary, even), as well as for the fact that I tricked all you rotten bastards! Y’all probably thought you were subjecting me to the most difficult, stress-inducing option available to vote on. But I knew full well what you were gonna conspire to do, and so I picked a game that I actually already had a positive experience with in the past. So, the joke’s on you, suckers! Better luck next time trying to get one over on poor ol’ Cassidy. Oh, and thanks for your continued support too, I guess.

[1] Sell, Walther. “The Great Way: Journey to the West.” InnerJourneyToTheWest.com. Page established in 2009. Web.
[2] b c d e f g h i j k l m n Takase, Shunichi.【リレーブログ（クリエーター編）第2回】”スーパーモンキー大冒険”ｔｋｓ様 (“[Relay Blog (Creator Edition) Issue 2] ‘Super Monkey Adventure’ – tks”). BEEP. May 28, 2015. Web.
[3] 「元祖西遊記 スーパーモンキーアドベンチャー」 (“Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Adventure”). Wanpakku Comics – Family Computer Technics, Volume 20. Tokuma Shoten. February 25, 1987. Print. (Scan available)
[4] 「元祖西遊記 スーパーモンキーアドベンチャー」 (“Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Adventure”). Bi-Weekly Famicom Tsūshin, Issue 10. ASCII. October 31, 1986. Print. (Scan available)
[5] 「5月10日号特別付録 ファミコンロムカセット オールカタログ」(“May 10 Issue Special Appendix: Famicom Cartridge Full Catalogue”). Family Computer Magazine, Volume 7, Issue. 9. Tokuma Shoten. May 10, 1991. Print.
[6] 「ファミコン通信読者プレゼント」(“Reader Communication PRESENT”). Bi-Weekly Famicom Tsūshin, Issue 12. ASCII. November 28, 1986. Print. (Scan available)
[7] “CG History in Japan.” Toei Animation – EE.jp. Page established in 2012. Web.
[8] GameCenter CX, Season 3, Episode 1. Fuji Television, April 13, 2005. Television.
[9] Mackey, Bob. “Now You Can Finally Play the Worst Famicom Game in English.” USgamer. September 22, 2015.