Legendary Action Game With a Yokai Theme!

Mitsuki Nonaka
2 min readNov 5, 2023

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#48 Horror Game 100 story challenge

Manga artist Shigeru Mizuki’s masterpiece “Gegege no Kitaro(ゲゲゲの鬼太郎)” is a horror manga about Japanese yokai. Kitaro is a descendant of a ghost tribe, this differs from ghosts in general, which refer to a race that flourished before the birth of mankind. You’d never guess from the game title “NINJA KID” that this is a side-scrolling action game in which Kitaro plays an active role!

I used to play this a lot in elementary school, but always only made it to about stage 2… I believe it is a very high-difficulty action game, partly because I’m not good at action games. Enemy Yokai moves quickly, but Kitaro moves sluggishly. Getting the item allows me to move faster, but now I’m too fast and confused…. so, there is a time lag for sudden changes of direction. It takes time to get used to the game’s controls…

Now, as for the game system, you control Kitaro, and when you touch an object in the magical world, you move into the action part of the game. Kitaro’s basic weapon is a hair needle, with several enhanced weapons throughout the stage. There are 5 different stages, and you have to fulfill the requirements to conquer them (I didn’t know that and played blindly!) Then, after clearing a few stages, you can challenge the Yokai Castle, if you have an ocarina, you can ask for help from your friends, and you can see the familiar “Nurikabe(ぬりかべ)” or “Child Crying Old Man(子泣き爺).

I was so happy to see the Yokai that I had seen in the anime become dot pictures that I played this game over again, it became one of my happy memories. This is a work that Kitaro fans and Yokai fans should play.

See you tomorrow!

Image Credit: Cover of the strategy book published by Kodansha from Amazon

Title: NINJA KID (ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 妖怪大魔境)

Genre: Horror Action

Compatible Hardware: Family Computer

Publisher & Release Date: BANDAI. 1986

Introduction article of the anime “Gegege no Kitaro”

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Mitsuki Nonaka

Freelance writer/blogger 🖋 loves horror 👻 beloved horror novel, comics and films.