Bokosuka Wars was published by ASCII and released in 1983 for the Sharp XI then released in 1984 for the MSX and PC-88, 1985 for the FM-7, PC-6001, PC-98, and NES.
This also marks the first game that we’ve played on the NES system. Nintendo infiltrated households on July 15, 1983 when it’s first major home console was born. Dubbed the Famicon, it was released in the east with its three launch games – Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr and Popeye.
It was time to take the Famicon to the west and in October of 1985 the Nintendo system was released in New York. It would go on to sell 35 million units in the United States and become a smash hit – releasing iconic series such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Metroid.
Bokosuka Wars was never released in the west but it could be easily played by someone who doesn’t speak Japanese because the game is in English.
Bokosuka Wars is billed as a strategy game. You control a king who is fighting to reclaim his kingdom from the control of an invading army. Throughout the game you rescue and recruit subjects to your cause. You have the ability to move them all at once or pick and choose which soldiers to command.
You can choose to control yourself (the king), the normal soldiers, or the knights. Knights can destroy prison walls that soldiers are held captive in. Soldiers and knights who successfully survive three fights get upgraded to more powerful soldiers.
The game is lost if the king is killed in battle, and to win the game you have to reach the leader of the ogres and defeat him.
It took me awhile to get used to the data that was presented in the game. The number in the upper left corner represents the number of enemy forces remaining on the battlefield. The number to the right of that represents the remaining number of allied forces hidden in rocks, trees, or P.O.W. camps. The number on the bottom left is the remaining distance in meters to the location of King Ogreth. The number to the right of that, in the middle of the screen on the bottom, represents the attack strength of King Suren. It begins at 220 and get as high as 320. The number at the far right on the bottom depicts the power of the two units that are in battle. The number on the left is the allied unit’s power, the number on the right is the enemy’s power.
Your allied forces are hidden within rock formations and trees and so, as the King, you have to come into contact with these areas on the off chance that you may find and free one of your allies from these objects.
There is a strategy to the game in deciding who is going to fight particular enemies. Combat involves hidden calculations and probabilities. Once you have made your choice of combatant it’s a simple matter to sit back and see if the die rolls end up in your favor. If you win your unit receives a bump in power. Each enemy or unit has a specific number of points attached. There are fan sites that detail all of this information or you can simply read the NES documentation that comes with the game.
It took me a few games to get used to the gameplay. The game comes off as extremely hard at first blush but then once you get used to the gameplay it is not very hard to beat. I played on an NES emulator and the game took me about an hour to beat. You can take the path of patience and play strategically or you can choose to “bull rush” your way through to the end. I tried both strategies successfully.
I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. It’s not really an RPG and I wouldn’t call it a grand strategy game either. It’s somewhere between lite-strategy and arcade in my humble opinion. This will certainly not be the only game that we review on the NES but it gets the distinction of being the first. I have actually been busy in the background adding NES games to the site’s database each day. There were some sites in my research that claim that this was the worst game ever made for the NES. There seems to be a lot of hate out there for the title. I don’t quite see what that is all about as I did enjoy my time with the game. Perhaps it was comparing the game to one of the computer ports but again I enjoyed my time with the game.
Next up on the docket will be yet another console game however this one is an Intellivision offering: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin.
Until next time…