Genpei Tōma Den

Genpei Tōma Den (源平討魔伝) is a beat 'em up arcade game that was released by Namco in 1986 in Japan. It runs on Namco System 86 hardware. Over a decade later, the game was released in America and Europe as part of the Namco Museum under the title The Genji and the Heike Clans.

Gameplay
The player makes his way along a Yamato-e painting landscape fighting enemies as they appear. The game offers three types of action: Small Mode (standard), Big Mode (standard, but with large characters and usually boss fights) and Plain Mode (viewed from an overhead perspective). Most stages have torii, which are used to transport the player to a different stage. On most stages featured in Side Mode and Plain Mode, there are multiple torii that can be entered which will lead to different routes on the map. In Big Mode, however, there is only one torii at the end of this type of stage.

The leading character is a historical Japanese samurai, Taira no Kagekiyo (Also known as Akushichibyōe Kagekiyo) who fell in the Battle of Dan-no-ura at the end of the Genpei War. In Genpei Tōma Den, he was resurrected and fights Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Saito Musashibo Benkei over the Imperial Regalia of Japan, as well as to defeat his enemy Minamoto no Yoritomo.

The game also features the Sanzu River, a place believed in Japanese Buddhism to separate "the current life" and "the afterlife", resembling the concept of the Underworld or Hell (The river is often identified with the River Styx in Greek Mythology). Therefore, some mythological characters like Emma-o (閻魔大王; literally "Enma Dai-o"), god of the Underworld, and the Sun Goddess Amaterasu appear in the game.

Ports
The game's first port was released in 1988 for the Japanese Sharp X68000 home computer. Like most arcade games ported to the Sharp X68000, this version of Genpei Tōma Den was nearly identical to the game's arcade counterpart. The game was also ported to the PC Engine (the Japanese TurboGrafx-16) and released on March 16, 1990. The PC Engine version was also released for the Wii's Virtual Console.

Genpei Tōma Den was also featured on the Namco Museum Vol. 4 compilation game for the PlayStation game console, released in 1996 for Japan and 1997 for the U.S. and Europe. For the U.S. and European releases, the game was re-titled as The Genji and the Heike Clans. This would be the first time the original Genpei Tōma Den would make an appearance outside of Japan.

Sequels
Shortly after the release of the original arcade game, Namco released an RPG-style board game version of Genpei Tōma Den. Then later in October 21, 1988 Namco released a Famicom version of the board game called Genpei Tōma Den: Computer Board Game.

Genpei Tōma Den: Kannoni, a sequel to Genpei Tōma Den, was released on April 7, 1992 exclusively for the PC Engine. Surprisingly enough, this game also had an American release re-titled Samurai Ghost for the TurboGrafx-16. This was the first and only game in the Genpei Tōma Den series ever released outside of Japan, until Namco Museum Vol. 4 was released worldwide and kept the original Genpei Tōma Den game.

Other appearances in media
Kagekiyo has made a few appearances in other video games developed by Namco. He became a featured playable character in the Wonderswan Color game Namco Super Wars. He also appeared as a playable character in the Japan-only RPG titled Namco x Capcom. In the game he teams up with Heishirō Mitsurugi from Soul series and Tarosuke from Shadow Land. In addition, Yoshitsune, Benkei, Yoshinaka and Yoritomo also appeared as bosses. In Tales of Eternia (known as Tales of Destiny II in the U.S.), he appeared along with Rick Taylor from the Splatterhouse series in the Aifread's Tomb dungeon to bar the player from advancing through certain doorways. Kagekiyo's armor also appears in the character creation mode of Soul Calibur III, in which it is possible to create a character in his likeness.