Today I Played: Takeshi no Chousenjou · 6:55pm Jul 15th, 2015
I know what some of you might be thinking as you saw that title. Yes, apparently I am that crazy, now.
You see, recently, I picked myself up a Famicom. What's a Famicom, you might ask? It's basically the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). And a far cooler-looking one, if you ask me. Like the NES itself, the Famicom (combination of "Family Computer") was 8-bit, had two controllers (though it did possess an additional port for a light-gun, keyboard attachment, or otherwise), and... well, that's about it. The red-and-white aesthetics and top-loading cartridge design were obvious differences, along with the fact that the controllers were hard-wired to the console (with REALLY short cables!) instead of being separate accessories. The second controller had a built-in microphone, also.
It also had an "eject" slider. That would've been nice to have on the NES, huh?
But that's just the console. Let's move on to the game I played on the console.
This is the cartridge that broke the hearts of children across Japan back in Christmas of '86. Can you feel the betrayal? The anger?
If you haven't already seen the JonTron video on it (or even saw mention of it on, like, most retro gaming sites, period), then allow me to introduce you to Takeshi no Chousenjou -- aka, "Takeshi's Challenge". In 1986, Taito Corporation wanted to make a game based on Takeshi "Beat" Kitano's popular Takeshi's Castle, but in a curious case, Kitano himself decided to get directly involved in the creation of the game. In the end, it had pretty much nothing to do with the show.
From there, it got a little... weird. Apparently most of Kitano's ideas were so crazy, that they were outright rejected by the companies because of either the limitations of the Famicom's hardware, or that said ideas were "not suitable for children" (remember this point, guys!). When the game was released, it reportedly sold 800,000 copies, and a guide had to be published within mere weeks. But the guide itself was inaccurate, forcing them to release a second edition with corrections made. Widely regarded by many as kusoge (literally "shitty game"), it's ranked by many as both the worst and the hardest videogame of all time.
With that little bit of backstory done and over with, let's get to the game. So began my playthrough...
Got myself all set to go, right here. Look out Kitano, here I come.
Full disclosure: this game is pretty much impossible to beat without a guide. If you don't follow a certain string of steps and satisfy a certain set of criteria almost precisely, then you can't progress any further in the game. You just can't, mate. So yes, that does mean I had to use a walkthrough, both to guide me along in the game and also due to the fact that everything is written in Japanese, so I won't know what options to pick anyway even if I DO know what I was supposed to do. That, of course, does not stop the game from being difficult even with a walkthrough, which I'll be sure to elaborate on, don't you worry.
The game begins with you in your boss's office. Walking up to him initiates a dialog where he chastises you, an average Japanese salaryman, for your shoddy performance lately, and then gives you only a paltry bonus of about 200,000 yen. After that, you're pretty much free to roam around wherever you want. The game's open-endedness is incredibly deceiving, however. While it may appear that you have lots of things you can do -- and you can, indeed, do a lot of things -- you must follow a certain "checklist" of items to do, and you cannot progress further unless you do them properly. There is very little wiggle room for error and wandering, here. If you make a big enough mistake, you're stuck, and have to start all over again*.
How ironic is it that a game with so many options is so very limited?
*(An aside, I've heard people claiming that the game's password function is useless, and only serves as a joke. While on the password screen you are given the option to literally punch the guy standing at the desk -- which results in a game over, by the way -- you CAN input legitimate codes, which you can access in-game, and continue from the point you left off with your stats/money/etc left intact. And yes, they do work; it doesn't try to cheat or scam you in some way, even though I half-expected this evil game to do so. This actually made it easier for me in some regards, since it meant I could replay areas before certain events that were hard or tricky to overcome. If you input the wrong code, however? You get a game over as well. Not even kidding...)
So, what are you supposed to do? Well, it might go against your gamer instinct, but you're supposed to ignore your boss at the start of the game. No, you just turn right around at the start, walk away from him, and then go screw around outside for a while. You withdraw money from your bank account, around 50,000 yen, which you then spend on shamisen lessons. From there, you go to a bar, drink until you pass out, and then once you're dragged back home, you divorce your wife, pay alimony, and kill your kids. Remember when I said that some of Takeshi's original ideas were rejected for being "not suitable for children"? Apparently alcoholism, domestic violence, and rampant murdering is totally fine, though. (Okay... I lied, killing the kids is optional. But since beating up random people is not penalized or discouraged in any way -- hell, it's NEEDED for several key points in the game -- you'd be forgiven for wanting to muck around a little bit.) All while you're doing this, you're often assailed by the roaming Yakuza gang members, who sock you one in the face if you so much as breathe in their general direction. It's usually a better idea NOT to fight back, but because of the game's bullshit mechanics, they'll always land a hit on you unless you get lucky and manage to dodge them. Or cheat.
What makes the game much more merciful to play is by employing the use of a certain pair of exploits: a glitch, and a code. The glitch is whenever you open up the game's menu -- using the Select button, of course -- then close it again, the screen is cleared of enemies and respawn in different places if they even respawn at all. It's a good trick for getting around the later sections of the game, which I'll get to later. The second exploit is a special "code" of sorts, and it was only through a random LP that I found it: whenever you lose your health and get knocked down, which usually means you're seconds away from a game over screen, you can press the A and B buttons together at the same time three times exactly, and you'll get right back up with around half of your max health. You can do that as many times as you like, too. I only ever needed to do this twice though, since the menu-screen exploit often helped avoid conflict in the first place -- except in places where you HAVE to beat up things, of course. Then it just glitches out even more and you're often forced to restart whatever you were just trying to accomplish.
I'm sure it's completely ethical.
So, I just divorced my wife, committed infanticide, and nobody in the game world seems to give a shit. What now? Why, quit my job, of course! No, seriously; you need to quit your job. If you do so -- and provided you haven't done or said anything else to your boss beside to pick up your bonus, which you would need to also do AFTER you divorce your wife -- then you immediately get a bonus of 500,000 yen as a parting payment. Not too shabby. But wait, there's more; ducking under the potted plant in the main office area reveals another cache of your personal savings, worth another 100,000 yen. All in all, I had 800,000 yen on me at this point. Which I blew almost instantly on hang-gliding lessons, learning another language, and buying a plane ticket to the South Pacific. Random, yeah? Yet it's all completely necessary.
One of the game's more interesting challenges is where you have to use the Famicom's second controller, but only to use the built-in microphone. So there I was, playing pachinko, and losing horribly, as I tried to awkward shout and blow into the second controller's microphone whilst still mashing the A button on the first controller. Doing so got me in trouble, and after beating up some yakuza, I got gifted with 5000 balls right off the bat, which I then used to buy myself a shamisen. From there, it was off to the bar again, for some karaoke. Yes, the dreaded karaoke.
"あなたの ためなら どこまでも
Anata no tame nara dokomademo
ついてゆける わたし
Tsuiteyukeru watashi
せつない おもいを うたにして
Setsunai omoi wo utanishite
あめふる しんか いち..."
Amefuru shinkaichi...
Though I spent at least an hour struggling with the microphone and the controller's built-in manual workaround, once I figured out the proper "tune" for the song you play -- it always has to be the same song, a ballad called "Rain of Tears" (an oddly appropriate name, eh?) -- it wasn't really all that hard. It's only an issue because you have to repeat the same song three times in a row, without messing up once. But once I managed it, I ended up being charged by more yakuza, and after fending them off, an old man suddenly shows up and gives me a piece of paper. You are then given a number of options on what to do with the paper.
Already knowing that the only two options that work are the "soak in water (for 5-10 minutes)" and "leave in the sun for an hour" things -- any other option or not letting the paper soak for long enough/letting it soak too long will ruin it, meaning you have to do the karaoke all over to get it back -- I just went with the shorter option. Lo and behold, a map became known to me.
Map in hand, my path was now clear. The map was clearly guiding me to riches! Being jobless and homeless, I've really not much else to lose at this point. With this newfound resolve, I took the map... and beat the crap out of the old man. Why? Because if you don't, he shows up and kills you at the end of the game just as you reach the treasure. So it's better to just kill him while you have the chance, trust me. You'll be really sore if you don't.
After all of that, it's off to the South Pacific with me. I mean, I certainly didn't buy that plane ticket for nothing, right? Right. Upon arriving at the islands, I was greeted by my salaryman avatar swapping out his usual getup for some explorer-esque duds. While it seems that the black dudes are the only ones here that seem to want to punch me on this island -- can't help but gather some racist undertones from this -- at least they aren't as grabby and aggressive as the yakuza. For some reason, they can be dissuaded by simply turning and walking away slightly, which makes them stop, jump in place, then turn tail and run. Don't really know what's up with that.
But anyway, after stopping at the hotel to fully refill my hearts, and picking up some jewelry, a canteen, and a gun -- yes, a gun, which you can use to shoot things -- I made my way to the final stop on the island, where I put my smartly-learned skills in aerial pursuits to the test.
And this, dear readers, is what probably caused me the most frustration and headache out of the entire game up to this point: The hang-gliding section. The accursed hang-gliding section.
You can't ascend. You can only move left, right, and descend. Birds with fly at you, deliberately trying to ram your glider without remorse. You have a gun, but only one shot can be on-screen at a time, so if you miss, you're screwed. UFOs can show up, which shoot at you in return, as well. Gusts of wind can lift your glider back upwards, but you can literally shoot the wind and destroy it by accident, thus denying you the chance. Sometimes, if you're unlucky, a shot will go right through what you're trying to shoot.
And you only have one attempt.
Collide with just one bird or take too many hits from a UFO, and you're as good as dead. And you know what that means, right?
I must have spent more than twenty times trying to get past this section alone. Every other part felt like a breeze compared to it. But as I kept on playing, much like one would futilely smash their skull against a wall in an attempt to rid oneself of a headache, I realized that the birds, UFOs, and wind gusts all followed a specific pattern. Yes, a deliberate, non-random pattern. I realized that, if I tried enough times, I would soon figure out an optimal route to get past everything. Funnily enough, I found just such a route, and almost purely by accident.
Basically, my strategy went as such: never once did I descend. Ever. (Not until the fourth island at least, when you're supposed to descend, but that's another thing.) I just scrolled left to right on the same altitude, mainly keeping as far to the right of the screen as I was allowed and shooting down birds within a mere second of them appearing. Many of them I was able to avoid altogether. But I was very fortunate in discovering that, at that starting altitude, I found a gust a wind that let me go even higher. And then another gust of wind after that, even, putting me at the highest possible point on the screen. Why is this such a big deal? It let me completely dodge all of the UFOs, which always seem to spawn just a hair too low to shoot or collide with me. At that height, only the birds were an issue, but even then they were easily avoided or shot. So when I finally reached the fourth island and descended toward it -- making sure not to touch the ground, just getting down to that level and holding it for a second -- I was firmly in the clear.
You guys have no idea how good it felt to finally see this screen after I beat it.
But of course, the game wouldn't let me have a break even then. As soon as I was past that, I was dropped onto the island, where tribals and animals alike were all after me. The tribals are easy enough to shoot (though they tend to spawn close enough to get in at least one hit before you can kill them, a lot of the time), but the animals are a different story, since they are too short to be hit by the gun-- and no, you can't duck and shoot. Believe me, I've tried. I was mostly just jumping and super-jumping over a lot of things. So what do I do next? Well, since walking into the wrong hut will give you a game over, you have to know which hut to brave into, first. (It's the last hut before the jungle, FYI.)
What happens when you walk into the hut? Well, I don't know about you, but I got thrown into a pot of boiling water. Fun. They only let me go once I demonstrated my epic shamisen skills and won their ever-loving respect, though. See? I told you it'd come in handy down the line. They released me from the pot, suggested I go talk to the hermit at the end of the island, and so I left to trek through the jungles, where monkeys in the treetops threw coconuts at my face. At least... I'm fairly sure those are coconuts. Maybe. At any rate, they do a crazy amount of damage, so, best to not get hit by them...
I meet the hermit after passing the jungle and some more angry tribals, and I gift him with the canteen I bought earlier. Such a "useful" item pleases him, so he then gives me a hint by telling me that the villagers have the key to the treasure cave. Back through the jungle with me, then. Upon getting there, I offer the same tribal who wanted me for dinner earlier a gift, of fine jewelry. (It says "poetry" in the fan-translation, but whatever.) In return, they gift me with... a rock. Wow. I can decidedly say that this entirely makes up for the unfortunate misunderstanding we had, earlier. It's a very nice rock indeed. You can even equip it as a weapon!
Rock firmly in grasp, I passed back through the jungle once more, and found my way to the hill. It's a little tricky here, since you need to precisely super-jump onto the top of the hill, onto a tiny rock platform. From there, you need to carefully inch yourself to the rightmost side of that pixels-wide rock and then press down on the control pad, which immediately drops me into a cave. And just like that, I'm in the final stretch of Takeshi's Challenge.
The problems here now became twofold. Not only are enemies practically bleeding out from the walls, floors, and thin air itself, you also have to scour each floor of the cave bit-by-bit just to be able to find another random pixel-wide spot where you can duck down and drop into the next area. And since it's impossible to hit most of these enemies with your weapons (not even the Holy Rock can save me!), your only option is just to run through them. If it wasn't for the menu-screen exploit that resets all enemies onscreen, then I'm fairly certain beating this area is nearly impossible if you don't use the resurrection button combo (press down the A+B buttons three times) every time you get knocked down. But I persisted onward.
And I have to say, everything was going pretty well. Aside from the times I found myself repeatedly pummeled by hoards of sasquatch.
True story.
And then... at long, long last, I found it. Right there, at the end of the last section of the cave, the bounty of my exploits was revealed.
Upon gathering up my well-earned treasure, what else should greet me but Takeshi Kitano's lovingly-rendered 8-bit face?
And that's all she wrote, folks. My journey was over, and Takeshi's Challenge had been conquered. People called me crazy over Skype when i told them -- and then showed them -- that I bought a physical copy of the game. Was it worth it? Well, I got the game and the original box for like ten bucks, so... I'd say I got my money's worth, considering this game is essentially a part of history. Who else can say they own, played, and beat the whole shebang on the actual console it was developed for, and not on a emulator? Which, of course, means no savestates, no hacking, none of that. Just the game itself, the controller, the password screen (which DOES works, dammit; but don't trust any codes you find online, because a number of them are bad and will leave you stuck), and a handful of (possibly intentional) glitches and exploits that give the player a fighting chance. I played Takeshi's Challenge the way it was meant to be played™, and beaten it... in two days. Yes, I only got this game a few days ago, and beat it after only a few -- if rather prolonged -- play sessions, over a period of two days. And it apparently took JonTron two years to beat it. Huh.
So... the final verdict. Is Takeshi's Challenge really that bad of a game? Is it really that hard of a game?
If you ask me, well... not really.
I mean, don't get me wrong. The hang-gliding stage was hell. Even after my strategy was planned out and slowly perfected, I still messed up a number of times, and that was completely on me when it did. But if you know what to do, and have access to the exploits and codes... then it's not really all that bad. If this game DIDN'T have a walkthrough, and I was forced to figure it all out myself? Yeah, THEN it would be hard, because I simply wouldn't know what to do. It's hard in the same way that Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest was hard; you often had no idea what to do, where to go, or what to use on what. While Simon's Quest has in-game hints, these were horribly cryptic and often outright lied to you. So many players relied (and STILL rely) on a walkthrough to guide them through the steps. Even then, if you know what to do, the game itself is still challenging and time-consuming. It is a Castlevania game, after all. The bosses are still pretty crappy though.
(Speaking of Castlevania 2, some of you may have probably heard of the "Redaction" hack. As much as that fixes some issues with the game, I'm happy to say that there is an EVEN BETTER hack available for that game. Why better? Well, it re-translates the text to be more faithful to the original Famicom Disk System version, makes it less cryptic, makes text scroll faster, adds a much-needed in-game map, completely eliminates the infamous day-night transition text box (so day-night transitions are seamlessly melded into the gameplay!), adds an awesome cinematic prologue to the title screen with text ripped from the instruction manual's prologue, adds the ability to SAVE YOUR GAME (a feature that used to be present in the Famicom Disk System version!), tweaks a few other things, and so much more. I'd highly recommend checking it out if you like Castlevania, and want to play an altogether improved version of Simon's Quest. (Here's a guy playing it, if you want to see it in action.))
I'd almost suggest that Simon's Quest is harder than Takeshi's Challenge, but then I remember the hang-gliding section, constantly-spawning enemies you can barely ever hit, and incredibly-limited ways of restoring health. Once you get past the alternate-universe moon logic of the first act, the second ratchets up the difficulty slider to just plain unfair. If it were not for the exploit/code, then the game would be virtually unbeatable. But, since these exploits DO exist, in the main game itself, it's a workaround that I consider fair play. Simon's Quest has no such exploits, but since the penalty for a game over is just you losing all your hearts, it's just more time being wasted than anything. Beyond that though, the hang-gliding is the only legitimately hair-pulling challenge, while everything else is easily solved with a good walkthrough. So I can safely say, that after all that, it was certainly not the hardest game I've ever played and managed to beat. Its difficulty is fully reliant on its absurdity, cryptic and utterly nonsensical series of "to-do" tasks, and overall unfairness to the player. It's easily overcome for the most part, so long as you have a guide to help out.
Remember, kids: drinking heavily is never a bad thing.
As for its badness, I'd say it's pretty obvious: this is a troll game. It was designed with the singular intention of annoying, frustrating, and angering gamers. Its badness is wholly intentional. In a way, though, it's actually kind of brilliant, at the same time. It's unique, makes interesting use of how to solve its cryptic puzzles (revealing the map), and the initially-apparent open-endedness was ahead of its time. Though most choices are worthless, and some even make you needlessly lose health and money, it's still an interesting trinket to behold. Its darkly-humorous tone is also kind of amusing, though your mileage may vary on that. Due to all this and more, I can safely say that it is not the worst game of all time, either. Would it really count as the worst if it was made to be a joke? A prank? I mean, if we can consider some trollfics on this site to not be the worst because of their intentional badness, then surely the same could apply in this instance. Its trollish design is actually kind of... brilliant, in many ways.
From start to finish, Takeshi's real challenge was simply... to not play the game at all. And he got us, hook, line, and sinker.
So, am I happy with this result? Well, I can at least say that I've beaten Takeshi's Challenge itself, at least. Perhaps it would have been much, much more difficult if I knew so little about the game to start with, but considering I was introduced to it through JonTron, who pretty much gave away most of how to beat it to begin with... well, can you blame me?
Final note before I sign off, since I just found this: someone made a spiritual successor/sequel to Takeshi no Chousenjou. And it is called... Kiyoshi no Chousenjou. Starring 'Meat Kiyoshi'! It's a rather amusing and punishingly-difficult platformer/obstacle course runner from the guys who brought us 1001 Spikes, so, it might be worth a look if you're interested. At least you get 999 lives from the start in this.
Maybe I'll do another Let's Play blog of sorts, sometime. I do have the original MOTHER now, after all...
"Why are you taking a game such as this so seriously?"
I want you to explain to me how your managed to get attacked by hoards of sasquatch as opposed to hordes.
That's one hell of a trick.
Also just reading this made me want to punch things.
Very nice blog post! I enjoyed reading it. The Famicom itself is an interesting piece of industrial design. That whole era of gaming is just wonderful.
No Maud
Now you are the Jontron
3240706
This is a rational reaction to Takeshi's Challenge.