Nineteen eighty-six was a transformative year for Nintendo. Super Mario Bros. had released at the end of the previous year and ushered in a slew of influential games. The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus (I guess), many of which were riding on the features of the Famicom Disk System, which also released that year. Home console games would quickly shift away from the cyclical arcade model and more toward adventures with endpoints; final goals to work towards, rather than just a high score.
We received many of the fruits of this labor. The Legend of Zelda would ship with a special battery backed cartridge to allow saving on the NES, while Metroid and Kid Icarus would swap to passwords. One notable game, however, was left in the dust among those titles; the second original title on the Famicom Disk System, Nazo no Murasame-Jou. Whether it was because it was too Japanese for Western audiences or… actually, that’s the only reason I can think of because it’s an excellent game that could have totally gotten away with just using a password system.
