Musya FI

SNES A Day 138: Musya

musya_us_box_art

Approximate Release Date: December 31, 1992
Genre: Action
Developer: Jorudan
Publisher: SETA

Musya makes a terrible first impression, but interesting visuals and a forgiving checkpoint system make it worth some consideration.

Just be aware that the act of playing Musya is awful. I criticized Lethal Weapon yesterday for having stiff controls, but Musya takes it to the next level. Your character walks slow, jumps extremely high, and falls like a stone. The one positive aspect of the gameplay is your primary attack is a lance, so you can keep the enemies at distance. Staying just out of the bosses’ reach and plinking away at their massive health reserve is the only way to defeat them. Magic would also be an option but is only effectual against the standard enemies and they respawn too quickly to make it worth doing.

Sounds pretty terrible, right?

Musya‘s saving grace is how forgiving it is. Each level is made of a series of rooms, and the game makes checkpoints at the start of each room. Given that you have 16 hit points, just running through the levels is a valid strategy. It doesn’t matter if you die, you can try again and again until you get to the next screen.

You might want to because the enemy design is fantastic. The first few areas are boring, with wisps and slimes making up most of the opposition. It doesn’t take long for giant eyeballs and floating heads that barf stuff at you. Then moons with lips and Santa Claus-esque demons. I played well into the third level just because I wanted to see how weird Musya would get.

It’s surreal and even dips into slight survival horror territory. The ideal way to play Musya might be to use cheat codes to give yourself infinite health and just enjoy the weird enemy designs because the game part isn’t great at all.

Tomorrow: Maybe NBA All-Star Challenge will have every team, unlike the last NBA game.

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