Konami announced GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon on Wednesday during Nintendo’s Indie World stream. It’s a surprise revival of a 34-year-old NES-era video game that was only published in Japan, but will look familiar to fans of 8-bit games like Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest, Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, and The Goonies 2.
The original Getsu Fuma Den was released on Nintendo’s Famicom in Japan in 1987. The side-scrolling action-adventure game starred Getsu Fuma, who is on a mission to recover his fallen brothers’ swords and kill the evil dragon master Ryukotsuki. The game featured overhead, side-scrolling, and behind-the-back gameplay perspectives — and was infamously said to have inspired Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for NES.
The new game is described by Konami as an “Ukiyo-e style roguevania 2D action” game — meaning it has roguelike elements and a latter-day Castlevania-style structure. In GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon, “the seal to the gate of hell has been ripped open and a flood of evil spirits have been released into the world” and Getsu Fuma must take up arms and battle the revived Ryukotsuki’s demons to protect his clan.
GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon is being developed by indie studio GuruGuru in cooperation with Konami. It’s coming to Nintendo Switch in 2022 and Windows PC later this year in a Steam Early Access period. (Early Access players will get access to the original Getsu Fuma Den on Steam.)
Shin Murato, producer of GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon at Konami, said in a news release that Early Access “gives us a great opportunity to build a community for GetsuFumaDen and ensure the game is as strong as possible. Throughout this period, we want to utilise user feedback and foster an active discussion to increase the quality of the game. We will work very closely with our community to help bring this game to life through content review, bug fixes, and balancing.”
“We look forward to entering Early Access and actively working in partnership with the community on a title that speaks to our passion about design, visuals, and story,” said Yuki Yamashita, director at GuruGuru. “We’re excited to hear the community’s feedback with a goal to shape and evolve the game as we move forward in development.”
You can watch the debut trailer for GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon at YouTube.
