Release Date: 1988
Developer: Vic Tokai Corporation
Publisher: Vic Tokai, Inc.
This article is late. I apologize for the delay. Sometimes, life gets in the way.
Anime has been a big influence in gaming for years. Anime staples like Dragon Ball Z and Pokémon have been the basis for very successful video game franchises. Moreover, games with anime aesthetics have seen acclaim. One needs to go no further than the Level-5 and Studio Ghibli collaboration, Ni No Kuni, as an example.
Back in the 8-bit days, however, anime was not seen as much in the States. In Japan, games based on Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Cyborg 009 were commonplace. Stateside, not so much. In fact, the first game I ever played that was based on an anime property was Vic Tokai’s Golgo-13: Top Secret Episode for the NES.
I was completely unaware of the series when I first played the game. I played it only because a friend had the game. I went to his house one evening to play NES games hand hang out. It was us and three other friends.
The only game we played that night was Top Secret Episode. I ended up staying the night. None of us slept; we spent the entire night playing that one game. None of us were even tired afterward.
For 1990, this game was the pinnacle of awesome, rivaled only by The Legend of Zelda.
In anime, Golgo-13 is the codename for Duke Togo, a hired assassin that puts James Bond to shame. He is a spy and a ladies’ man in the same vein as Bond, but anointed with a license to kill that pales whatever MI-6 grants to their counterpart. Togo is known to brandish a custom M-16 that he uses to snipe targets whenever it suits him, and it seems to suit him often; his body count in the series would make Rambo jealous.
Golgo-13: Top Secret Episode is a game full of espionage, deceit, and “adult themes” in an era before the ESRB. The opening cutscene shows a helicopter that is detonated in flight. That is no ordinary helicopter; it is carrying a deadly biological weapon, codenamed Cassandra-G. The biological weapon, a vaccine for it, and some plans have turned up missing in the charred remains of the helicopter. Also present in the remains is a shell…fired from a custom M-16.
The CIA pins the attack on Golgo-13, and further ties him to the KGB. A covert intelligence outfit named FIXER, however, believes that Golgo-13 has been framed. An agent for the secret organization has information that the DREK empire is behind the attack. That agent, of course, turns up missing after the dispatch.
Out of options, FIXER contracts Golgo-13. He is to infiltrate East Berlin, find an agent named Condor who has information about a Cassandra-G vaccine, and try to eliminate DREK.
The game has you control Golgo-13. The gameplay switches between side scrolling ground levels, first-person shooting areas, side-scrolling flying and swimming levels, and even first-person maze sections. The varied gameplay is tense and sometimes unexpected; you could be innocently walking around Brandenberg Gate when you are suddenly ambushed by baddies that you must dispatch in first-person view.
There are many “cinematic” cutscenes interspersed throughout the game. They mostley serve as exposition, but get you more invested into the game’s story. It’s a game mechanic that was not prevalent back then, and it sold players on the story. During that non-sleeping sleepover, we were hooked on the story’s progression thanks to these cutscenes. We were heavily invested.
The cutscenes eventually led to something we had not experienced in an NES game before: implied sex. A scene in a hotel room with a female operative turned a little steamy (well, but 1980s standards). Before long, another cutscene played where we witnessed from outside the hotel room. Golgo-13 and the operative got close, a kiss seemed to be exchanged, and the lights turned off in the room. Duke Togo was going in! As teenagers, we hooted and hollered like we were watching actual porn! There was nothing like that on the NES!
In fact, this game is a bit of an oddity in the NES library. Nintendo was known as a real priss when came to topics of sex, religion, or consumption of alcohol or cigarettes. Many games were censored to remove content that promoted those things. But Golgo-13: Top Secret Episode has many such references intact. In fact, there are areas where you can have him openly smoke cigarettes. The only other NES game I can recall that shows that is Metal Gear, and Top Secret Episode is more overt.
The varied gameplay styles help lessen the monotony of constantly grinding through similar levels. However, they’re not exactly good at doing so. The first-person shooting sections are simple bits where you are just standing in place and moving in a 360º space to shoot enemies around you. The first-person maze sections are slightly confusing and are easy to get lost in later on if you don’t map it out manually. The later sections also get “Nintendo Hard” in a hurry. I have only beaten the game once personally, and that was years ago. I can’t repeat the feat now.
Still, it’s a thrilling ride along the way. The variety in gameplay keeps gamers on their toes, and the story, while elementary now, was incredibly captivating back then.
Presentation-wise, the game is very serviceable. The game looks good in the side-scrolling sections, not so much in the first-person bits. Its soundtrack, however, is airtight and great. The opening theme is in my Pantheon of chiptune soundtracks. As far as NES soundtracks go, it’s my favorite from a company not named Sunsoft or Konami.
Does it still hold up? I think some parts do. The cutscenes may see hokey to us now, and the first-person sections are a bit lacking, but the gameplay is still fun. As a pure adventure game, it still has merit.
Unfortunately, gamers today are limited when looking for this game. It was never ported outside the NES, so you would have to own the console and game – or resort to more nefarious means – to play it. Still, I think it’s worth the time and effort. The game was a bit of an outlier in its day. It was a game that worked to advance the story cinematically. For a group of gaming-addicted teens in the 90s, that was an incredible experience. Nowadays, it’s a great example of the early days of cinematic gameplay…with sex!
Good: Varied gameplay, early cinematic scenes, more adult themes than usual
Bad: Dated dialogue, some gameplay elements didn’t play out very well
Final score: 7.5/10
