By 1986, Sunsoft had begun developing original titles for the Famicom as opposed to arcade ports, but those games often retained the feel and design of the arcade. There’s arguably no better example of this than Kanshaku tamanage Kantarou no Toukaidou Gojuusan-tsugi (officially translated as Firework Thrower Kantaro’s 53 Stations of the Tokaido), a brief but very difficult action title that’ll put even hardened experts through their paces.
Toukaidou Gojuusan-tsugi refers to the 53 Stations or checkpoints along the Toukaidou, the most important of the five highways that led to the capital of Edo (now Tokyo) during the Edo period between 1603 and 1868. This route begins in the city of Kyoto, where fireworks craftsman Kantaro has finished his training. He’s planning to travel along the Toukaidou to return home to Edo and his fiancée Momoko-chan, but he’s continually pestered by the countless goons working for Inokuniya Gouzaemon, a treacherous merchant who wants to use Kantaro’s firework knowledge to craft guns.
Toukaidou Gojuusan-tsugi is a linear side-scroller where you have to reach the end of the stage. You’re able to jump and throw explosive fireworks, which will clear out most enemies in a single hit (some, such as the gun-toting Gouzaemon, require two). You can also place one on the ground, in order to take out the wandering ronin who otherwise slash your fireworks. There’s plenty of enemies with unique moves and strategies to deal with, from bouncing ninjas to knife-throwers lurking on roofs to dangerous monks.
You can ward them off with fireworks or by jumping onto roofs and trees, but there’s some characters who will slow you down for a short time and can’t be attacked. They can only be circumvented by finding items acquired by bombing certain unmarked locations, similar to The Tower of Druaga. Coins can be used to pay off the unwanted admirer Otami, amulets ward off the smiling ghosts, a security pass (or six coins) will let you pass by the checkpoint guards, and a sword gets rid of dastardly thieves who’ll otherwise take all your stuff.
There’s other uses for these items even if you don’t run into some of these characters, so it’s still worth looking out for them on your travels. You’ll sometimes find a rice ball that makes you briefly invincible, though it slowly brings your speed to a halt. Collecting three amulets will summon sandals that let you walk on the clouds, where you can find special tiny clouds that give you loads of points and therefore extra lives. You’ll need two coins to summon tiny bridges over otherwise impassable gaps, and grabbing ten will open up a door to a zone that’ll warp you ahead by either three or six stages.
Although it’s not a long game, only comprising 21 straightforward stages (not counting the warp levels), you’ll need all the help and items you can get because Toukaidou Gojuusan-tsugi is very difficult. The enemies’ various patterns require split-second reactions and plenty of mental juggling to overcome, and you’re encouraged to keep moving as more of them will show up before too long. If you make contact with any of the enemies or their projectiles, you die in one hit. It’s quite overwhelming as is, but what pushes it over the edge is that there are no continues. Run out of lives, and you have to start from the very beginning.
This is the kind of game that demands constant replays, learning the various hiding places of items and secrets to obtain more lives or warps, in order to give yourself enough of a buffer to reach the end. For what it’s worth, the controls do a solid job at being responsive enough to your movements, jumps and bomb throws (apart from how you fall straight down if you walk off a ledge of any height), and there aren’t any technical issues that make things even tougher. It’s hard to recommend this to most, but players who relish extremely tough arcade action games should enjoy themselves.
The visuals are quite decent, with cute characters, colorful backdrops that cycle between different times of day, and a sturdy framerate despite how much happens onscreen. The locales manage to be fairly decent adaptations of the various places you visit along the Toukaidou, at least as seen in Utagawa Hiroshige’s famous woodblock prints (one of which is even used in the background of the game’s cover art). The action is punctuated by very short but fittingly upbeat traditional-style music which will get stuck in your head after a few minutes.
“Hakone” – the eleventh print from Utagawa Hiroshige’s “The Fifty-three Stations of the Toukaidou” series, used for the background of the game’s cover art (seen above).
There’s a two-player mode available, though it’s of the variety where players alternate after each death rather than anything co-operative. There aren’t any in-game credits, but was developed by TOSE rather than being internally made like Altlantis no Nazo, according to The History of Sunsoft Volume 1. Toukaidou Gojuusan-tsugi has seen plenty of re-releases over the years, starting with the Ultra 2000 Sunsoft Classic Games 2 release on Windows where it was bundled with Ikki. It also appeared in Memorial Series Sunsoft Vol. 3 for the PlayStation alongside The Wing of Madoola, and later received a port to NTT DoCoMo’s mobile phones.
After years of various digital releases on PlayStation and Nintendo systems, it was included in 2024’s SUNSOFT is Back! Retro Game Selection with Ripple Island and Wings of Madoola. This release includes scans of the original manual and advertisements, rewind and save state functions, and an official English translation for the first time. It doesn’t require a translation to enjoy, seeing as the only text appears on intermission screens between stages, but it’s a nice convenience all the same. A English fan translation was done back in 2005 by the prolific KingMike’s Translations group, which translated many Famicom and Disk System titles during the 2000s and 2010s.
LINKS:
The English fan translation patch: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/894
Special thanks to Windii Gitlord for translating the manual.
Extra information is sourced from The History of Sunsoft Volume 1 by Stefan Gancer, and the episodes covering this game from the Famidaily and Game Center CX series.
