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"Lost Media" Mysterious Murasame Castle Japanese TV Special Found

Rydeen

Rydeen

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Oct 25, 2017
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View: https://youtu.be/gGwkT7MwPHk?si=LIs5yj8Q1iBdCXCi

A super-rare find just popped up online; The Japanese live-action adaptation of the recently added to Nintendo Switch Online 'Mysterious Murasame Castle'!

The TV special was an episode of the series 'Onyanko Club Drama Land' which was an anthology series that featured a different member of the Jpop group Onyanko Club in every episode, this particular episode was a loose adaptation of the Famicom Disk System game 'Nazo no Murasame Jo / Mysterious Murasame Castle' and premiered on December 8th, 1986. It was never re-broadcast, and was believed to be "lost media" (according to Wikipedia) until the episode was uploaded to YouTube.

Super-interesting to hear the game's sound effects and even music used in certain parts, and as this aired in 1986, this makes it the FIRST live action adaptation of a video game, pre-dating the Super Mario Bros movie from 1993.
 
red mage

red mage

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Damn, I didn't even know the Super Mario Bros. moie from 1993 was considered the first video game live action adaptation
 
Qwark

Qwark

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Oct 27, 2017
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Love stuff like this, will add it to my watch list to check out later.

red mage said:
Damn, I didn't even know the Super Mario Bros. moie from 1993 was considered the first video game live action adaptation
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I don't know if I believe it TBH. Like there wasn't some random Pac-Man or Space Invaders live-action thing at some point? The wiki only seems to list big adaptations, not something like this TV special. Lots of missing info.
 
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bloopland33

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Mar 4, 2020
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I see a YT comment saying a DVD was tracked down and dumped. If true, it's wild how DVDs existed (possibly were sold) of this thing and it still became lost media for a time.

Something only broadcast once and never released on home video I get, and it's not like this thing would have moved tons and tons of DVD copies, but still. You'd think there'd have been enough out there for it to have surfaced earlier than this.
 
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Rydeen

Rydeen

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Oct 25, 2017
1,503
Seattle, WA.
bloopland33 said:
Something only broadcast once and never released on home video I get, and it's not like this thing would have moved tons and tons of DVD copies, but still. You'd think there'd have been enough out there for it to have surfaced earlier than this.
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It was an episode of the series 'Onyanko Club Drama Land' which was an anthology series that featured a different member of the Jpop group Onyanko Club in every epiosde, so outside of the Murasame Castle connection, this show would have zero interest to your average retro game enthusiast, and since the DVD box set was advertised without the Murasame connection, it was just hiding in plain sight in Japan since 2005.
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

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Oct 25, 2017
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I guess it's to be expected that a live action adaptation would be kind of wonky because that was just how they tended to be for a long time, but it feels like it didn't really seem like Murasame Castle until the last third at which point it decides to be video game-y to the point of absurdity.

They probably went with the best action they could on the budget they had, but it somehow doesn't feel right to see Takamaru having normal swordfights instead of mowing down dozens of ninjas every minute.

It is nice that they seemed to be trying to have more active female characters here than Nintendo was putting in their games at the time.
 

bloopland33

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Mar 4, 2020
2,377
Rydeen said:
It was an episode of the series 'Onyanko Club Drama Land' which was an anthology series that featured a different member of the Jpop group Onyanko Club in every epiosde, so outside of the Murasame Castle connection, this show would have zero interest to your average retro game enthusiast, and since the DVD box set was advertised without the Murasame connection, it was just hiding in plain sight in Japan since 2005.
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But even outside of retro game enthusiasts though, I'm surprised this had never been uploaded to the internet before now. I would've expected fans of the group or fans of the series to have also been hunting the contents of the DVD down.
 
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