This article is part of our Japanese Obscurities feature. We put out a whole book about them, which is available as both a full color hardcover and a Kindle ebook from Amazon! If you’d like to see more of these features, please check out the book and if you enjoyed it, leave a five star review so we can do a follow up with even more interesting, offbeat, or historically important Japanese games!
Tomy, a long-running toy company that also published plenty of Naruto and Zoids games, took a crack at game development on the PS1 with Hit Back in 1999. The game begins in Mimil and with Princess Mimiru reading a book to four of her friends. Storytime is quickly interrupted by a Shinigami that kidnaps the princess and retreats inside the book. The four friends give chase, enlist the help of a fairy that turns into a ball, and begin to work their way through the book’s scenarios in order to rescue the princess, starting with living hieroglyphics and culminating in a fight against Satan himself.