 SNES-DRA- Maju Uo, or King of Demons in Japanese, is one of the most sought-after Super Famicom games because, well, there just aren't games that look like this on the Super Nintendo. Any action platformer that went for a vibe similar to this always had kind of a cartoony slant to it, like Super Ghouls and Ghosts or Zombies Ate My Neighbors. The closest is probably Super Castlevania IV or Castlevania Dracula X, but even those games seem somewhat sane compared to what you see in Maju Uo. The artwork and design behind some of these monsters is really out there. I guess the closest another Super Nintendo game would come in that aspect is the last level of Contra 3, I guess? But even then, what in the hell is this thing? What's with this cake frosting dispenser chasing you? Yeah, if you're into dark and messed up imagery and if you're into movies made by, say, Dario Argento, just take one look at the cover here and you know what you're getting into. Wow. So yeah, that's the big appeal here. You just don't see that many 16-bit games that look like this. As for the gameplay, your character's speed, sprite size, and range of motion is consistent with a game like Castlevania. It certainly feels a bit similar, although you are pretty small compared to most other Super Nintendo games like this. However, you have a gun with unlimited ammo instead of something like a whip like in Castlevania, and you can hold the fire button down for a power shot that looks suspiciously like a Hadouken. You can also double jump and throw a kick for a close-range attack. That's just a start with, though, because when you beat the first boss, there's a jewel left behind that rotates between three colors. The green jewel turns you into what looks like some kind of green pterodactyl thing that shoots lasers. Okay. The red jewel has you shoot boomerangs, and the blue jewel has you turn into Spyro's evil half-cousin. Each form also has a special charged up attack as well. Choose the same color jewel more than once and it levels up your character. But if you choose each color one after the other, you'll unlock a fourth form. Or interestingly enough, you can stay as a human the entire game if you want to challenge. The level design is about what you'd expect from a side-scroller like this, although there's some surprises here and there, like this bridge collapsing, or this giant monster that tries to crush you. Maju Uo is one of the rare Super Nintendo or Super Famicom games that has a decidedly Sega Genesis feel to it, if that makes sense. Usually in games like this, I'm used to seeing huge detailed sprites, and yeah, some of the bosses take up a substantial chunk of the screen. But in each form your character takes, he's still pretty small, and he just looks and moves like something out of a Genesis game, I don't know. The music also has that Genesis feel to it. It just sounds buzzy and grindy. Believe me, I don't mean that as a bad thing, I like it a lot and it's pretty different. For the story, it's all in Japanese, but you don't need to navigate any menus or anything to be able to play Maju Uo, so this game is entirely English friendly. If you insist on reading the little dialogue there is here, there is an English patch available. Anyway, you play as Abel and this other guy, Bear, kills his family, in order to revive the King of Demons. I do not know what one has to do with the other, but whatever. So now Abel has to go through hell, literally, to save his daughter, and his wife, I guess, turns into a fairy to help him or something? There's some dark stuff here beyond the imagery, so you can see why this never made it overseas. Anyway, yeah, Maju Uo is a game that stands out big time in the Super Famicom library. There's just not much else like it out there. So that of course means that it's going for a fortune on eBay. Yeah, even the Super Famicom cartridge is like $200, sorry. Despite that, Maju Uo is still a good English friendly action platformer with some utterly bizarre imagery that's sure to make you wonder what the hell these people were thinking when they came up with some of these enemies. So if you want to spend some quality time in hell, here you go.