Bonze Adventure
Image: Taito

Bonze Adventure (or Jigoku Meguri as it is known in Japan) is a Taito-developed platformer about a Buddhist priest travelling to hell to defeat a swarm of evil yokai and restore order to the underworld.

It was originally released in Japanese arcades in 1988 and later received a port for the PC Engine console in 1990. However, as Taito Corp recently revealed in a set of tweets, the developer/publisher also at one point made plans to create a version of the game for the Nintendo Famicom, with its lead designer Kenji Kaido putting together some initial designs in his free time.

The account describes the gameplay for this abandoned project as being similar to Taito's popular arcade hit Bubble Bobble, with the action presumably all taking place on one screen as opposed to being a sidescroller like in the original.

According to Taito, it would be wrong to say that the project was eventually cancelled, with the company instead never really considering it a serious possibility but something Kaido was simply working on for fun.

Fortunately, if you want to play the Arcade version of Bonze Adventure today on Nintendo hardware, there is now an easy option that is available to you. Bonze Adventure is currently on the Nintendo Switch eShop and PlayStation Store as part of Hamster's Arcade Archives. You can check out some footage of the original game below: