Meet our heroes: Bunroku and Marco, in Shifting Sand Land of all places.
Touhouken Bunroku (東方見文録, The Travels of Marco Polo) is a text based adventure game, released for the Famicom by Natsume as a Japanese exclusive. It focuses on a troublemaker known as Bunroku Touhouken, whom travels to the times of famous explorer Marco Polo.
The title of the game is a play on 東方見聞録 (The Travels of Marco Polo), but with the fourth character altered. The game is noted for its dark humour and absurdist textuality, gaining a cult following.
This game provides examples of:
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Accidental Nightmare Fuel: Jump Scares everywhere, some quite disturbing looking characters, and that ending. - Ascended Fanboy: Deconstructed; Bunroku's fantasies of joining Marco Polo in his quest end up with the boy's father unable to travel to China, forcing Bunroku to step in as Marco's guardian and be the hero he always saw himself as in the scenario. It...doesn't work out too well, cue Downer Ending.
- Bamboo Technology: Midway through Chapter 4, Bunroku pulls out a rocket launcher made from bamboo, and open fires on a giant mansion.
- Blackface: One of the first characters you meet, in the very first part of the game after starting proper. The genie from the magic lamp also evokes the imagery to a lesser extent.
- Distressed Dude: Happens to Bunroku in Chapter 2.
- Death by Adaptation: While Marco Polo lived to old age, enough to tell the world his travels, here he dies as a child due to Bunroku altering history and a kamikaze attack.
- Double Meaning: A hilariously catastrophic example bordering on Pun. When Bunroku activates his controller to summon the Kamikaze typhoon
, the time machine's control somehow malfunctions and insteads sends a kamizake airplane squad from WWII, who obliterate the entire fleet and Marco. - Downer Ending: After Marco dies due to Bunroku recklessly altering time, the latter washes up on some island which is some sort of detainment for those who mess with history. Bunroku is forced to accept his captor's "hospitality" ending into a tiny, shared Japanese bathtub, where he soon goes insane, declaring "this is not Japan" and leaving him screaming for his mommy in the style of Edvard Munch's famous "The Scream".
- Hope Spot: In Chapter 5, Marco and Bunroku are finally about to reach China with the help of a Mongol fleet. Only for Bunroku to accidentally summon a squadron of kamikaze planes, killing Marco in the crossfire.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Bunroku, a college student in his 20s, becomes best buds with the teenager Marco Polo.
- Madness Mantra: Bunroku repeats "This is not Japan" and "Mommy" over and over again while he is forced to share the bathtub with some nutjobs in the ending.
- Mushroom Samba: In Chapter 2, following his Distressed Dude moment, Bunroku gets drunked up and begins hallucinating.
- Never My Fault: While Bunroku is devastated after accidentally killing Marco, he tries to justify it as a neccesary act to stop the Mongols from invading Japan.
- Non-Standard Game Over: During Chapter 3, you meet a king and his daughter. You can opt to touch the daughter, and if you do, the game abruptly ends.
- Protagonist Title: Bunroku being the protagonist.
- Refuge in Audacity: Jesus divekicks Bunroku while still attached to the cross.
- Say My Name: Marco's last words are to tearfully call Bunroku for help as he's obliterated by kamikaze planes.
- Shifting Sand Land: Where a good ordeal of the first three chapters are set in, on occasion reaching the levels of Impassable Deserts.
- Time Police: At the end of the game, Bunroku is captured by these, due to him recklessly changing history by killing Marco Polo.