Sometimes you can’t help but fall to the “overnight fan” effect, and I fell hard when I started to get acquainted with Ghost Sweeper Mikami. GS Mikami is a horror comedy property with its origins as a manga written and illustrated by Takashi Shiina, focusing on the adventures of professional Ghost Sweeper Reiko Mikami and her agency in their exorcisms and consultations. Sometimes crass on the surface, there’s a certain kind of heart beneath it all that qucikly endeared me to the series (starting with the anime).
Ghost Sweeper Mikami has a lot of material that it could lend to a game from a cast of characters with established ghost sweeping lore to derive mechanics from, creative ghosts to fill in a juicy rogue’s gallery, and a distinct and colourful art style to set its presentation apart. It’s no surprise that a Super Famicom game would be released, but there’s always the onerous albatross of being licensed material. So does Ghost Sweeper Mikami: Joreishi wa Nice Body manage to shed the stigma and stand as solid title?
Yes, absolutely. However I would add the caveat that while the game certainly isn’t limited to an audience of established Mikami fans, it certainly enhances the experience.
Ghost Sweeper Mikami is a sidescrolling action game with paranormal themes. Mikami can jump, latch onto certain platforms, and attack with her divine staff or talismans. Levels have one or two sections of platforming and enemies followed by a boss at the end of each “Report” showcasing spirits and locations Mikami had encountered in the series. After every boss, Mikami receives a gem that she adds to a statue, and there are seven slots in total.
The levels are generally fairly short, though some are more enemy heavy, while others are a little more platform heavy. They may be a little more vertical, promoting exploration, or feature elements like flowing water pushing you back. It’s fairly standard fare in terms of level elements, but it’s generally well constructed.
Things are broken up a little as well with a handful of autoscroller levels (such as the broom level depicted below). Both of these play quite differently from one another and are generally more difficult than the rest of the game where you can pace yourself – a welcome change in a game that’s fairly lukewarm in challenge.
The standard level format allows Mikami to pace herself, and on a casual first play this allows you to keep the screen uncluttered. There can be many enemies and they can arrive from strange angles, and your standard divine staff only has so much reach (though you can perform a few different attacks with it). Urns contain upgrades for your staff to add a projectile (getting hit typically removes an upgrade), spiritual stones to freeze enemies in place, or talismans to swallow every enemy on the screen (these generally stun bosses for a couple of seconds, too). It’s not the most robust moveset but it works.
Bosses are excellent, being big and detailed and taking an absolute beating before ultimately going down. They aren’t too overwrought, actually quite fair, and make for excellent level punctuation. These bosses are infamous spirits from the series, possessing abilities that made them a threat there. It’s fan service, really, because I was excited to see each new ghost and what it was capable of. I won’t spoil later encounters, since that’s part of the fun if you’re going into this as a fan. And outside of that, they’re still well drawn paranormal beasties. If you like games with these themes it should scratch that itch, albeit with more humour and less gore.
To speak of the style, the presentation of Mikami is directly inspired by the source material, particularly the colours of the anime, and attempts to translate that as Super Famicom visuals. And it does this well, graphics are clean and stylized and are very evocative of the anime. The game is very colourful, and the levels all look very distinct and visually interesting with bosses being well animated and well drawn. It’s a joy if you’re a fan of the series, and still quite appealing otherwise since Mikami has such a wide variety of ghouls and ghosts to draw from.
The intro theme to Ghost Sweeper Mikami is a direct adaptation of the anime’s opening, a distinct and catchy song that translates well onto the platform. But the game features an impressive score all around, and I often found myself exclaiming how great the songs were, heh.
Ghost Sweeper Mikami features characters from the start of the anime to just before the end, so it’s a known factor that the biggest demographic would have been the anime’s audience in the 90’s. Watching the anime I felt that if I had this show as an option back when it was current I would consider it as a comedic alternative to The Real Ghostbusters, similar to Samurai Pizza Cats vs TMNT. But where the humour in Mikami is often sexually themed I suppose it would have been a difficult sell in that market even if it had the same amount of editing and changes that Kyatto Ninden Teyandee had in its transformation into Samurai Pizza Cats.
So although Ghost Sweeper Mikai is a great game, it didn’t have its established fanbase to push an SNES release. It wouldn’t have been the first localized separate from its source material (see: Black Belt and Last Battle and their relationship to Fist of the North Star/Hokuto no Ken, for instance) and one can’t help but wonder what would have been the result. For better or worse.
The crux of it is what Mikami brings to the table for folks who aren’t established fans, however, since as good as the game is it doesn’t break much new ground. It doesn’t have the technical finesse of Hagane (though of course it’s a much cheaper option!) and it’s not nearly as over the top as El Viento or RunSaber. Other action platformers are often faster paced and more eclectic.
It is, however, consistent. It’s consistently well constructed and presented. It doesn’t let up on the flavour and levels become steadily more complex with new enemies and mechanics every time. The supernatural themes of the game will not be limited to established fans of Mikami, and the animation and character shine through. It’s long enough to keep you playing for an evening, but never overstays its welcome and features very simple four digit password. It just does so much right.
It’s a well rounded game and a lot of fun, and that’s the kind of thing that holds up and transcends fandom. If you like action games on the SNES, you stand a good chance of liking Ghost Sweeper Mikami: Joreishi wa Nice Body on SFC.
But to be clear, if you’re a fan of the anime or manga it will be a sweeter experience. Because the significance of some of these ghosts will be lost if you don’t have the background, cameos will be meaningless, and the conclusion of collecting these seven stones won’t carry the same weight. If you’ve played the game, I urge you to explore the rest of the property. If you’re a fan and you haven’t played the game, I urge you to give it a spin.
I haven’t played it, but it does seem like it’s at least a competent game. That was the nice things about licensed games back then–they were more often good or even great as opposed to now.
There were always some stinkers, especially with western Movie based games. But there were also some brilliant games. Disney NES games were largely solid, Samurai Pizza Cats on famicom is great… it wasn’t as cut and dry as it usually was going forward for sure.