Time Crisis, in Feudal Japan.
- "The best arcade workout that doesn't involve dancing like a loon
"
GamesTM Magazine UK, February 2003 Edition
- Soulstealer: A cursed blade possessed by maleovalent darkness.
Despite being forged in the fires of hell, the blade is as cold as ice.
Eventually, the bearer of the sword will transform into a monster and be ruled by the lust of the blade.
Lightbringer: A divine blade possessed by Holy Radiance.
Imbued with the power of Holy Light, it counters the powers of darkness.
And thus begins the battle between the two blades, in Flash of the Blade (also known as MAZAN: Flash of the Blade in it's original release), a 2002 Namco action game made for the arcades, chronicling the adventures of the Player Character Genma Tachibana, a Master Swordsman armed with the Lightbringer, wandering across Feudal Japan while battling the forces of darkness brought forth by the Evil Overlord Gen Busai and his Soulstealer, from zombies to Yōkai to rogue samurai minions.
The game is played from a first-person perspective similar to Light Gun Games, but with it's controller shaped like a sword (much like the Wii Remote) and the player taking out onscreen enemies using slashing movements within time limits ala Time Crisis. The arcade console is notably made based on the Sega Naomi hardware using electromagnetic trackers for accurate motion-sensing to track down the player's movements, making it one of Namco's more advanced hardware and considerably ahead of its time.
See Blade of Honor for a similar game, or Police 911 for a gun-based game running on similar motion-sensor technology.
"I have waited centuries for this moment...":
- Ambushing Enemy: The fish-headed humanoids who pounces out the river to attack you, hands infested with eyes suddenly crawling on your boat, ghosts which literally tepeorts in front of you from nowhere, among others. Be on full alert and ready to parry at all times!
- Anti-Frustration Features: While the time limit system is lifted from the first Time Crisis, the time limit has been capped at 99 as opposed to 60, due to needing more time to parry enemy attacks with swords. In addition, more enemies drop time extensions.
- Bakeneko and Nekomata: There's a bakeneko serving as a boss, who appears to be humanoid, save for having paws, fox-ears and a tail, and has a Boss Subtitle "Demon Lynx". His real name though happens to be Ashiya Ryunojin.
- Bad with the Bone: Some enemies, like the demonic ninja, will throw skulls at you as projectiles. Which you can parry out the air.
- Belly Mouth: Headless samurai whose faces are located on their bare torsos are a recurring enemy.
- BFS: The Evil Overlord Gen Busai can turn his Soulstealer into this to cut you down if you can't block his attack right.
- Boss Subtitles: Stage Names Demon Lynx (Nekoyasha) and Nefarious Arachnid (Yami-Gumo), whose their real names are Ashiya Ryunojin and Kumo-Onna Yatsude respectively.
- Cool Sword: The plot revolves around two of these, on different sides, called the Lightbringer and Soulstealer. You wield the former and spends the whole game using it to kick ass and destroy enemies.
- Creepy Centipedes: One stage have Ōmukades as enemies, where they appear crawling through the mouth of a living face growing from a wall. They reappear in River Styx, this time crawling out the lava river which they're somehow immune towards.
- Dem Bones: Living skeletons are one of the most frequent enemies spawned by the Soulstraler. No word if they're brought back from the dead or corrupted living folk, though.
- Dual Wielding: So many of your enemies...
- Oni enemies uses two gigantic spiked clubs in tandem.
- Fish-headed monsters have sharpened marlin snouts in place of arms, and will use them to slice you up.
- There are small, masked demonic critters who uses two knives to stab at you repeatedly.
- Finally, the Soulstealer, possessing it's ex-owner's corpse as the Final Boss in name of Gen Busai. Where the Soulstealer turns into a Flaming Sword held by it's ex-owner on one hand and the other holding a hammer.
- Dub Name Change: Regarding weapons, Soulstealer and Lightbringer are called "Kuro-homura" (Black Flame) and "Mazan" (Demon Slayer) respectively.
- Evil Weapon: The Soulstealer, a wholly-sentient cursed sword that brings forth all sorts of monsters and demons across the land. And even the weapon's ex-owner trying to kill himself with the weapon to end it's reign isn't enough to stop it, turning himself into an Evil Overlord in the process! Even its Japanese name "Kuro-homura" goes into Red and Black and Evil All Over territory.
- Expy:
- Genma Tachibana, the main protagonist, is basically Richard Miller if he's given a voice instead.
- The Final Boss, Gen Busai, is basically Wild Dog with sword. He even considers Genma as a fool, similar to how Wild Dog says to VSSE agents.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There:
- You'll see plenty of eyes growing on walls and ceilings, as a result of Soulstealer's evil energy. Which creepily observes you from the background as you fight assorted enemies.
- The hands crawling out the waters in Goblin Cave are coverted in eyes.
- Eye Scream: The game's final cutscene - when the Soulstealer reveals it's true form as a Faceless Eye, after you defeat it's host, you then throw the Lightbringer at it, embedding the sacred weapon into the Soulstealer's pupil. The eye then cracks apart, dissolves into nothingness, and the source of all evil is gone.
- Faceless Eye: After defeating it's host body the first time, the Soulstealer then reveals it's true form - as a gigantic floating eye in a red realm, before animating it's host body for another battle.
- Fire and Brimstone Hell: River Styx, the hell level, where the entire cavern area is coated in flames and you're on a river moving atop a lava stream.
- Fish People: One area where you cross a stream will have large number of fish-headed humanoid creatures pouncing out the water to attack. Whose hands are sharpened, pointed blades appearing to be a marlin's snout.
- Flechette Storm:
- The Demon Lynx can summon a mass of spinning blades at you as a ranged attack. Which you need to slash out the air rapidly to avoid getting hit.
- The game's Final Boss - Soulstealer's true form, wielded by Evil Overlord Gen Busai - can perform several gigantic flying swords to materialize from thin air and send them flying at you.
- Giant Mook:
- The overweight, headless samurai are much larger than regular skeletons, and requires multiple slashes to kill.
- Among the Nefarious Arachnid's spawns, the largest of them are easily the size of carriages, and absorb far more damage than other spider-based enemies.
- River Styx have gigantic fish-monsters twice your size.
- Giant Spider: The Nefarious Arachnid, naturally, have a swarm of these as her brood. You encounter her in a cobweb-covered room full of eggs, and then they hatch and release hordes and hordes of oversized arachnids on you, the largest ones having green human faces growing from their heads.
- Helping Hands: An area with you on a boat have multiple disembodied hands sticking out the water, all of them covered in eyes, making a grab at you.
- Life Meter: Lifting from Ninja Assault, the player is given one; either running out of it or time counter leads to a Continue Countdown.
- Living Clothes: The Soulstealer will animate dresses to attack you, where they float around the area while somehow growing a pair of thin, skeletal arms.
- Living Drawing: You might come across paintings of demons and ghosts, which will come to life the moment you're near. These enemies have an ehtereal, two-dimensional appearance, floating around you to attack.
- Man on Fire: The game's major bosses, the Demon Lynx, Nefarious Arachnid and the Soulstealer's host inexplicably bursts into flames after being slain, with the subsequent cutscenes showing them burning into nothingness.
- Master Swordsman: Genma Tachibana, the Master of the Lightbringer sword, which the player controls to rid the land of evil.
- Mega Neko: The first boss is a Bakeneko who introduces itself by crashing through the roof of a haunted inn, trying to crush you via Giant Foot of Stomping. Which you need to slice up a bit to avoid getting damaged.
- Oni: Hellspawn Cavern have multiple gigantic red-skinned Onis, all of them Dual Wielding spiked clubs as enemies.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: A lot of your enemies are ghosts, which can be harmed by the Lightbringer thanks to it's magical nature. More often than not ghost enemies will teleport from out of nowhere to attempt potshots at you.
- Our Goblins Are Different: The goblin enemies in this game, for instance, looks like andromorphic mole-people with glowing yellow eyes and constantly sporting a Cheshire Cat Grin across their face, 24-7, even as you cut them down.
- Parrying Bullets: Your only method of dealing with ranged attacks, like arrows, flung blades, boulders or projectiles summoned by bosses, is by using the Lightbringer to block them.
- Plant Mooks: The bamboo forest have sentient bamboo people enemies, with wooden faces growing on their barks. They have a habit of blending together with the environment's real bamboo trees before suddenly revealing themselves, and they somehow bleeds red when killed, despite being plants.
- Prepare to Die:
- Said by the Demon Lynx in his introduction cutscene, before the fight.
Demon Lynx: You will get no closer to my master. Prepare to die!- The Soulstealer, possessing it's ex-owner's corpse for a Final Boss battle, delivers something similar.
"You have shown courage to come this far, so I will honor you with a quick death." - Protagonist Title: Downplayed, "Mazan" is the Japanese name for the player character Genma's sword Lightbringer.
- Seppuku: The final stage, Hell, have you finding this as the fate of the Soulstealer's former wielder - a warrior overwhelmed by the blade's evil magic, and decides to ultimately shove the weapon into his torso to end it. But the blade's own dark magic is powerful enough to revive the wielder's corpse back to life, in the name of the Evil Overlord Gen Busai.
- Sequential Boss: The Soulstealer's host body needs to be defeated twice, where after you killed it the first time the evil sword then reveals his true form, teleports you with it to another realm, and revives the host to fight you again. The game ends when you defeat it a second time.
- Spin-Off: Of Ninja Assault lore-wise, though its gameplay is more similar to Time Crisis.
- Sword Fight:
- Most of the skeleton enemies are armed with swords, but they're hardly a match for the Lightbringer's powers as you hack them to bits with ease.
- The Final Boss battle plays out as such, with you swinging the Lightbringer to combat Gen's Soulstealer
- Timed Mission: Similar to the first Time Crisis game, you're on your own wiping the enemies within time limit. Even though you're given Overly Generous Time Limit to parry enemy attacks, running out of time will still result in a Continue Countdown.
- Tsuchigumo and Jorogumo: The Jorōgumo shows up as a boss, under the Boss Subtitle Nefarious Arachnid, firstly appearing as a woman playing a shamisen as you enter an abandoned house full of cobwebs. And then she sheds her disguise by popping out gigantic spider-legs from her back.
- Unstoppable Rage: When you trigger "Berserker" mode, which have you hacking through enemies nonstop like no tomorrow until your meter runs down.
- You Fool!: Gen Busai taunts Genma with one of these during the final battle.
- "I need a vacation..."
