Ganso Saiyuuki Super Monkey Daibouken is known as the “Ultimate kusoge”

destructoid.com:

I first heard of Ganso Saiyuuki Super Monkey Daibouken on Game Centre CX where it was introduced as “kyuukyoku no kusoge” or “ultimate crappy game.” The host, Shinya Arino, tackled it as part of a segment that ran throughout 9 of the 10 episodes of season 3 (2005). The concept of the segment is that he’d try to tackle the game, and every time he’d get stuck or confused, he’d call a viewer to get hints on what to do.

He was eventually able to complete the game, but Super Monkey Daibouken is so incomprehensible that, in one of the episodes, he made absolutely no progress, and none of the viewers could help him.

I decided that I’d try that out for myself. Obviously, no one views me (that I know of), so my goal was to complete the game using the same viewer hints that Arino did. It’s an enlightening experience.

Released by Vap Inc. in 1986, Ganso Saiyuuki Super Monkey Daibouken is a game based on Journey to the West, the classic of Chinese literature. I feel like I know very little about Journey to the West aside from all the ways it’s been bastardized by popular media over the years.

You play as the entourage for a monk who must, as the name implies, journey to the West. That’s more-or-less the best I can give you as a primer because, as I said, the game is incomprehensible. You play as the entire entourage, but the only one who’s with a damn is Goku. It sort of follows Dragon Quest’s example (Dragon Quest having been released earlier that year) by having you navigate across an overworld while it throws random battles at you.

The battles are fun, by which I mean they’re barely functional. You scoot across an endlessly scrolling screen, trying to hit the enemies. All the characters can damage enemies, but only Goku and the