A playthrough of Koei's 1989 historical war simulation game for the NES, Nobunaga's Ambition. This video shows two playthroughs. The first is a 17-fief game played as Uesugi. The second, beginning at 2:27:44, is a 50-fief game played as Kakizaki. Koei's first ever strategy game, Nobunaga's Ambition (信長の野望), was a huge hit when it first appeared on Japanese computers in 1983, and it played an prominent role in establishing the military war sim genre. Its 1986 sequel, Nobunaga's Ambition: Zenkokuban (信長の野望 全国版), was the first game in the series to see an international release, and it was the basis for this Famicom/NES conversion. Set in the Sengoku era of Japanese history, Nobunaga's Ambition challenges you to do what even the mighty Nobunaga Oda himself could not: to become shogun and to unite all of Japan under your banner. Japan is split into fifty fiefdoms, each led by a powermongering daimyo, and the game begins by asking you to choose who among them will act as your proxy. The campaign kicks off in the spring of 1560, and you are given total freedom to do as you see fit. You can hire assassins or declare war on your neighbors, but you'll generally want to start by establishing a solid economy in your home territory and growing your forces. The more self-sufficient you become, the better off you'll be when the time comes to expand. The first few years are arguably the most difficult, but when - and if - you survive the opening salvos and claim a few neighboring fiefs as your own, the keel starts to even out. You'll fall into a rhythm as you go about building up your towns, training your troops, scaling up food production, and hiring ninja to spy on (and occasionally sabotage or assassinate) your opponents, and once you've grown strong enough, you take a few more fiefs and repeat the process. The cycle ends only once you've won it all or died trying. Koei's war sims are infamous for the barriers they pose to newcomers. They ask you to juggle a ton of factors at once, their clunky interfaces are dominated by text menus and data tables, and their mechanics become increasingly complex as you make progress. However, if you invest the time to pierce the seemingly impenetrable veil that shrouds any of these games, you'll see how they've earned such loyal fanbases over the years. They're basically the video game equivalent of crack. They won't turn you into a toothless psychotic, but they will leave you hopelessly addicted. Nobunaga's Ambition probably won't sit well with people who demand things like animated graphics and action from their NES games, but if you like to think, you couldn't ask for a better game. Or a better gateway drug. (And after a careful read of the manual and a few false starts, things will begin to make sense, I promise. It's not nearly as complicated as it first seems.) _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete ( punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
