The king never levels up. You do — one egg at a time, until you can guess what is inside before it opens.
Played badly, it looks like luck: an egg goes out, something hatches, the clock never stops, and you find out too late that the thing you spent was not the thing you needed. Play it for a while and the odds start to feel like a table you carry in your head. You know roughly what a given egg tends to give you. You know which trump card is worth holding through one more bad minute. Nothing on screen has grown — no experience bar, no stat, no king. The only thing that leveled up is the person holding the controller.
— inspired by Nobuo Uematsu
The king cannot fight. All he can do is throw an egg, and whatever comes out of it walks off across the map while the clock keeps running. It either holds the road to your castle or it does not. That gamble, over and over, is the first hour, and it had my heart going.
The hour after it is quieter and much better. You begin to feel which egg tends to give you what. You learn to hold a trump card through one more bad minute because it will be worth more later than it is worth now. Lord Almamoon is exactly as useless at the end as he was at the start. Nothing on the screen levels up. The player does. That is the part of this game I have always liked.
Square put it out on December 2, 1988 — fifteen days before Final Fantasy II. The company was in the middle of building its reputation for seriousness: destiny, a world at stake, orchestral ambition on hardware with no orchestra. Then it walked in with a comedy about a king who is bad at his job and sat down on all of it.
The credits are a strange thing to read now. Kazuhiko Aoki led the design. The graphics were by Takashi Tokita, who had joined Square in 1985 and would go on to direct Chrono Trigger. A joke about a useless monarch, built by the people the company would lean on for the next ten years.
And the joke had to come through the same narrow pipe as everything else — a handful of electronic voices and a screen of coarse dots, the same equipment that carried Final Fantasy II fifteen days later. Nobuo Uematsu has described how he worked then: play a line on a piano, then enter it by hand, an eighth note here, a C8 there, until the machine would sing it back. His name is on both scores. The soundtrack release for Hanjuku Hero VS 3D carried seventeen of these 1988 tracks, filed by then as some of the earliest work he ever did.
Nothing in this game ever gets stronger. You do. Some things are like that — they never improve for you, and you walk away improved anyway.
About this game
You are a king who cannot fight. What you can do is throw an egg. Something hatches, walks off across a map where the clock is still running, and either it holds the road to your castle or it does not. The first hour of Hanjuku Hero is that gamble, repeated. The hour after it is quieter and much better: the same creatures keep coming back, you start to feel which egg tends to give you what, and you learn to keep a trump card in hand until the moment it is worth more than it is worth now. Lord Almamoon is exactly as mediocre at the end as he was at the start — the growing happens on your side of the screen. Square released it on December 2, 1988, fifteen days before Final Fantasy II, and it is the lightest thing the company shipped while it was busy building its own seriousness.
Gallery
The Story Behind
By the end of 1988 Square had a reputation to protect. Final Fantasy had made it a serious house — destiny, world-ending stakes, orchestral ambition on hardware that had no orchestra — and the company was building its future on that. Hanjuku Hero walks in and sits down on it. The heroic quest, the chosen one, the fate of the kingdom: all of it is set up here so that it can sag. And the joke had to fit through the same narrow pipe as everything else. If something is funny in this game, it had to arrive through a handful of electronic voices and a screen of coarse dots — the same equipment that would carry Final Fantasy II fifteen days later. By Uematsu's own description, he would play a line on a piano first and then type it in — not a performance captured as he played it, but values entered by hand, an eighth note here, a C8 there, until the computer would sing it back. There were three electronic tones to put them in. No detail that specific survives about the songs in Hanjuku Hero. They were entered, note by note, in the same building and the same year as the ones for Final Fantasy II.
Tricks & Tales
The credits are a strange thing to read now. Kazuhiko Aoki led the design. The graphics were handled by Takashi Tokita, who had joined Square in 1985 and would later direct Chrono Trigger. A comedy about a useless king was built by people the company would lean on for the next decade, and the music has outlived the joke. A Super Famicom sequel followed in 1992, Hanjuku Hero: Aa, Sekai yo Hanjuku Nare. The series came back on Nintendo DS in 2005 as the touch-controlled Egg Monster Hero. The soundtrack release for Hanjuku Hero VS 3D carried seventeen of the original 1988 tracks, filed by then as some of the earliest work Uematsu ever did. It is often claimed that Uematsu wrote this score while finishing Final Fantasy II. No such statement from him, or from anyone who worked on either game, appears in any record we can check. What is documented is two release dates fifteen days apart and one composer's name on both.
Collector's Guide
Region & Compatibility
Released exclusively in Japan for the Famicom. Never officially released outside Japan in any form for the original Famicom version. The Super Famicom sequel (1992) also remained Japan-exclusive.
Maintenance Tips
The gold-plated edge connectors on Famicom and NES cartridges pick up skin oils and oxidation over decades — a gentle wipe with a cotton swab dampened in 90% or higher isopropyl alcohol, stroking along the length of the pins rather than across them, is the accepted standard. Let the alcohol fully evaporate before reinserting. The old habit of blowing into a cartridge is folklore: the moisture in breath causes slow corrosion of the contacts over time, and any improvement you felt came from the act of re-seating the cart, not from the breath itself. Nintendo eventually updated its own troubleshooting guidance to say explicitly: do not blow into your Game Paks.
Going deeper
Explore the machine this game ran on, and what to check before you buy or care for one:
What to Watch Out For
Before buying, these are the points worth knowing — from someone who handles original Japanese Hanjuku Hero copies regularly.
Does Hanjuku Hero save via battery backup or password?
Battery backup. The cartridge contains an internal coin-cell battery that retains save data when the power is off. The manual instructs players to press Reset before switching off the power to prevent data corruption — a step worth following on any Famicom battery-save title. Passwords are not used.
The cartridge is from 1988 — is the save battery still working?
Almost certainly not. Famicom cartridges with battery backup use a CR2032 coin-cell (3V lithium, soldered to the PCB). A battery manufactured in 1988 has well exceeded its rated lifespan of 10–20 years. Assume the battery is dead on any untested copy and budget for a CR2032 replacement. A retro game shop or collector can solder a new one — it is a standard repair for Japanese Famicom collectors.
Is there an NES English version I could play instead?
No. Hanjuku Hero was never officially released outside Japan. There is no English NES localization. Modern re-releases are also Japan-only: Virtual Console on Wii (2007), 3DS (2013), and Wii U (2014). The only legitimate way to play the original game is on a Japanese Famicom or Famicom-compatible hardware.
How do I tell if a Hanjuku Hero cartridge is authentic?
Only one physical Famicom release is documented — product code SQF-HJ, published by Square on December 2, 1988. No board revisions or re-presses have been confirmed in collector databases. Verify that the cartridge label reads スクウェア (Square) and that a product code sticker matching SQF-HJ is present. Counterfeit copies are rare for this title, but mislabeled carts occasionally appear in bulk lots.
Before You Buy
Things worth knowing before you buy Hanjuku Hero
A short checklist for buying a used Famicom cartridge wisely — useful with any seller, anywhere.
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Choose a seller who tests it before shipping
A copy that has actually been powered on and checked is a known quantity. An untested one is a gamble you only settle after it arrives.
Look for a seller who states it was function-tested and says what they confirmed. A serious seller can tell you exactly what was checked.
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Make sure it fits your console
This is a Japanese Famicom cartridge with a 60-pin connector; a North American NES uses a 72-pin slot, so it will not fit directly.
Play it on a matching Japanese console or a region-free system, and confirm the listing states the region.
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If this title saves your progress, check the battery
Cartridges that save use a small coin-cell battery that fades over decades — a dead one wipes your save without warning.
Ask the seller whether the save function was tested. Replacing the battery is possible, but doing so erases any existing save.
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Check that the contacts are clean
Dirty edge contacts are the most common cause of startup and sound trouble in cartridges of this age.
Choose a seller who cleans the contacts before shipping. A note that it was tested and cleaned means the basics were handled.
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Confirm it is genuine, not a reproduction
Sought-after titles are targets for reproduction boards with replacement labels.
Ask for a photo of the circuit board and look for factory markings. Favour a shop with a licensed second-hand dealer permit (古物商) — by law its stock has a traceable origin, your simplest guard against fakes.
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Read the seller's reviews and return policy
A 100% positive record across thousands of sales is close to a guarantee — packing, communication and problem-solving all work for everyone. A return policy protects you if something is off.
Read the feedback and confirm a clear return window before you buy.
The last step before buying anywhere is knowing what it's worth.
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Rooms this game lives in
Wander deeper — explore the themed rooms where Hanjuku Hero sits alongside its kin.
Memories from around the world
This is a young museum, and this page is still waiting for its first voices. The memories people send reach Taisei personally, and the ones that move him find a home here over time — always with the writer's blessing. Yours could be the very first for this game.
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Hanjuku Hero — Max Explains