Gegege no Kitaro: Youkai Daigekisen (DS)

Gegege no Kitaro is one of those series I think everyone's aware of through its influence, but it's not widely seen or read by English-speaking audiences. This game was apparently released to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the first Gegege TV anime, though to be honest, there's been a pretty steady stream of Gegege games (Gegegames?) coming out since at least the Famicom. Those games have manifest in a few genres, and in this case, it's a platformer. I think the big draw for the game is the graphics: on the surface level, they're made up of beautifully-drawn pixel art, but what I really loved is what that art depicts. The game is set in a modern Japan that's just a little grimier, a little darker, and a little spookier than real life. It's not the kind of over-the-top grime and dirt seen in a lot of 2010s American horror movies, it's just presenting slightly murkier spaces than the average suburbanite might be comfortable inhabiting, and even within that specific setting,…