Summary
Journey to the West is one of the great epics of Chinese history. Written sometime in the 16th century, the novel is a dramatisation of the accounts of Xuanzang, a Buddhist monk who travelled from China to India. Needless to say, Journey to the West takes some liberties in its adaptation.
While everyone knows about the loveable and deeply mischievous Sun Wukong, less is known about the rest of the novel. It’s at times a comedic work, and other times deeply spiritual. There are many facets to it, plenty of which have lent themselves to games. Here are some games based on the novel that aren’t exclusively about Sun Wukong.
8Journey To The West
Yeah, it’s pretty hard to deny the inspirations behind this one. Journey to the West is a free-to-play mobile game, that has more recentlyalso launched on Steam, if that’s your preferred platform for this kind of game.
It’s a deck-builder featuring many of the characters from Journey to the West and has a genuinely enticing art style. Of course, it also includes some microtransactions mainly focused around its playable characters, though you’re able to at least still get some good fun out of it without spending.
Journey to the West is an old novel, and its inspirations are innumerable across the entirety of Asia, though its prevalence in the West is a more recent phenomenon and a lot of that attention was generated by one game -Black Myth: Wukong.
Having a massive game coming out from the country that wrote the original novel is a great thing, though their own creative liberties paint Sun Wukong as a decidedly more stoic character than he is in the novel. At least you get to meet many of the other characters from the novel as well.
6The Monkey King: The Legend Begins
Back in 1988, the video game Cloud Master was released for the Famicom and a handful of other gaming consoles for the time. It was a successful game pulling some very specific segments from Journey to the West, though it took some strong liberties of its own. It was, however,exclusive to Japan.
In 2008, a remake titled The Monkey King: The Legend Begins was released for the Wii. It was very much the base game at its foundations though featured an updated art style and a Western release, allowing even more people to witness its side-scrolling take on Journey to the West.
5Ether Saga Odyssey
Ether Saga Odyssey, also known as Ether Saga Online, was a free-to-play MMORPG that pulled heavily from Journey to the West from its aesthetics and themes. Though it didn’t feature the same story or characters, it had clear influences all the same.
You could play as a variety of different races in the game and could even have some pets to join you on your own journey. The game was unfortunately shut down by its original developer in 2016, though it still lives on in various fanmade forms.
4Saiyuki: Journey West
While Journey to the West may be a Chinese novel, it has been a massive influence on works across the entire length of Asia. One such country that has made many adaptations, be they faithful or loose, is Japan. Saiyuki: Journey West for the PS1 is just such a game.
Launched in 1999, Saiyuki takes plenty ofgameplay inspirations from the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics, though weaves a story that is undeniably Journey to the West. Featuring characters and style taken directly from the novel, it weaves a story that is only roughly similar to the original novel.
3Lunar: Eternal Blue
Lunar: Eternal Blue serves as a sequel to Lunar: The Silver Star, both games released for the Sega CD. At the time of Lunar: Eternal Blue, the game employed advanced tech in the CD format and various other aspects that boosted its retail price dramatically. So where’s the Journey to the West inspiration here?
It’s a very specific aspect of this game. The core themes of Lunar: Eternal Blue are about battling against an arrogant, oppressive god. The writer of the game, Kei, Shigema, stated that this idea came specifically from a scene in Journey to the West where Sun Wukong must break free from the hands of the Buddha.
2Dragon ball
Plenty of people know the name Sun Wukong, and while fewer know his origins in Journey to the West, it’s not exactly hidden information. What’s lesser known is that to the general awareness of the story in Asia, plenty of cultures have their own pronunciations for many of its characters. Such as a name you may well have heard of - Goku.
While in the West, Goku is a name associated with Dragon Ball, the name is literally the Japanese translation for Sun Wukong. With that awareness, it becomes exceedingly obvious everything that Dragon Ball has pulled from Journey to the West. It is ironic for the inspiration to have larger cultural awareness internationally than the novel that inspired it.
This game stands out amongst the many works inspired by Journey to the West in a few ways, but here’s the most notable - it’s the only one made by a Western Studio. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West doesn’t shy away from its inspirations in its title, though it definitely takes some creative liberties in its own rendition of the work.
Set in, um, America 150 years in the future from our own time, Enslaved Odyssey has you take on the role of Monkey as you protect Trip on your own journey to the pyramid in the West. There’s little in the way of comedy or magic on display here, yet you can’t deny, despite deviations, that it is indeed inspired by Journey to the West.
Monkey is also played by Andy Serkis, for some reason his favourite type of role to play.
