I wrote this 'cause I was bored. Alright? Is THAT a good enough reason for ya?!? ;]
The rumour is... Zankurou is Shizumaru's father, gone insane from training too hard... a perfect alibi for the reason he spared his apparent son's life during the devastation...
Ohga is pretty much human looking, with some funky looking armor (like everyone else in the game). He's the worst boss since Felden and Saisyu. He's got everything in an SNK boss and he cheeses like crazy. He's got an uppercut that juggles you for a maximum of 6 times, a massive fireball, and he can teleport anywhere on screen. By the way, if you hit the fireball, it just splits into 5 or 6 smaller fireballs.
"When five years shall have passed five times, all the dead trees shall bloom; crimson clouds shall shine brightly in the western sky, and a boy of divine power shall make his appearance."This prophecy began only 20 years (instead of 25) before Shiro's appearance, but the clouds did in fact turn sort of pinkish (a weather anomaly due to drought, I think) and that was enough for the peasants. However, once the peasants started kicking some butt, the Shimbara daimyo called for help, but the Tokugawa shogunate wasn't told about the economic aspect, only that there were a bunch of religious fanatics rampaging through the region and seizing all the food, which of course really scared the hell out of the government. Here's an actual circular (which in fact was put out by the rebellion leadership) they were given as an example:
"An angel was sent as messenger and the instructions he transmitted must therefore be passed on to all the villagers. The sixty-six provinces of Japan will all be Kirishitan (Christian), of that there is no doubt. Anyone who does doubt, the Lord Deus with His own feet will kick him down into inferno; make sure this point is understood. And the august personage named Lord Shiro who has these days appeared in Oyano of Amakusa is an angel of Heaven." - dated 1637.Anyway, the shogunate sent in an army of samurai which numbered as high as 100,000 at one point to put down the rebellion, and eventually forced the 37,000 peasant, 200 of which were ronin (Amakusa was the son of a Konishi ronin) and half of which were women and children, into a last stand at Hara Castle, where they were also bombarded by Dutch artillery from the sea. Amakusa-led forces killed as many as 20,000 of the troops with minimal casualties on their side, and even managed to kill the general in a desperate counter-attack attempt. The new general simply starved them out, however, and when the Samurai finally broke through, every man, woman, and child was slaughtered, Amakusa supposedly finally going down protecting the inner sanctum, where the women and children were hiding, although others say his body was never found. The only survivor was a painter whom the rebels had imprisoned for communicating with the enemy. If you go to that region nowadays there's a small-time tourist trap there, where you can buy Amakusa figurines and large fantasy portraits of him summoning doves (rumored to be a sleight-of-hand trick he picked up from Portugese missionaires and perhaps the origin of his sorcerer reputation). The only real portrait of him (done by the double-crossing painter, no less), has him in full samurai armor, and not the mystic robes in the game.
Anyway, in SS, Amakusa worked for some evil force, dubbed "The Dark Guy"...whoever that was. We never did find out. But dressed in flashy robes, and armed with a magical weapon, Amakusa was quite the boss to contend with. Especially after players discovered a laughable bug in the game that gave all players a perfect instant win on the first or second (of 3) rounds. I give him the vote as best exit (after being defeated), I liked the little animation that he goes through, turning white, and folding into a line, like the 2-dimensional sprite that he is (so there!).
$Id: neo_boss_faq.html 1.4 1996/01/23 00:41:53 thb Exp thb $