Dynasty Wars ARCADE

Dynasty Wars is Capcom’s 1989 arcade hack-and-slash, released in Japan as Tenchi wo Kurau, adapting Hiroshi Motomiya’s manga of the same name, itself based on the classical Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Players take the role of sworn brothers Liu Bei, Guan Yu, or Zhang Fei (or the cavalry officer Zhao Yun), fighting on horseback through the Yellow Turban Rebellion toward a confrontation with the tyrannical Dong Zhuo.

Riding a horse throughout gives combat a distinct rhythm from Capcom’s other beat-’em-ups of the era, letting players trample smaller enemies while swinging weapons at larger threats. Produced by Yoshiki Okamoto, it later got a spiritual successor in Warriors of Fate (1992), which reused the horseback-combat format with a new story and cast.