Onimusha: From Inabayama Castle to Kyoto and Paris

Onimusha: Warlords opens at the Battle of Okehazama, where Samanosuke Akechi watches the fight and is attacked by Imagawa Yoshimoto's men. In the game Nobunaga Oda wins, but is badly wounded and assumed dead. The real battlefield lies at Toyoake in Aichi, and it is a National Historic Site. Historians say the exact course of the fight is embellished by legend, so the pin marks the memorial park, not a single scene.

場所の精度: The game shows the battle only as a prologue; the pin marks the Okehazama memorial site in Toyoake.

訪問のヒント: The battlefield is now a park in Toyoake City.

A year later Samanosuke answers a letter from his cousin Princess Yuki and rides to Inabayama Castle, arriving too late: Yuki is abducted by demons. The castle is real. Today it is called Gifu Castle, on Mount Kinka. In 1567 Nobunaga took it after his retainer Kinoshita Tōkichirō led a small party up the steep cliffs. The game's ending shows Samanosuke viewing Inabayama Castle from afar. Visitors can walk up or ride the Mt. Kinka Ropeway, then visit the museum inside the reconstructed keep.

訪問のヒント: Take the Mt. Kinka Ropeway from Gifu Park, or hike up (about one hour); the keep holds a three-floor museum.

In Onimusha 3: Demon Siege, Samanosuke fights his way to Honnō-ji Temple in Japan, 1582, to finally put an end to Nobunaga Oda. He is beaten and pulled through a portal. Later Jacques Blanc reaches Honnō-ji and defeats Nobunaga. History gives the temple a very different 1582: the Honnō-ji Incident was the attempted assassination of Nobunaga in Kyoto.

場所の精度: The pin marks the Honnō-ji temple area in Kyoto; the game's temple is a fictional set piece.

The same game jumps to Paris in 2004. Samanosuke awakens there and helps Jacques Blanc fight the Genma army that has begun its invasion near the Arc de Triomphe. He meets Jacques' girlfriend Michelle near the Arc and fights toward the roof. The monument stands at the western end of the Champs-Élysées, in the middle of Place Charles de Gaulle.

The Genma scientist Guildenstern has brought soldiers into the future through a time warp. By establishing a base in Mont-Saint-Michel, he has built a new time warp generator to bring a larger army through time. The real Mont-Saint-Michel is a tidal island in Normandy, about a kilometre off the coast. It was reachable at low tide for the many pilgrims to its abbey.