The Japanese Sword Museum in Tokyo, set along the bank of the Sumida river, enshrines behind glass a collection of remarkable blades spanning hundreds of years of craftsmanship. Books about the longer uchigatana and shorter wakizashi, some of them written by the museum's very donors, celebrate the swordsmiths who hammered them out of steel. But flip through one, and there's a good chance you won't spot the name Muramasa, despite his swords playing a prominent role in some of Japan's most famous battles.

Centuries of mythology building up around the idea that your swords were cursed will tend to do that to a guy.

Vanillaware's Muramasa: Revenant Blades, at least, isn't afraid to lean into the legacy. The 2D action game is so in love with swords it's got 108 of them, and it turns the superstition that Muramasa's swords had to taste blood once unsheathed into a simple but enticing mechanic: Each comes with a unique skill, which can be equipped on another sword only after it's had its fill of bloodshed.

"There's definitely this reputation that the swords of Muramasa are cursed, but what that means is they have power," says director Wataru Nakanishi. "In this game Muramasa is an important character and will create these very powerful swords, but in turn [the protagonists] must collect souls for him, so they have this cooperative relationship based around this dark situation."

In a way Revenant Blades is lifting a curse of its own: 17 years after the game was first released on the Nintendo Wii as Muramasa: The Demon Blade, it's somehow the first release from Vanillaware to make it to PC.

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