7 Blades

7 Blades is based on the 1990 film Zipang, directed by Japanese filmmaker Kaizo Hayashi. The game takes place in mid-17th century Japan, during which the Tokugawa shogunate was gaining power. The game is set on the man-made island Dejima, which the Japanese government is using to house Western foreigners and where a Christian group is trying to separate from the rest of the country. The main character is Gokurakumaru, a violent mercenary and poor womanizer.

He travels with his gun-wielding love interest (Oyuri) and sidekick (Togizo). The latter provides comic relief and holds the swords as Gokurakumaru collects them one by one.

7 Blades was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Japan East in association with Paradise Pictures. The game was in development for over two years with a staff of around 20 people. Konami was assisted by Hayashi, who served as the game's directing supervisor and was given creative control over its storyline, dialogue, and action. Hayashi had not been involved in video games prior to 7 Blades, but began leaning towards production of such a game when visual advances in computer graphics were made in the medium, striving to make it "universally appealing".

Hayashi wanted 7 Blades to cover a wide range of genres, and even with the player killing a large number of enemies, he hoped that it could also be enjoyed as a sophisticated sword-fighting game. Hayashi felt that meshing the story branches of the two playable characters was a feature "only possible in a game". Hayashi chose to create a game rather than a film due to what he perceived as the limitless potential of games.

7 Blades was met with an indifferent critical response from European and Australian publications, currently holding an aggregate score of 64.5% on GameRankings.

The game was re-released under the "Konami the Best" range of budget titles in Japan, as well as its collection of European budget titles.