1989 · Game Boy · Game story
Selection: Erabareshi Mono (1989): The Prince Who Had to Knock First
A marked prince, a broken kingdom and a sword named Wish make a fine fantasy premise. The unusual pleasure of KEMCO’s Game Boy RPG is that progress also depends on humbler acts: look closely, open carefully, and sometimes knock.
In this story
A mark that becomes a route
Selection: Erabareshi Mono begins with an image that does not need a map to feel consequential: Prince Hein carries the proof of being chosen on his arm, a birthmark shaped like a sword. Nintendo’s Japanese description says that the mark sends him out to seek Wish, the sword of hope said to break darkness, after the king has fallen under its influence. It is a classic fairytale engine—one child, one impossible inheritance, one country waiting to be reclaimed—but the Game Boy format gives it a private scale. Hein is not a distant legend on a painted cover. He is the person through whom every suspicious room, monster and closed object must be read. 1 3
Nintendo dates this Japanese Game Boy original to 28 December 1989 and identifies KEMCO as its maker. The contemporary material calls it a role-playing game, not a general fantasy adventure, and the official electronic manual gives the setting a name: Ricker. In the manual’s opening tale, a prophecy says that the bearer of the sign on the left hand is chosen by the sword. That language matters. The game’s own framing puts the physical mark, the sword and the kingdom’s danger in the same line of sight, rather than asking later releases or fan summaries to fill the scene with extra lore. 1 2 3
Trivia The prophecy is especially neat because the sign is described as a sword before the hero has obtained the sword that matters. Hein begins with a symbol, not a solution. It is a wonderfully economical piece of 1989 RPG storytelling: the left arm carries an answer in miniature, while the player still has to earn the full-sized version. That is not just decorative backstory. The official description explicitly calls the mark the proof of the chosen one, and the manual makes it the visual key to why Hein is able to take up the journey at all. 1 2
See it in action
A king, a door, and a very bad decision
The manual does not start with Hein wielding a sword. It starts below the castle. King Hennessy, described as a lover of peace, finds an old door concealed deep underground. The warning on it says that what was sealed there must not be touched until a hero arrives. Naturally, he enters. A painted dragon, a sword lodged in its chest and a red light follow; when the king reaches for the sword, the weapon shatters, the seal breaks, and the king’s mind falls into darkness. It is theatrical, but the sequence has a useful sting: the calamity is not simply inherited. It begins with curiosity without care. 2
That opening makes Hein’s own curiosity feel different. His task is to investigate, but not to repeat the king’s heedless reaching. The current Nintendo description says he advances by defeating the monsters in his way with sword and magic, yet it makes equal room for inspecting people and surroundings. The game therefore presents two kinds of contact with the unknown. One breaks a forbidden seal because it cannot wait. The other asks the player to look, open or knock, then live with the answer. It is a small but charming moral shape for a compact RPG: attention is heroic when it includes restraint. 1 2
Trivia The old knight who saves the child is more than a convenient escape hatch. The manual says Hein is rescued after the queen dies protecting him, then raised for fifteen years by that veteran. Only then does the knight give Hein a sword and explain the secret of his birth. The story’s chosen prince is therefore not raised in a glittering court waiting for applause. He is prepared elsewhere, by someone who knows what the palace became. It gives the game’s modest opening a grounded, almost fireside sense of time passing before the real adventure begins. 2
Three verbs make a curious prince
The game’s most memorable feature is not hidden behind a complicated subsystem. Nintendo names three essential commands. みる, or look, is used to observe people and the nearby world for information. あける, or open, handles treasure chests and the important tools they may contain. たたく, or knock, is the mischievous one: the current Japanese description warns that choosing it carelessly can get Hein scolded, though it can also lead to something unexpected. The manual confirms the practical menu meanings—look at something close, open something close, knock on something close. The player is invited to choose a verb, not merely press an all-purpose interaction key. 1 2 3
Those verbs make the world feel conversational. Looking at a person begins a conversation, the manual explains; opening proposes that an object is ready to yield; knocking asks whether the nearby thing has a response. None of this requires the article to pretend every wall hides a secret. The official sources do not say that, and neither should we. What they do establish is more interesting: the adventure gives different grammatical moods to different kinds of attention. Hein is a prince with a destiny, but the player keeps him moving by behaving like a polite, curious, occasionally impudent visitor. 2 1
Trivia “Knock” is a surprisingly comic word to find beside sword and magic in a fantasy RPG. Nintendo’s own warning that it can earn a reprimand is the joke’s whole charm. The game turns an everyday social gesture into a risky adventure command: perhaps use it; perhaps do not use it indiscriminately; perhaps the nearby world has opinions. That light touch is valuable because it keeps the premise from becoming too solemn. A cursed king and a prophetic scar can coexist with the possibility that the prince is being told off for bad manners. 1 3
When the answer is a battle
Selection does not make every question peaceful. When a monster attacks, play changes to a battle screen. The documented choices are fight with a weapon, use magic, use an item, choose auto battle or attempt to flee; fleeing can fail. A victory or escape returns Hein to the main screen. HP falls from enemy attacks and magical effects, and reaching zero produces game over. Experience from defeated monsters raises level, while MP is consumed by magic. These are simple, recognizable RPG rules, but the manual places them right next to the inspection vocabulary rather than allowing combat to erase it. 2
That placement is the game’s rhythm. A route can be an invitation to investigate and also a risk. A chest may be a reason to open; a direction may hold a monster; an item may help after the encounter. Hein’s role is not reduced to a fighter, even though Nintendo correctly says he defeats enemies with sword and magic. He is a traveller whose decisions alternate between reading the immediate world and surviving what it sends back. For a handheld RPG, that steady alternation has a comforting clarity. Curiosity supplies the texture; battle supplies the punctuation. 1 2
Trivia The manual’s monster list has an unexpectedly domestic menace in the middle of its dragons, vampires, cyclopes and skeletons: three varieties of mimic. There is a mimic, a metal mimic and a devil mimic. A game that already teaches players to inspect and open objects is quietly telling them that object-shaped trouble comes in grades. That list alone makes opening things feel a little more dramatic than a menu label suggests. 2
Magic with a home address
The manual says Hein gains different spells as his level rises. Some attack with fireballs, whirlwinds or lightning; some target one monster, while others strike all enemies. Several of the area spells can damage Hein as well, a small warning against treating power as automatically safe. Telepot is different: it moves him to the old man’s room or the prayer master’s room. The latter is not abstract lore. By looking at the prayer master, Hein can pay gold to restore HP and MP; by looking at the crystal ball there, he can check the oracle words used for continuation. 2
There is a pleasing consistency in that arrangement. Magic is not only spectacle for the battle screen. At least one spell links the wilderness to familiar rooms, and those rooms support both recovery and the password ritual. The fantasy world is therefore built from anchors as much as threats: a house, a prayer master, a crystal ball, a remembered route back. This does not make Selection unusually large; the sources do not claim that. It makes its journey legible. Even after the king’s darkness turns the kingdom frightening, Hein has places in its geography where the player can regain bearings. 2
Trivia The original Game Boy version also has a very clear recovery point after defeat. When HP reaches zero, the manual says the game restarts at the old man’s house. That detail gives failure a narrative address. It is not merely a punishment screen; it is a return to the person and place connected to Hein’s upbringing. The later Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console manual adds service-specific suspend and whole-backup features, but those belong to the rerelease. The 1989 game’s documented safety net is the old man’s house and its password continuation structure. 2 6
Keep the first journey first
This page is about the Japanese 1989 Game Boy cartridge named セレクション 選ばれし者. That boundary is worth stating because an official Nintendo UK page exists for The Sword of Hope II, a later English-language product with Prince Theo, a separate demon name and a three-character party description. Those details belong to that sequel’s regional release, not to Hein’s first Japanese adventure. Similarly, Nintendo’s 2025 announcement places this target game among four Game Boy additions, while noting that the service name changed to Nintendo Classics in June. Availability history is useful context, not permission to blend games together. 5 3 1
Keeping the editions apart lets the original be more interesting on its own terms. It does not need borrowed companions, overseas character names or later plot conflicts to earn attention. Its identity is already unusually clear in the official text: a left-arm mark, a king lost to darkness, Wish, a sword and magic, and three verbs that make every nearby thing a possible question. The modern Nintendo Classics listing is a new doorway to the game, but the voice on the other side remains recognizably 1989—compact, direct and a little odd in exactly the right place. 1 2 4
Trivia Nintendo’s May 2025 article says that its game description is based on the words printed on the back of the original package. That explains the wonderfully concentrated tone of the current summary: it has to sell a kingdom in danger, a chosen prince, a hope-bearing sword, monsters, magic and a risky knock in a few lines. Rather than treating that brevity as a gap to be filled with guesswork, it is better to enjoy it as period copy. The back of a Game Boy box had very little room, and Selection uses its room to make “knock” sound like a promise. 3
A few more screens
1 official imagesSources & image credits
Facts were checked against the links below. Official media remains the property of Nintendo and the relevant rights holders.
- セレクション 選ばれし者 — Nintendo Classics Nintendo ↗
- セレクション 選ばれし者 — Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console electronic manual Nintendo / KEMCO ↗
- 〖5月23日追加〗ゲームボーイ Nintendo Switch Online追加タイトル Nintendo ↗
- Nintendo Classics タイトル一覧 Nintendo ↗
- The Sword of Hope II | Virtual Console (Nintendo 3DS) Nintendo ↗
- How to Load a Virtual Console Game Nintendo Support ↗
- The Sword of Hope (1989) MobyGames ↗
- The Sword of Hope (1991) | Game Boy Game Nintendo Life ↗
