OK I asked my family, with no luck what this game I'm trying to remember is.
It starts where you're listening to the story of why and what you have to do and the background is this dojo looking place (I always skipped it so can't remember fully) I get the feeling it was a japaneese/or otherwords asian type made game, but I could be wrong. But it was optional 2 player game, you could choose to be red or blue clothes, and you started on this board walk with shops. You could go into the shops and buy food or different weapons. I mained a pole arm and this kazoo whistle thing. You couldn't roam around and have free range on your character you could only move up and down the stairs on level 1 to get gold for the shops, and to get to level 2 you had go all the way right. Then it would go to a scene where you were in an ally and you had to go through this ghost world to get to level 3, the 2nd level was easily best in like 2-5 minutes. (I think u MIGHT have had to protect someone throughout this stage) and then level 3 you could only progress the games by going right and you had to jump over a bunch of flying crap and evil plants or something and you had to hit a bell at the top of the level at one point..
All I can rememeber.. u can ask for more info and ill let you know if I remember