Pour One Out for Nintendo’s Most Underrated and Forgotten Series
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a reboot
Everyone knows that we live in the glorious age of remakes, revamps, and sequels. Everything from your young childhood favorites to the classics and beyond of every medium in entertainment is getting the good ol’ reboot treatment, for better or for worse. Sometimes the property in question is reimagined and turns out great. Sometimes the property in question is remade and turns out horrible, or it gets a less-than-amazing sequel. Hollywood studios and game developers press ever onward though, determined to find the next big hit, even if they have to raise the dead to do it. Unfortunately, some of the best things from the past inevitably fall between the cracks, and are forgotten.
One of these things is a franchise that is little known to Westerners, and could even be considered obscure by Japanese standards: a franchise called ‘Ganbare Goemon’, featuring the title character, Goemon, and his gang of misfit friends. It is totally forgivable if you’ve never heard of it. The manga has sadly never been translated to English, and the anime that was produced only lasted for one season. Fortunately, that one season was also dubbed in English, and is available for purchase online.
What you might not know is that the Ganbare Goemon series is known by a different name in the West. The first game in the series to be released in Europe and North America was released as Legend of the Mystical Ninja, for the Super Nintendo, in 1991. This earlier title is available for purchase on Nintendo’s Virtual Console, if you’re interested, and it is one that older gamers may actually remember. Here’s the kicker though: the franchise, according to Wikipedia, has released a total of twenty three games since 1986, and only five of them have been released outside of Japan! In Japan there have been Goemon games released on many gaming platforms since its beginning, mobile phones notwithstanding. Why then has the franchise seen such little reception outside Japan, especially considering anime and Japanese culture is just as popular outside Japan as it is inside it?
The one game I want to bring your attention to is a gem for the Nintendo 64, the console that has become Nintendo’s time-tested legendary game system of yore. In the midst of many games that would go on to become veritable icons of gaming in general, the Ganbare Goemon series put out my favorite N64 game ever, and it’s hardly spoken of anymore. This game was called Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon, and it was an open-world style game that took place in a fictionalized version of Japan. Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon was released in 1997, which for reference is a whole year before Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (which to be fair, is arguably the best game ever made). In Starring Goemon, players take control of Goemon, a character based on Ishikawa Goemon, from Japanese folklore, and his three oddball friends in a plot that takes them across a unique vision of Japan. His friends are an overweight bumbling ninja, Ebisumaru, a robotic ninja, Sasuke, and a level-headed female ninja who works for a secret organization of peacekeepers, Yae. Oh, and there’s a giant robot named Impact who doubles as a disco dancing movie star. In true Japanese fashion, the plot of the game involves aliens, giant robots, monsters, magic, and some super cool Japanese pop-rock music. The whole affair is steeped in Japanese legends and culture actually, taking cues from stories and characters from long-standing folklore. It had a memorable soundtrack, varied and interesting gameplay, fun mini-games, diverse locations, lots of jokes, some early gaming era voice acting, and it was all wrapped up into a neat package on the N64.
Starring Goemon is a lighthearted and humorous love letter to Japanese culture, and it excels as a 3D platformer. Sure, it doesn’t have the same bells, whistles, and production values as a Zelda game, and its scope isn’t nearly as broad, but the game is so well made you’ll hardly care when you play it. So, if this game was so great, whatever happened to the rest of the series? Why did it fall by the wayside? Many more games were released in the series on various platforms, mostly handheld, with the exception of one N64 sequel that was even more obscure than this one called Goemon’s Great Adventure, a game that immediately drew back from the new open-world structure and returned to the series’ original side-scrolling structure. Needless to say, Goemon’s Great Adventure is even less remembered than its predecessor. None of the series’ subsequent releases were seen outside of Japan, even though Starring Goemon was well-received in the US and otherwise. It’s a complete mystery why Nintendo has let this game slip into the nether. I understand that the Ganbare Goemon name isn’t a househould one, but it had one really great game! It’s a cult classic!
Why have I written this editorial?
Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon has been basically lost to the annals of time, doomed to exist in the form of shoddy ROM copies on the internet. It has not been released on Nintendo’s Virtual Console, a service that allows you to buy and play legal copies of old Nintendo games. People are asking about it too, I see posts about it from time to time. This is what I’m asking of you, dear reader: if you’re a gamer, if you value history and gaming history, if you love preserving classics of the gaming hobby for future generations to enjoy, please, please, please, make your voice heard and let Nintendo know that we have not forgotten about Goemon. I do not know how or if the nuances of copyright law factor into this, especially since Konami was its developer, but I am not content to replay this game in imperfect glitchy ROM form for the foreseeable future. I would gladly buy a copy of Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon, should it be released.
Ganbare Goemon has not seen any major releases for several years now. It’s basically dead. Until Nintendo realizes they’ve forgotten about Goemon, pour one out for their most forgotten and underrated series, it deserves a little respect, if only a little. Help it pass on, so it won’t haunt the world of the living any longer.
This article was written by Super Jump contributor, Chris Anderson. Please check out his work and follow him on Medium.
