is a video game released by
Konamiis a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
for the
Nintendo 64The , often abbreviated as N64, is Nintendo's third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released on June 23, 1996 in Japan, September 29, 1996 in North America, March 1, 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1, 1997 in France and December 10,...
on August 7, 1997 in
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and April 16, 1998 in North America as the fifth entry in the
Ganbare Goemon, known as Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Mystical Ninja, and Goemon in North America and the PAL region, is a long-running video game series produced by Konami....
series. The second Goemon game released in North America, it follows
Legend of the Mystical NinjaThe Legend of the Mystical Ninja , is a light-hearted action-adventure game for 1-2 players by Konami, and was released for the Super NES in 1992. It was also ported to the Game Boy Advance along with Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shogun Magginesu only in Japan...
and features hybrid elements of
platform gamePlatform game, or platformer, is a video game genre characterized by jumping to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles. It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
s like
Super Mario 64is a platform game, developed by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development and published by Nintendo, for the Nintendo 64. Along with Pilotwings 64, it was one of the launch titles for the console. It was released in Japan on June 23, 1996, and later in North America, Europe, and Australia....
and
action-adventureAn action-adventure game is a video game that combines elements of the adventure game genre with various action game elements. It is perhaps the broadest and most diverse genre in gaming, and can include many games which might better be categorized under narrow genres...
games like the
Legend of Zeldais a high fantasy action-adventure video game series created by game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and developed and published by Nintendo. The gameplay consists of a mixture of action, adventure, puzzle solving, and role-playing. The series centers on Link, the main playable...
series.
The story follows
GoemonGoemon is a Japanese given name which may refer to:* Ishikawa Goemon , a legendary ninja warrior and bandit hero notable for being boiled alive after a failed assassination attempt on Toyotomi Hideyoshi...
's struggles to prevent the Peach Mountain
Shogun is a military rank and historical title for Hereditary Commanders in Chief of the Armed Forces of Japan. The modern rank is equivalent to a Generalissimo...
s gang from turning Japan into a
fine artFine art describes any art form developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than utility. This type of art is often expressed in the production of art objects using visual and performing art forms, including painting, sculpture, music, dance, theatre, architecture, photography and...
s theater. The plot calls for three cinematic musical features and battles between giant robots; like other
Ganbare Goemon games, it's peppered with
surrealist humorSurreal humour is a form of humour, stylistically related to the artistic ambitions of the surrealists, based on bizarre juxtapositions, absurd situations and nonsense...
and
anachronismAn anachronism—from the Greek ανά and χρόνος —is an error in chronology, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other...
s.
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon sold nearly 200,000 copies worldwide. Reviewers praised its graphics, gameplay, and humorous plot. Critics found the soundtrack and tunes memorable and moving, but criticized the
localizationLocalization or localisation may refer to:* Language localization, the process of translating a product into different languages or adapting a language for a specific country or region...
, unintuitive camera control, and dull stretches of travel through Japan.
Goemon's Great Adventure, known as Mystical Ninja 2 Starring Goemon in Europe, is a video game developed and released by Konami for the Nintendo 64 on December 23, 1998. It is the third game in the Ganbare Goemon series released in North America and following Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, released two years earlier...
followed in 1999 and
Goemon Mononoke Sugoroku in 2000.
Gameplay
Players navigate Goemon through forests, fields, dungeons, and other
three-dimensional modelsIn 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical representation of any three-dimensional object via specialized software. The product is called a 3D model. It can be displayed as a two-dimensional image through a process called 3D rendering or used in a computer...
of
medieval JapaneseThe written history of Japan begins with brief information of Twenty-Four Histories, a collection of Chinese historical texts, in the 1st century AD. However, there is evidence that suggests people were living on the islands of Japan since the upper paleolithic period...
places. Goemon and his friends can walk or run, jump, attack, and use special abilities to cross terrain, pick up money, and defeat adversaries. Players control only one of four characters at a time but can cycle through them with the press of a button. Hearts at the bottom of the screen show a character's health. If hit by an enemy and damage is taken, a character loses a heart. Some items and acts replenish strength, and a
Maneki NekoThe is a common Japanese sculpture, often made of porcelain or ceramic, which is believed to bring good luck to the owner. The sculpture depicts a cat beckoning with an upright paw, and is usually displayed—many times at the entrance—in shops, restaurants, pachinko parlors, and other businesses...
adds a heart to the overall health. If all hearts are lost, the player restarts at the entrance to the field map they died in and the player's number of lives declines by one. If the player loses all lives, the game restarts at the last point saved or at the beginning of the game if a Controller Pak is not used.
Traveling through Japan, players visit towns and coffeehouses safe from enemies, where they can eat in restaurants or sleep in inns to refill strength and buy armor or riceballs—a self-acting item that refills health by itself. Many interactive
non-player characterA non-player character, often shortened to NPC, is a character that is controlled by the gamemaster in role-playing games. When this definition extends to video games, an NPC in a video game is usually part of the program, and not controlled by a human....
s populate cities and talk with other characters to uncover
plot deviceA plot device is an object or character in a story whose sole purpose is to advance the plot of the story, or alternatively to overcome some difficulty in the plot....
s or idle
gossipGossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. It forms one of the oldest and most common means of sharing facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and other variations into the information transmitted...
. Players save their progress in towns with a Controller Pak at the inns or at the entrance to some dungeons. Some places are impassable barring the use of special abilities unlocked by completing
minigameA minigame, sometimes called a subgame, is a short video game often contained within another video game. A minigame is always smaller or more simplistic than the game in which it is contained...
s. For example, Ebisumaru must hide in a giant's cupboard to learn self-shrinking magic, an art that allows passing through small holes. The player has two wayfaring tools: a status screen shows found items, weapons, and
player characterA player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
s and a map screen shows where they are in Japan. In dungeons, the map screen shows the building's floorplan if they have the item
Mr. Elly Fant. At the end of each dungeon is a
bossA boss is an enemy-based challenge which is found in video games. A fight with a boss character is commonly referred to as a boss battle...
, a harder than normal enemy with hearts of its own.
Beating a boss can trigger a cut scene, after which Goemon appears outside the dungeon or helms his giant robot friend Impact to thwart an enemy robot (although not mentioned in the manual, these segments of gameplay support the Rumble Pak accessory). These sequences begin with a music video and a high-speed minigame in which Impact must smash structures and avoid hazards while racing across the countryside. The points gained by destroying buildings determine how many health points (measured in oil) Impact will have in the coming battle. Players control Impact from a cockpit behind his eyes where gauges show enemy and player health and ammunition. Impact can punch, kick, defend, reel in opponents with the chain pipe, and use projectile weaponry, including nasal bullets and a laser. Once a boss is beat, a cut scene of the enemy exploding shows, and the game returns to normal exploration-based play. At the very end is the last boss whose defeat unlocks the ending. Collecting all the fortune cats and beating the game enables an Impact tournament mode with a special image of the robots as the prize for winning.
Characters
The
protagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, video game, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy...
of
Mystical Ninja is Goemon, a hot-blooded,
kiseruis an old style Japanese smoking pipe. Kiseru have been used for smoking a very fine, shredded tobacco, as well as Cannabis. It is typically made out of metal on the ends , with a shaft typically made out of bamboo...
-wielding
ninjaA was a covert agent or mercenary of feudal Japan specializing in unorthodox arts of war. The functions of the ninja included espionage, sabotage, infiltration, assassination, as well as open combat in certain situations. The underhanded tactics of the ninja were contrasted with the samurai, who...
with blue, bushy hair. The lord of Oedo asks him to find those who maimed Oedo Castle. Goemon lives in Oedo Town and is friends with Ebisumaru, a strange, gluttonous fat man who wears a blue
bandanaA kerchief is a triangular or square piece of cloth tied around the head or around the neck for protective or decorative purposes...
. Ebisumaru is defined as lazy and perverted. Their
kunaiA is a Japanese tool possibly derived from the masonry trowel. Two variations are the and the . It is a good example of a very basic tool which, in the hands of a martial arts expert, could be used as a multi-functional weapon...
-throwing friend Sasuke is a mechanical ninja (made by the Wise Man of Iga) who enjoys hot baths and Japanese tea. Rounding out the heroes is Yae, a fierce sword-wielding
kunoichiKunoichi is the term for a female ninjaor practitioner of ninpo.-Etymology:The term is thought to derive from the names of characters that resemble the three strokes in the kanji character for woman ; said in the order they are written: ku - no - ichi...
, who happens upon Goemon's band in Zazen Town. The villains of the game hail from the organization
Peach Mountain Shoguns and include a gang of four "weirdos" led by Spring Breeze Dancin' (Danshin Harukaze) and Kitty Lily (Margaret Ranko).
[Goemon: You...you WEIRDO! / Baron: You keep calling me weirdo... / [Girl] I was forced to see the weirdo's dance ever single day...Awake or asleep, it was the weirdo dance, weirdo dance, weirdo dance...It's driving me nuts! .] They intend to transform Japan into a stage for their talents.
Story
While shopping in Oedo Town, Goemon and Ebisumaru feel the ground quake as a peach-shaped flying object sails overhead.
[Ebisumaru: I thought that I could negotiate a discount...with my hypnotic dance. .] The vessel fires a laser at Oedo Castle, turning it into a European-style castle with
spireA spire is a tapering conical or pyramidal structure on the top of a building, particularly a church tower. Etymologically, the word is derived from Anglo-Saxon, so it is related to "spear," rather than the Romance languages and "spirit."...
s and flags. Worried for the safety of the Lord of Oedo and his daughter, Goemon and Ebisumaru retrieve a chain pipe from
Mt. Fujiis the highest mountain in Japan at . Along with Mount Tate and Mount Haku, it is one of Japan's "Three Holy Mountains" . An active volcano that last erupted in 1707–08, Mount Fuji is just west of Tokyo, and can be seen on a clear day...
and assault the castle. Inside is Baron, a member of the fashion-loving Gang of Four who reveals he was sent to turn the castle into a stage.
[Baron: My name is Baron! / Baron: I've come to make Oedo Castle a beautiful stage!. .] Goemon shrugs him off and defeats the King Robot Congo to free the Lord and find a "miracle item". The Lord asks Goemon to catch them and gives a Super Pass for access to the roads of Japan.
Goemon sets out to the Wise Man's house for assistance, but the house explodes as he approaches. A fuming Baron comes forth and mans his
kabukiis the highly stylized classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers....
robot. Goemon finds a
Triton shellTriton is the common name given to a number of very large sea snails, predatory marine gastropods in the genus Charonia.The name "triton" is also often applied as part of the common name, to other, much smaller sea snails of the genus Cymatium, within the same family, Ranellidae.Tritons are named...
in the rubble that can call Impact, who lays ruin to the kabuki robot. In Zazen Town, Goemon finds Yae, who claims the troublemakers responsible are Flake Gang members named the
Peach Mountain Shoguns. Yae joins Goemon, and they learn that children with dancing talent have been kidnapped around the region. In Zazen, Goemon defeats a strong man blocking a bridge leading out of the town. Ashamed, the man offers Goemon the mechanical robot Sasuke, thrown there by the explosion of the Wise Man's house.
[Benkei: Aaaaaaaaaah...to be defeated in the same manner as I was by Ushiwaka...Please, I beg you! Don't tell anyone that I lost, please...I'll let you pass the bridge at will, and I'll give you something from my collection... Goemon: Which is? Ebisumaru: Wow, wow! It's our friend, Sasuke! .] Goemon accepts the unconscious, powerless Sasuke and walks to Kii-Awaji island, where the
dragonDragons are legendary creatures, typically with serpentine or otherwise reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of worldwide cultures.The two most familiar interpretations of dragons are European dragons, derived from various European folk traditions, and the unrelated Oriental dragons, such as...
-powered passenger ferry has been stopped by the dragon's sudden craze. Goemon teleports to the dragon and finds a Gang of Four member named Colon who used the dragon to kidnap children; he then breaks Colon's mind-control device. The dragon turns back to human and crashes near a shrine.
The human calls himself Koryuta, son of the Dragon God, and apologizes for the kidnappings. He pledges help in transporting the heroes across Japan, and claims the kids are at the Dogo Hot Springs.
[Koryuta: I remember going to the Dogo Hot Springs, just west at [Iyo]. .] Goemon travels to Iyo but finds the Hot Springs closed; the only entrance is a mouse hole. He learns from travelers that
sweetsConfectionery is the set of food items that are rich in sugar, any one or type of which is called a confection. Modern usage may include substances rich in artificial sweeteners as well. The word candy or sweets is also used for the extensive variety of candies that comprise confectionery...
in the Zazen Town shrine can make a person smaller. Ebisumaru offers to steal the sweets. With the dwarf power the group infiltrate the Ghost Toys Castle, a dark house of traps, toys, and a giant
pool tableA billiard table or billiards table is a bounded table on which billiards-type games are played...
. Colon faces Goemon with the robot Dharmanyo, but is crushed and lets go his miracle item. The hidden man aboard the peach ship at Oedo comes out calling himself
Spring Breeze Dancin'.
[Goemon: Who are you?! / Mystery man: Aha! / Mystery man: I'm the leader of the Peach Mountain Shoguns! / Mystery man: In the fresh spring breeze, sha, la, la, I come alive! La, la... / Mystery man: These beautiful visions appear before my eyes, la, la... / Mystery man: Yes! / Mystery man: I am... you know I am... the one they call...Spring Breeze Dancin'! Ebisumaru: What an intro... .] He pokes fun at the group with
nicknameA nickname is a descriptive name given in place of or in addition to the official name of a person, place or thing. It can also be the familiar or truncated form of the proper name, which may sometimes be used simply for convenience A nickname (also spelled "nick name") is a descriptive name...
s and instructs Colon to retreat. With the children liberated, Goemon follows Colon to the Chu-goku Region, where he revives Sasuke with two batteries. They enter the Festival Temple, a Peach Mountain base.
They destroy a guard robot, prompting Gang of Four member Sharon to appear with Kitty Lily, the second leader of the Peach Mountain Shoguns. Lily boasts that
Kyūshūor Kyushu is the 3rd-largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternate ancient names include Kyūkoku , Chinzei , and Tsukushi-no-shima...
is a stage and asks Sharon to return to base after buying some
foundationCosmetics are substances used to enhance the appearance or odor of the human body. Cosmetics include skin-care creams, lotions, powders, perfumes, lipsticks, fingernail and toe nail polish, eye and facial makeup, permanent waves, colored contact lenses, hair colors, [hair sprays] and gels,...
.
[Lily: Kyu-shu- has already become our Stage, la, la... / Goemon: What did you say?! / Sharon: Hey, that's great! Does that mean I can return now? / Lily: Sure... / Lily: But before you go, I'm out of foundation... / Lily: Get the usual best for me! Okay? / Sharon: Uh... all right, but you always take forever to pay me back. .] Alarmed, Goemon and friends rush off to the bridge to Kyūshū and find Omitsu on her way to deliver dumplings. Stunned by Omitsu's seeming ruggedness, Goemon forgets to warn her of danger, and the island rises into odd thunder clouds in the sky. A fortune teller instructs the group to set out north to Mount Fear to find a way to Kyūshū. After necessary
weight trainingWeight training is a common type of strength training for developing the strength and size of skeletal muscles. It uses the force of gravity to oppose the force generated by muscle through concentric or eccentric contraction...
to remove obstacles, Goemon finds the northeast Festival Village and learns of a psychic witch. The witch summons Wise Man, who tells Goemon to gather the fourth miracle items at the Stone Circle near Festival Village for passage into
outer spaceOuter space comprises the relatively empty regions of the universe outside the atmospheres of celestial bodies. Outer space is used to distinguish it from airspace and terrestrial locations....
and Kyūshū.
[Wise Man: Retrieve [Miracle Items] from the four Flake Gang leaders of Peach Mountain... / Wise Man: ... and take it to the altar of the Stone Circle in [Ugo], to the west... / Wise Man: Then you'll be able to go to outer space! / Goemon: Awesome... / Goemon: But Wise Man! How do you know?! / Wise Man: Ahem! That's because I'm... / Wise Man: The WISE MAN! (the witch also reveals that it was indeed Sasuke who had accidentally destroyed his home by accidentally dropping a firecracker bomb).] Goemon investigates reports of stolen food in the village while Yae undergoes training to become a mermaid. The two paths converge when Yae finds the Gourmet Submarine, a
Peach Mountain vessel containing hordes of food. After sidestepping grills and swimming through gallons of soup, Goemon confronts Poron, the final weirdo, who jokes that he lost the last miracle item in Zazen Town.
Lily enters by hologram to ridicule the party, but is rudely interrupted by Dancin', who continues to call Goemon "Fernandez". Dancin' instructs Poron to activate the ship's self-destruct sequence. Goemon escapes by calling Impact and defeats a mermaid giant robot. In Zazen Town, a kappa named Kihachi desires to trade the miracle item for
cucumberThe cucumber is a widely cultivated plant in the gourd family Cucurbitaceae, which includes squash, and in the same genus as the muskmelon.- Botany :...
made by the priest's son. The son sits on a precipice inaccessible save through
jumpingJumping or leaping is a form of locomotion or movement in which an organism or non-living mechanical system propels itself through the air along a ballistic trajectory...
training; Sasuke volunteers in the Chu-goku Region and acquires the miracle item. At the Stone Circle, the Pemopemo God awakens and asks the heroes if they have the courage to venture to outer space. Goemon affirms their decision and the group enters Kyūshū through the Gorgeous Music Castle. They discover Sogen Town has been converted to a garden city with European architecture. Goemon locates Omitsu and learns that Dancin' and Lily can be found past a rigid gate—accessible only with the help of Wise Man.
Stunned to find him alive, Goemon learns that in exchange for building the Instant Stage Beam and mechanical robots, the Peach Mountain Shoguns gave Wise Man five car magazines and a muscle car poster.
[Wise Man: Well... in exchange for a muscle car poster and five car magazines... .] Enraged to learn of his home's demise, Wise Man helps Goemon enter the castle. Kitty Lily and Dancin' confront the heroes with the elaborate musical number
Gorgeous My Stage before a self-destruct sequence begins. Goemon summons Impact to fly into outer space, where he thwarts the giant peach ship Balberra and duels Lily and Dancin' in their personal battle robot. Dancin' mocks Goemon in defeat, and Impact sends their robot's head far into outer space to reveal a picture of Dancin' and Lily smiling among the stars. Goemon returns to Japan to find a horde of girls rushing towards him, and awaits their praise for saving Japan. The group is shocked to find the girls angry over the apparently death of their idol, Spring Breeze Dancin'.
Humor
The story of
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, a quest to thwart dancers in a peach-shaped spaceship from using laser weaponry to convert Japan to a giant stage and its citizens to loyal dancers, is steeped in
surrealistSurreal humour is a form of humour, stylistically related to the artistic ambitions of the surrealists, based on bizarre juxtapositions, absurd situations and nonsense...
and Japanese humor. Many reviewers and writers smirked at Konami's plot summary and story details. The plot's sanity is further broken down by the Goemon series' use of anachronistic technology and references, including giant robots, airplanes, and pizza.
[[Old Woman] How can I help you? I've come to order pizza. / [Priest] I hate airplanes and that's why I chose to be transferred at the Tourist Center...That was no transfer! It was heck of a lot more horrifying than airplanes!! .] The game's dialogue is peppered with offbeat humor, and a few instances of sexual innuendo, such as Mokubei's admonition to wield his pipe to impress young girls. The ending credits of the game show Ebisumaru take out his camera, shrink, and then go on his back and crawl to the feet of a female NPC, as to look under her dress. In the Japanese game, Wise Man collected
hentai is a Japanese word that, in the West, is used when referring to sexually explicit or pornographic comics and animation, particularly those of Japanese origin such as anime, manga and computer games . In Japan it can be used to mean "metamorphosis" or "abnormality"...
magazines and pornographic posters rather than automotive publications. A
laugh trackA laugh track, laughter soundtrack, laughter track, LFN , canned laughter or a laughing audience is a separate soundtrack invented by Charles "Charley" Douglass, with the artificial sound of audience laughter, made to be inserted into TV comedy shows and sitcoms...
punctuates certain jokes. A [kuː] sound sometimes concludes
punA pun, or paronomasia, is a form of word play that deliberately exploits ambiguity between similar-sounding words for humorous or rhetorical effect...
s.
[Dancin': By the way, the word scenes... / Dancin': Has nothing to do with my name, cuz my name is not Dan-scene, la, la...! (Oooh...) .] The game often breaks the
fourth wallThe fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. The term also applies to the boundary between any fictional setting and its audience...
by textually parodying certain game conventions—such as an
non-player characterA non-player character, often shortened to NPC, is a character that is controlled by the gamemaster in role-playing games. When this definition extends to video games, an NPC in a video game is usually part of the program, and not controlled by a human....
's tendency to be fixed in one position.
Development and audio
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon was first titled
Ganbare Goemon 5, then
Legend of the Mystical Ninja. The Japanese producers wished to break the series' numerical naming pattern to stress that
Mystical Ninja differed from its forefathers. Originally made with a two-player mode, this feature was scrapped months before the Japanese release. Early development pictures showed Impact battling in a modern city against a
handgunA handgun is a firearm designed to be held and operated by one hand, with the other hand optionally supporting the shooting hand. This characteristic differentiates handguns as a general class of firearms from their larger counterparts: long guns such as rifles and shotguns , mounted weapons such...
-wielding foe. Later images touted the battle against the Wartime Kabuki Robot Kashiwagi taking place over a forest and village. Konami released many
rendersRendering is the process of generating an image from a model, by means of computer programs. The model is a description of three-dimensional objects in a strictly defined language or data structure. It would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information. The image is a...
of Goemon posing and making faces for magazine previews. A 60–70% complete build of the game was featured at E3 in June 1997, suffering from graphical clipping and camera issues. Konami later presented a mostly-finished build at the
Tokyo Game ShowThe , commonly known as TGS, is a video game expo / convention held annually in the Makuhari Messe, in Chiba, Japan. It is presented by the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association and the Nikkei Business Publications, Inc...
in September 1997. Developers aimed to make the game "very visual" with new content, and the game's marketers echoed this by using large, colorful advertisements. Konami targeted children, among whom the series is popular in Japan, by scheduling appearances of a Goemon
mascotThe term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
at some elementary school
gymnasticsGymnastics is a sport involving performance of exercises requiring physical strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, balance and grace. Artistic gymnastics is the best known and most popular of the gymnastics sports governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique...
sessions. The game's later success prompted the production of an animated television show. The series followed Goemon as he struggled against evil after being transported to modern society, where he befriended an elementary school student. Its release in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
was planned for winter 1997, then February 1998, but was ultimately delayed two more months.
Mystical Ninja featured a cartridge size of 128
megabitA megabit is an SI-multiple of the unit of bit for digital information storage or transmission. The International Electrotechnical Commission's standard IEC 60027 specifies the symbol to be Mbit, but Mb is also in common use....
s, designed much larger than most of its peers and predecessor games to allow high quality musical numbers and voice samples.
In total, there are three musical numbers—
Theme of Ganbare Goemon,
I Am Impact, and
Gorgeous My Stage. They feature the talents of
Hironobu Kageyamais a Japanese musical artist prominent in the soundtracks for anime, video game, and tokusatsu productions. He is sometimes called Kami by his fans. Kageyama got his big break at age 16, as lead singer of the pop group Lazy. By the early '80s, the band split and Kageyama went solo...
,
Ichirou Mizuki, born on January 7, 1948, in Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan, is a famous, highly prolific Japanese vocalist, lyrist, composer, voice actor and actor best known for his work on theme songs for anime and tokusatsu. For over 40 years, he has recorded over 1200 songs for Japanese film, television, video and...
, and Toshihiro Tachibana &
Etsuyo OtaEtsuyo Ota is a Japanese mezzo-soprano vocalist who lent work to Mystical Ninja Starring Goemons musical sequence Gorgeous My Stage...
respectively. The song's main soundtrack is composed of a mix of traditional
JapaneseThe modern Japanese music scene includes a wide array of performers in distinct styles both traditional and modern, ranging from rock, electro, punk, folk, metal, reggae, salsa, and tango to country music and hip hop. The word for music in Japanese is 音楽 , combining the kanji 音 with the kanji 楽...
and modern
instrumentsA musical instrument is an object constructed or used for the purpose of making the sounds of music. In principle, anything that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the beginnings of human culture...
integrated in original arrangements. The dungeons feature minimalistic songs which grow in complexity and length as the player proceeds deeper into the lair. The soundtrack on whole is a collaborative effort by four composers.
[COMPOSER Shigeru Araki - Kato Yusuke - Saiko Miki - Yasumasa Kitagawa .] The musical numbers, with forty tunes from the game and one remix of
I Am Impact, were released October 3, 1997 on
CDA Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store sound recordings exclusively, but later it also allowed the preservation of other types of data. Audio CDs have been commercially available since October 1982...
. The soundtrack was later extracted from
Read-only memoryRead-only memory is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. Because data stored in ROM cannot be modified , it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM...
and presented in Nintendo Ultra 64 Sound Format on May 9, 2005; it is one of the most downloaded releases at USF Central.
Reception
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon sold 55,000 units in America and 141,000 units in Japan. American reviewers praised the game's story and setting for its quirky, unique flavor;
Nintendo PowerNintendo Power magazine is a monthly news and strategy magazine formerly published in-house by Nintendo of America, but now run independently. As of issue #240 , Nintendo contracted publishing duties to Future US....
called
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon a "blend of history, fantasy, and science fiction," writing that the game "never failed to enchant or intrigue." Dialogue was considered likably memorable, whether relying on clever puns or
surrealist humorSurreal humour is a form of humour, stylistically related to the artistic ambitions of the surrealists, based on bizarre juxtapositions, absurd situations and nonsense...
. The Japanese songs in
Mystical Ninja's title and Impact sequences, unusual to Western audiences, augmented the bizarre humor. One Japanese reviewer claimed the Impact song cultivated a heroic atmosphere for ensuing battles. Gameplay was similar to that of
Super Mario 64is a platform game, developed by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development and published by Nintendo, for the Nintendo 64. Along with Pilotwings 64, it was one of the launch titles for the console. It was released in Japan on June 23, 1996, and later in North America, Europe, and Australia....
and
The Legend of Zeldais a high fantasy action-adventure video game series created by game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and developed and published by Nintendo. The gameplay consists of a mixture of action, adventure, puzzle solving, and role-playing. The series centers on Link, the main playable...
series, offering responsive play control and ability-driven progression.
Mystical Ninja featured a simple controller setup and easy learning curve to this end. The
minigameA minigame, sometimes called a subgame, is a short video game often contained within another video game. A minigame is always smaller or more simplistic than the game in which it is contained...
s, Impact sequences, and secret tournament mode bolstered
replay valueReplay value or replayability is a term found in combination with video games, but it may be also used to describe other kinds of games, movies, music, or theater plays. In video games, the term replay value to describe the entertainment value of playing a game more than once...
, and reviewers praised the game's graphical finesse in animating characters creating the Japanese countryside in three dimensions. A reviewer for The News Tribune considered the presentation "a terrific upgrade from the Super Nintendo version". However, the game was found to be prone to slow-downs in detail-heavy areas, and one reviewer decried the inability to pause the game during Impact battles. Another found play control "not as fluid as it is in
Super Mario 64".
Critics enjoyed the soundtrack's integration of
popPop music is a music genre that developed from the mid-1950s as a softer alternative to rock 'n' roll and later to rock music. It has a focus on commercial recording, often orientated towards a youth market, usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs...
and
shamisenThe shamisen or samisen , also called sangen is a three-stringed musical instrument played with a plectrum called a bachi...
-laden
traditional Japanese musicThe modern Japanese music scene includes a wide array of performers in distinct styles both traditional and modern, ranging from rock, electro, punk, folk, metal, reggae, salsa, and tango to country music and hip hop. The word for music in Japanese is 音楽 , combining the kanji 音 with the kanji 楽...
. A writer for IGN declared that the songs would "permanently burn themselves into your brain...something that can't be said for most N64 titles"—echoed by Japanese reviewers who noted that the music would not grow tiresome.
Mystical Ninja was also commended for high-quality voice samples and sound effects. Reviewers were divided concerning the efficiency of the camera system — most considered it inferior to
Super Mario 64's, citing instances of clipping issues and resulting "extremely difficult" platform jumping sequences. The game features a few sequences of long travel between towns, regarded as dull and unenjoyable. Reviewers disapproved of the game's short play time, estimating that
Mystical Ninja could be completed in only ten to fifteen hours. The objections came in spite of the developers anticipating the problem and trying to mitigate it by requiring players to return to certain locations.
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon requires a Controller Pak to save—a rarity in early Nintendo 64 titles which garnered negative attention from both American and Japanese critics. One reviewer decried not being able to save his progress inside castles, which become "harder and more complex" with time. Reviewers fluent with past
Ganbare Goemon games argued that the absence of the series' usually intuitive minigames and a two-player mode hampered
Mystical Ninja's
replay valueReplay value or replayability is a term found in combination with video games, but it may be also used to describe other kinds of games, movies, music, or theater plays. In video games, the term replay value to describe the entertainment value of playing a game more than once...
, and a Japanese reviewer felt that the transition to three dimensions had deprived the game of the traditional Goemon feel.
Mystical Ninjas
localizationLocalization or localisation may refer to:* Language localization, the process of translating a product into different languages or adapting a language for a specific country or region...
was criticized often. The plot and poorly-translated jokes tended to confuse players. A critic for
The Tampa TribuneThe Tampa Tribune, published in Tampa, Florida, is one of two major newspapers published in the Tampa Bay area, second in circulation and readership to the St. Petersburg Times. The paper's tagline is "Life...
wrote, "upon popping in the...cartridge and listening to the opening theme song, you'll realize something about this game. It's Japanese." He added, "attempts at humor often come across as rather inane. Early conversations with village residents only add to the confusion." Others countered that the strange localization often compounded the surrealist humor through the use of weird, unusual
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
and grammar. One critic stressed, "talk to everyone you meet... Everybody has something interesting to say."
A writer from
GameSpotGameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which purchased...
remarked that the game was translated surprisingly well given the sheer amount of Japanese jokes and innuendo.
Next Generation MagazineNext Generation Magazine was a video game magazine that was made by Imagine Media publishing company . It was affiliated to and shared editorial with the UK's Edge magazine. Next Generation ran from January 1995 until January 2002...
lamented that Konami had not polished it more, holding that it otherwise might have been the "best N64 action/RPG". IGNIGN is a multimedia news and reviews website that focuses heavily on video games...
's reviewer cautioned that though Mystical Ninja
was billed as a role-playing gameA role-playing game is a game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines...
, it would differ from the expectations of Western fans. Critics noted that it would hold over gamers until the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Timeis an action-adventure video game developed by Nintendo's Entertainment Analysis and Development division for the Nintendo 64 video game console. It was released in Japan on November 21, 1998; in North America on November 23, 1998; and in Europe on December 11, 1998...
—provided they played it with an open mind to avoid culture shockCulture shock refers to the anxiety and feelings felt when people have to operate within a different and unknown cultural or social environment, such as a foreign country. It grows out of the difficulties in assimilating the new culture, causing difficulty in knowing what is appropriate and what...
. A contributor for The Dallas Morning NewsThe Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas area, with a circulation of around a half-million subscribers. It was founded on October 1, 1885, by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the Galveston Daily News, of Galveston, Texas. Today it has one of...
concluded that the game "will please N64 owners starving for a decent adventure game... But players should rent it before they buy." A reviewer for the Sentinel & EnterpriseThe Sentinel & Enterprise is a morning daily newspaper published in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, with a satellite news bureau in Leominster, Massachusetts. The newspaper covers local news in Fitchburg, Leominster and several nearby towns in northern Worcester County and northwest Middlesex County,...
wrote in 2001 that while considered a "flawed 3D platformer", Mystical Ninja
offered "quirky" fun "following the heels of Super Mario 64
" by inviting players to "scale mountains, invade pagodas, and pilot giant robots in all-out fisticuffs to the rhythm of Japanese lyrics and pop tunes." The game is rated 73.8% at Game RankingsGameRankings is a website which keeps track of video game reviews from other sites, and combines them to present an average rating for each game. It indexes over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 games. The Ratings show the general critical opinion about a game; thus, Gamerankings has...
and receives an 8.4 out of 10 rating by players at GameSpot.
Sequels
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon
was immediately followed by a Game BoyThe is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America on , and in Europe on . In Southern Asia, it is known as the "Tata Game Boy" It is the first handheld console in the Game Boy line...
game of the same name. Featuring gameplay similar to the Super Famicom title Ganbare Goemon 3: Shichijuurokubei no Karakuri Manji Katameis a Ganbare Goemon series video game released for the Super Famicom, and the third one for that console. It follows the protagonist Goemon as he struggles to recover Wise Man, who has been imprisoned by the evil nun Bismaru far in the future...
, the game presented a new story in which Yae had been kidnapped by the Black Ship Gang. In late 1999, Konami released Goemon's Great Adventure, known as Mystical Ninja 2 Starring Goemon in Europe, is a video game developed and released by Konami for the Nintendo 64 on December 23, 1998. It is the third game in the Ganbare Goemon series released in North America and following Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, released two years earlier...
on the Nintendo 64The , often abbreviated as N64, is Nintendo's third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released on June 23, 1996 in Japan, September 29, 1996 in North America, March 1, 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1, 1997 in France and December 10,...
—a 2.5D2.5D , also called pseudo-3D, is an informal term used to describe visual phenomena which appears to be three-dimensional but for some reason isn't completely so, be it for not being constituted by true 3D entities in the case of graphics, or not allowing full 3D movement—typically restricting it...
side-scrollerA side-scrolling game or side-scroller is a video game in which the gameplay action is viewed from a side-view camera angle, and the onscreen characters generally move from the left side of the screen to the right...
with multiplayerA multiplayer video game is one which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time. Unlike most other games, computer and video games are often single-player activities that pit the player against preprogrammed challenges and/or AI-controlled opponents, which often...
support. Reviewers gave it high marks for recreating the feel of the older, 16-bit-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor.Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816...
Goemon games and considered it the arguably best side-scroller for the Nintendo 64The , often abbreviated as N64, is Nintendo's third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released on June 23, 1996 in Japan, September 29, 1996 in North America, March 1, 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1, 1997 in France and December 10,...
. The final Goemon title for the Nintendo 64 was Goemon Mononoke Sugoroku
, released exclusively in Japan on December 25, 1999. In Mononoke Sugoroku
, players must collect O-fuda cards while navigating a board gameA board game is a game in which counters or pieces that are placed on, removed from, or moved across a "board"...
. After a spate of sequels on the PlayStationThe PlayStation is a 32-bit fifth generation video game console released by Sony Computer Entertainment in December ....
line of consoles, Konami returned to the medieval, quirky Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese themes of Mystical Ninja
and its brethren on June 23, 2005 with Goemon: Toukai Douchuu for the
Nintendo DSThe is a dual-screen handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in 2004 in Canada, the United States, and Japan. The console features a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP, with two LCD screens inside—with the bottom one being a touchscreen...
.
External links