Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

About Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (1997) is Konami's surreal 3D action-adventure for the Nintendo 64, in which Goemon and friends stop a gang from turning feudal Japan into a Western theatre, with giant robot battles and musical numbers.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon in Depth

The Peach Mountain Shoguns gang plans to turn Japan into a Westernised fine arts theatre, and Goemon and his friends set out to stop them. The plot includes three cinematic musical numbers and battles between giant robots, and like other Ganbare Goemon games it is full of surreal humour and anachronisms. Players explore forests, fields, dungeons and towns modelled on feudal Japan, walking, running, jumping, attacking and using special abilities. Only one of the four characters is controlled at a time, but they can be swapped with a button press. Hearts show health, a Maneki-neko lucky cat adds an extra heart, and losing all hearts costs a life and returns the player to the entrance of the field map.

Towns and coffeehouses are safe from enemies, offering restaurants and inns to restore health, shops for armour and self-acting riceballs, and plenty of characters with plot clues or gossip. Progress is saved to a Controller Pak at inns and some dungeon entrances. Some routes need abilities earned through minigames; Ebisumaru, for instance, must hide in a giant's cupboard to learn shrinking magic. A status screen and a map of Japan help navigation, and the item Mr. Elly Fant reveals dungeon floorplans. Each dungeon ends with a boss, and some victories lead into battles where Goemon pilots the giant robot Impact, beginning with a music video and a high-speed race to smash structures and avoid hazards.

Making Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka developed it, and the producers broke the series' numbered naming to stress how different it was. Early images showed Impact fighting a gun-toting foe in a modern city, later replaced by a battle over a forest and village with the Wartime Kabuki Robot Kashiwagi; the E3 build suffered clipping and camera problems before a mostly finished version appeared at the Tokyo Game Show in September 1997. It sold nearly 200,000 copies worldwide and received average reviews overall, with 28 out of 40 from Famitsu. Reviewers praised its graphics, gameplay and quirky story, while criticising the camera and slowdown and questioning whether its jokes would reach Western players. Edge gave it eight out of ten, urging Konami not to deny Western gamers "its charms".