Welcome back to Forgotten Gems, my column about games that have faded but shouldn’t be forgotten. Last time, I took at a look at the unexpected return of one of Square’s most unique 16-bit RPGs, Live a Live. While there may be no happy ending this time, hopefully you’ll still enjoy this look back at an entire game series that almost all but faded from public discourse: Goemon, Konami’s Mystical Ninja.
Namco has Pac-Man. SEGA’s got Sonic. Nintendo has Mario. Konami’s got… Frogger? Twinbee? The Parodius Octopus? It’s honestly a bit surprising that one of the most prolific game developers of the ‘80s took so long to develop a stable of recognizable characters; let alone a core company mascot. Before it became known for the exploits of the Belmonts and Solid Snake, Konami dazzled us more with clever concepts like Time Pilot, Gyruss, and Track & Field, as well as competent game adaptations of animated shows like TMNT or the Simpsons.
Enter the Ninja
But the roots for Konami’s own Mario were already taking hold in 1986 when it released Mr. Goemon. Based on Japan’s 16th-century Robin Hood, the outlaw Ishikawa Goemon, Mr. Goemon is an unusual platformer. For one, it took its art style from famous woodblock prints depicting kabuki enactments of the folk legend, but more importantly, it played very differently from platformers of the age. Whereas bumping into enemies in its contemporaries would mean losing a life or taking damage, Mr. Goemon is an oddly-controlling, hectic jump ’n’ run in which you can push and shove your enemies as you infiltrate enemy fortresses. Goemon can use a “kiseru” pipe to smack his enemies or toss gold coins and other pick-ups, including the famous Japanese maneki-neko cat figurines.
If all that sounds unconventional and confusing, you should know that these kiseru pipes weren’t just for smoking. They became quite the rage among Japanese warriors, who would carry iron or brass pipes and use them as weapons when they didn’t have access to their swords. As for throwing those oval koban coins, gourds, and nekos – that’s vintage, economical video game character development on display right there. Being an honorable outlaw, Goemon allegedly gave to the poor – thus, he has no need for money and happily tosses around symbols of good luck, such as hyotan gourds and cat figurines.
Mr. Goemon was not a hit. But Konami clearly liked the idea of “owning” a truly Japanese video game hero enough to greenlight a completely different Goemon game for home consoles and computers before Mr. Goemon was even in arcades. Released in July 1986, Ganbare Goemon! Karakuri Douchuu lays the foundation for an entire series of unique platformers in an alt-history, mechanized Japan. “Ganbare!” is a Japanese rallying cry, and is best translated as “go for it!” or “keep it up!” and would become intrinsically linked with the Goemon series for many years. But one thing was still missing that would come to define the Goemon games – and made it one of my favorites on the Super Famicom: co-op gameplay.
With 1989’s Ganbare Goemon 2 for the Famicom, Konami found its success formula. The game combined the three-quarter-view town sequences of the second game with the side-scrolling jump and fight action of Mr. Goemon. It also added the defining co-op mode where a second player could join the fun as the supremely weird Ebisumaru, a combination of the Japanese thief Nezumi Kozo and Konami producer Ebisu Etsunobu.
Goemon 2 kicked off a series of 20 full-fledged Goemon platform and RPG games, not including some lesser spin-offs and mobile minis, spanning 20 years of game development and some truly creative efforts by multiple Konami studios. It’s a series known for its silly sense of humor, for taking you on a trip of the sights and sounds of a not-quite-historically-accurate Japan, for dozens of memorable tunes and fully vocalized songs, screen-tilting, screen-warping, screen-flipping Mode 7 effects, 3D mech battles, and for a range of clever mini-games – including a playable 16-bit version of Konami’s own Gradius.
Which brings us to 1991, when Konami undertook the unlikely step to bring the most Japanese mascot in gaming to the west.
American Ninja Warriors
We can’t be sure what made Konami consider the sixth game in the series, Ganbare Goemon: Yukihime Kyuushutsu Emaki, for a western release in 1992, a year after it debuted to acclaim in Japan. Perhaps it was the impressive graphics that make it one of the best Mode 7 showcases to date, or the incredible soundtrack that really puts the Super NES sound chip through its paces. But most likely, it was an attempt to capitalize on the excitement surrounding the impending US release of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which also seemed to be the inspiration for the newly minted English title: The Legend of the Mystical Ninja.
This sudden spark of courage did not extend to trusting overseas audiences to engage with or understand Goemon’s historical origins. The game received an infamously terrible localization treatment. Japanese food items like onigiri rice balls became pizzas. And our heroes Goemon and Ebisumaru were unceremoniously renamed to Kid Ying and Dr. Yang, with a typo-laden manual contributing even more cringe-worthy Asian stereotypes, like naming the monkey “Fur Man Chu”. It’s not that Goemon isn’t an inherently silly game – one of the sequences removed from the localized version was Ebisumaru baring his butt and farting at the end of a dance performance – it’s that its silliness is so uniquely and unapologetically Japanese that randomly dubbing it with Chinese terms and concepts just stunningly misses the point.
But localization aside, Goemon’s first western showing went over pretty well. EGM rated the game 8, 8, 9, 8 and lauded it for its gameplay, co-op mode, and soundtrack – while expressing some consternation over its presentation. “The graphics are too cheesy for me, with lots of pastels,” said the legendarily mystical Quartermann. Konami never disclosed official sales numbers for the title, so we’ll never know whether its distinct visuals and themes or lack of awareness kept it from achieving bigger success in the US, but we do know that whatever courage had led to the publisher giving Goemon a shot quickly dissipated.
Goemon’s further Game Boy and Famicom/NES outings wouldn’t see stateside release, but more egregiously, Mystical Ninja’s direct sequel, Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shogun Magginesu! remained forever a Japan-only delight. In this humble writer’s opinion, Goemon 2 is the best co-op platformer on the Super NES, adding drivable vehicles, a third playable character, and a Super Mario World-style overworld map to the mix. Bolstered by critical success in Japan, Konami took the series even further.