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What is Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon?

The Goemon series' leap into 3D: a big, funny Konami adventure in which a blue-haired thief crosses feudal Japan to stop villains who want to turn the whole country into a stage.

In Japan it is Ganbare Goemon: Neo Momoyama Bakufu no Odori, released by Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka on August 7, 1997 for the Nintendo 64, and in North America and Europe on April 16 and 18, 1998. It was the twelfth mainline Ganbare Goemon game, yet only the second the West ever received, after The Legend of the Mystical Ninja on the Super NES. A peach-shaped ship has fired on Oedo Castle and remade it as a European palace, and the Peach Mountain Shoguns behind it intend to convert all of Japan into a Westernized fine arts theater. Goemon objects.

The structure is a hybrid, and that is its charm. Open fields, forests, and trap-filled dungeons play as 3D platforming, while the towns between them play as a role-playing game: inns and restaurants restore health, shops sell armor and rice balls, and residents hand out plot points and idle gossip. Four heroes share the journey and swap at the press of a button: Goemon himself, the gluttonous Ebisumaru, Sasuke, a mechanical ninja built by the Wise Man of Iga, and the swordswoman Yae. Dungeons end in bosses, and some victories hand the controls to Impact, Goemon's giant robot, for first-person cockpit duels against enemy machines.

It sold 141,000 copies in Japan and 55,000 in America, nearly 200,000 in all. Reviewers praised its graphics, variety, and humor and criticized its camera, and its aggregate score sits oddly low against the individual notices: Electronic Gaming Monthly's panel reached 9 out of 10, and Edge gave it eight out of ten twice, for the import and again for the PAL release. Time has settled the argument its way. The game holds a cult following still actively building mods for it today.

ONE GAME, TWO BOXES

Japan 1997, America 1998

Ganbare Goemon: Neo Momoyama Bakufu no Odori and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

The twelfth Goemon, and nearly the last one the West saw

Ganbare Goemon Neo Momoyama Bakufu no Odori Japanese box art — **Japanese box · N64, 1997**Goemon fills the cover of the series' first 3D entry, coin in hand, under his home title.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon North American box art — **American box · N64, 1998**The same game eight months later, and only the second Goemon North America and Europe ever received.

Konami's producers dropped the series' numbering for this one and renamed it twice in development, first Ganbare Goemon 5, then Legend of the Mystical Ninja, precisely to signal that this Goemon differed from its forefathers.

THE NUMBERS

Record of the release

August 7, 1997

Japanese release, a full eight months before the West, on a 128-megabit cartridge, much larger than most of its peers.

141,000 to 55,000

Japanese versus American sales. The gap between the two figures is the series' whole Western story in miniature.

Famitsu 28 of 40

A respectable home score, while Electronic Gaming Monthly's reviewers reached 9 out of 10 and Edge scored it eight twice.

Four heroes

Goemon, Ebisumaru, the mechanical ninja Sasuke, and Yae, swapped freely with one button.

Three musical numbers

Full sung set pieces, fitted onto the cartridge alongside voice samples. They have their own page in this archive.

One scrapped mode

A two-player mode was built and cut only months before the Japanese release, a loss series veterans noted in their reviews.

What is Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon?

ONE GAME, TWO BOXES

Ganbare Goemon: Neo Momoyama Bakufu no Odori and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

THE NUMBERS

THE FIRST WORD