25 years of the N64: Goemon's Great Adventure
25 years of the N64: Goemon's Great Adventure
For the second Mystical Ninja game on the N64, Konami left the realm of pure 3D to make one of the systems few side-scrolling platformers.
On September 29, 2021, the Nintendo 64 will turn 25 years old in North America. Throughout the month of September, I’ll be covering the console, its games, its innovations, and its legacy. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
If Goemon’s Great Adventure isn’t the best side-scrolling platformer on the Nintendo 64, then it’s without question the second-best. That can be said so confidently in part because of the relative paucity of side-scrollers on the N64 — the world went a little overboard with making every possible 2D platformer into a 3D platformer in a post-Super Mario 64 world, to the point that certain kinds of reviewers would be openly and illogically angry at the existence of side-scrolling games on the various systems — but it’s also because the game is, well, great. It truly is a great adventure. Tip your servers, everyone.
There is Goemon’s Great Adventure. There is Mischief Makers, which I absolutely would have written about this month if I didn’t already do so a few months back. There is also Yoshi’s Story, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, and… uh… others, probably. Goemon ranks among the very best side-scrollers on the Nintendo 64 both by default but also because it’s one of the best side-scrollers of the fifth generation of consoles. That’s not exactly as long of a list as it would be for the fourth generation of consoles, but still, it’s a larger sample we’re pulling from then just the N64 itself.
Goemon’s Great Adventure, released in North America in 1999, is part of the Legend of the Mystical Ninja series, or part of the Goemon series, depending on where it is you’re playing these games. The franchise didn’t arrive in North America until 1991’s The Legend of the Mystical Ninja on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, but the series was already a few games deep at that point in Japan. As with just about everything you might have once enjoyed from Konami, they aren’t making anymore of them: the last main-series game to come out in Japan was back in 2005, and the last one to be released outside of Japan was, well, Goemon’s Great Adventure. It’s actually a bit unclear why they stopped releasing Goemon games outside of Japan, considering they were decent enough successes when they did get play outside that country. Goemon’s Great Adventure sold over 160,000 copies, which was considered successful for a third-party game on the N64 (remember, Glover sold 150,000 copies, and that was enough to at least temporarily green light a sequel), and it was a sequel to an N64 game that had itself sold 200,000 copies worldwide.
Despite this, Konami decided Goemon was only for Japan from then on. Maybe because of reviewers from outside of Japan who feared the game was just a little too Japanese for Americans to enjoy. Luckily, reviewers didn’t harp on this nearly as much for Goemon’s Great Adventure as much as they did for its predecessor, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, but still.
Speaking of Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, that was a 3D platformer, as was the style at the time. It had the same kind of problems as many 3D platformers, but was still a good, absurd time, as Goemon games tend to be. Even with its poor localization and apparently worrisome levels of Japanese-ness, critics were into the gameplay and the world and its characters, and as said, it sold well worldwide. Konami didn’t make a 3D platforming sequel, however: instead, they went with a 2.5D side-scrolling platformer. The 2.5D isn’t just there for show, either. You can only move on a 2D plane, yes, but the stages are designed around the kind of depth that 2.5D brings: you’ll often move along the z coordinate, entering into areas of a stage that you had previously only seen in front of or behind you, or in order to ascend in a circular fashion. Enemies you cannot reach will shoot projectiles at you from the background into the foreground, foes will pop up from the background and enter the foreground themselves. Like I said, the 2.5D isn’t just there because it looked neat.
If you’re unfamiliar with Goemon, you might think this was a return to the roots of the series given the series transitioned to 3D for its N64 debut, but not really. The Super Nintendo’s Legend of the Mystical Ninja, for instance, was a side-scroller, but it was more Streets of Rage than Super Mario: your character did not just move left and right, but also moved up and down within the foreground of a stage, with enemies not necessarily coming directly at you, but instead traveling all over this plane. It was a side-scroller, but it was more action-adventure brawler than anything. Goemon’s Great Adventure is more of a straight side-scroller, and it’s a platformer, too: you move one of four characters in a two-dimensional space, but the backgrounds and objects are three-dimensional. Think of it as a blend of Goemon’s past, both distant and near, and released on a console that would allow such a blending to occur.
Really, Goemon’s Great Adventure has a little bit of everything Konami knew how to do well. The weapon system works much like certain kinds of shoot-em-ups: you find weapon upgrades from defeated foes, but if you take damage, you go down a weapon level. Konami, of course, was at one time one of the premier shmup developers and publishers in the world, so them finding a way to put that kind of genre logic into a completely unrelated genre, and making it work, is no surprise. Similarly, shifting Goemon to a side-scrolling platformer invited comparisons to another Konami property, Castlevania. The kind of precision in jumps, in timing, in attacks, the need for exploration and item upgrades to get by that you would find in a Castlevania game, especially the pre-Metroidvania style of Castlevania, is also found in Goemon’s Great Adventure.
Throw in that Goemon’s Great Adventure has the kind of humor and brightness in design that populated so much of Konami’s work in other series — think Parodius, their parody of their own Gradius series, for instance — and it truly is a quintessential Konami release. Oh, and let’s not forget the music. Konami is responsible for plenty of classic themes over the years, and the quality that went into those works is found within Goemon’s Great Adventure. Even if a couple of the songs with lyrics are exclusive to the Japanese version of the game, for some reason.
Here’s how Goemon’s Great Adventure works. You play as one of four characters, which you can switch between at, for all intents and purposes, any time. If there is a section of a level that requires a certain ability to get by, there is going to be a teleporter for you to use to get to the character select room so you can make the switch, rather than have to backtrack so you can dive underwater or whatever. You can also switch characters whenever you feel like in-between levels at the teahouse in the town of whichever world you’re currently in — these towns are also where the shops, the people who will assign you side missions, and the inn where you can rest up and save your game are found.
The four characters, in order of when you acquire them, are Goemon, Ebisumaru, Sasuke, and Yae. Goemon has a double jump and a weapon that, when upgraded, has some real range to it: it’s a kiseru, which is not actually a weapon, but is instead a smoking pipe. Still, you pick up a couple of lucky cat statues, and that smoking pipe might as well be a lead pipe. Goemon also acquires a chain pipe, which can be used for ranged attacks and to break down a specific kind of block that will impede your progress otherwise. Ebisumaru cannot double jump like Goemon, but he can use a megaphone that creates blocks that can be used to impede or attack enemies, or also can be used as stepping stones. Sasuke is a ninja, with some attacks you would think are pretty traditional for a ninja, but as this is Goemon, he is not entirely traditional: Sasuke is actually a robot ninja. And then there is Yae, a katana-wielding ninja who has learned the secret art of turning into a mermaid, and she also carries around a bazooka. A classic pairing if there ever was.
The game can be played in single-player and co-op modes, and co-op allows for some extra gameplay elements, like the ability to have one character lay flat on the ground to be used as a springboard for the other. The existence of co-op is also why the game has a segment where Sasuke learns how to dive underwater, so that those parts of the game work even in co-op mode.
I haven’t mentioned the game’s story yet, but, well, here goes. A time machine of sorts has been developed by the Old Wise Man: the technology allows any dead person from the past to be brought back to life in the present, and Ebisumaru, of course, wants to use it to speak with James Dean. While they are arguing about who should be brought back to life — the Old Wise Man might have only made this machine so he could meet Marilyn Monroe — Bismaru appears and steals this “ghost return machine” in order to, in short, bring about the existence of an undead army.
The game is broken into a pattern you’ll pick up on in a hurry. Each of the five worlds has a few stages to play through, and while some might appear optional, they are not. You complete stages in order to earn entry passes, which you will need to pass the castle gates of each world in order to proceed to the boss fight. There aren’t enough entry passes just lying around, so you’ll also have to complete side missions, which you’ll discover the existence of in each world’s hub town by speaking with the various residents. These range from timed missions for finding some items tucked away in corners of a stage you’ve already been to that you might not have noticed in your first, straight playthrough, to races against rivals that will require that you find shortcuts and also that you smack your rival upside the head every now and again to slow them down. They’re fun diversions, and even though they take place in stages you’ve already been to and played through, they often utilize those stages in a new way, which helps them feel fresh even upon your return to them.
The platforming is unforgiving. It is not unfair, but it will test you and your attention to detail. There are places where you absolutely need to double jump if you don’t launch yourself into the air at the exact right spot, or places where you will need to create platforms using Ebisumaru’s megaphone if you aren’t playing as Goemon. You must always be wary of foes popping out from the background, or falling from the sky, or of platforms that will shoot up into the air in an attempt to crush you against spikes or a ceiling, and so on. It’s a game that looks easy to play in the hands of someone who already knows what they’re up against, but given you have limited health — just three hits unless you buy or find some armor to extend that — and how much of the game is based on precision, whether it’s in the platforming or in the combat, it is not easy. You’ll fail, but at least when you do, you can always see how you should have played instead. Levels have checkpoints, there is an item you can buy at a low-enough cost that’ll revive you where you fell: you’ll get the hang of it all with practice.
The game controls well, though, there are a few things to point out where it is a bit tougher. There are some bars to grab onto throughout certain stages, and you use them to launch yourself up and over. While the game controls best with the directional pad over the control stick for a number of reasons — accuracy in movement on a 2D plane, for one, and access to the L shoulder button that throws projectiles another — releasing those bars works best while using the analog stick, since you can better fully press that in the direction you want to launch in. Similarly, I found that swimming underwater works better with the control stick, too. Aiming at enemies is a pain underwater, but those enemies don’t give you money like the ones above water, either, so you can just swim by them if you prefer, and the control stick helps you do so with grace.
Did I mention the mechs? Goemon’s Great Adventure has mechs. You fight against mechs at the end of each world, after the boss fight in the castle, and they are tag team affairs. You pass a baton to the other mech to control them when you want to, and so long as they aren’t knocked out on the ground, that’s what will happen. This is necessary sometimes, as your opponents have fight-ending moves that will kill you if you are caught by them: passing a baton out of self-preservation is a thing you will do.
The mech fights control differently than everything else in the game, since they are first-person affairs from inside the cockpit of the giant robots. You have simple punching attacks you can use, but what you’ll want to do is familiarize yourself with the special attacks. There is a flurry of punches you can throw that will cause quite a bit of damage to the enemy and interrupt whatever they were doing so long as they are in range of your fists, and you also have a charging meter that, when full, unleashes a devastating laser beam. These fights are all a combination of knowing when to unleash brute force and trying to figure out the puzzle of your opponents’ movements and attacks. They can be a little frustrating if thing aren’t clicking, sure, but luckily, a game over for failing until you run out of lives means little, since you can restart right at the mech fight instead of at the beginning of the castle.
And that’s Goemon in a nutshell, really. A game with ninjas, some of them robots, some of them capable of turning into mermaids, with some of those mermaids capable of wielding bazookas, and everyone capable of piloting a mech, while just one of them wants to pilot a mech so that they can meet the ghost of James Dean. Like I said, it truly is a great adventure, one that makes me miss the old Konami, and, well, the existence of Goemon games. At least we’ve got gems like this one, though, but I do have bad news for you on that front: Goemon’s Great Adventure is significantly more expensive now than it was when I purchased it, and it was expensive then, too. This is definitely one for the emulation bin, if you’re into that sort of thing: like with a few games I’m covering during this celebration of the Nintendo 64, Goemon’s Great Adventure would certainly have qualified as an entry in the “Re-Release This” column here at Retro XP if I wasn’t writing about it in this form instead. Still: re-release Goemon’s Great Adventure, Konami, the damn thing is $160 on Ebay right now.
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