Random Shots: The Locations of Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for the Nintendo 64. To summarise it, while it had its flaws, it was still creative and engaging enough to be memorable for the lucky few who got to play it, myself included.  It's the sort of thing I would love to play again as some sort of updated HD remake, although its publisher, Konami, seems to have no idea what the [verb] they're doing these days.  But it was after I posted that review that I learned something about the game, after all those years of it living in my memories.  I was looking at a map of Japan's old provinces -- the regions that existed before the 1868 Meiji Restoration replaced them with the prefectures in use today -- when I recognised one of the province names as a location from the game.  Then another... and another... until I realised this wasn't a coincidence.  Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon doesn't take place in some fake, fictionalised, fantasy version of Japan.  It's set in the real fictionalised, fantasy version of Japan!  So allow me to be your tour guide in a journey through the game, as we attempt to link its whacked-out take on the Land of the Rising Sun to its real-world counterpart.

The game starts at Goemon and Ebisumaru's home in Oedo Town.  Okay, this is obviously Tokyo, or Edo as it used to be known.  (The 'O' at the beginning of the word is a prefix denoting honour.)  Whilst wandering about Oedo Town, you may notice a few landmarks.  For instance, you know that big red gate blocked by a big red lantern?  That would be the Kaminari-mon, or Thunder Gate.  The real Kaminari-mon is located in the Asakusa district, on the approach to the temple Senso-ji.  And if you happen to cross a curved wooden bridge, you would be walking on the Nihonbashi, the "mile zero" from which all roads across old Japan were measured.  Alas, the real Nihonbashi was replaced with a new concrete bridge in 1911, but you can try out a replica of the original at the Edo-Tokyo Museum.  Anyway, after taking a trip out to Mount Fuji (yes, that Mount Fuji) and picking up a new weapon for Goemon, you'll head back and take on the first castle level, Oedo Castle.  There was indeed a real Edo Castle built in 1457, but over the centuries parts of it burned down; what's left currently serves as the Tokyo Imperial Palace.

With Oedo Town wrapped up for now, your journey will take you to Zazen Town.  Now, "zazen" refers not to any specific place, but to the meditation performed as part of Zen Buddhism.  But there are a few obvious clues which relate Zazen Town to the city of Kyoto.  The Golden Temple, where Ebisumaru will eventually learn his shrinking power, is a scaled-down version of Kinkaku-ji, a.k.a. the Golden Pavillion, one of Kyoto's most famous landmarks.  Then there's a section called Mt. Nyoigatake.  To get there, first you go up a staircase covered by a row of bright orange torii gates, just like the approach to the Fushimi Inari shrine, another iconic Kyoto destination.  Once through that, you'll end up facing a mountain with a kanji character written in flames on its side.  There are several of these mountains in Kyoto, commonly named the Daimonji-yama, and they are lit up in such a manner at the end of the O-bon festival in August.

Next door to Zazen Town is a place called Yamato.  The province it was named after is now Nara prefecture.  Yamato and Nara also share another connection besides their name -- it has to do with the centrepiece of Yamato, a giant pagoda-like building.  Nara is home to Todai-ji, a Buddhist temple boasting what was, at the time the game was made, the world's largest all-wooden structure.  The main hall at Todai-ji houses a giant bronze statue of the Buddha, itself the largest statue of its kind.  The similar building in Yamato is indeed equally big, and whilst this digital re-interpretation does not contain a similar statue, it is worth unlocking and checking out for an extra life and a Fortune Doll life upgrade.  Not far from Yamato is Kii-Awaji Island, from where you can warp to the Husband and Wife Rocks, a pair of islets tethered together by a giant rope.  The real Wedded Rocks, known as the Meoto-Iwa, are located off the eastern coast of the Kii peninsula, near Ise in Mie prefecture.

After a brief mini-boss atop a dragon, you'll land on Shikoku, another of Japan's four main islands¹.  Your landing spot is Kompira Mountain, and directly from there lies Folkypoke Village.  "Kompira" likely refers to Kotohira Shrine in Kagawa prefecture, which sits atop Mount Zozu, and is also called Konpira Shrine.  As for Folypoke Village... offhand, I have no idea.  The biggest city in that prefecture, would be Takamatsu, so that's the best guess I've got.  Anyway, across Shikoku lies the second castle level, but immediately beforehand are the Dogo Hot Springs.  There is indeed a Dogo Onsen in the city of Matsuyama, and whilst the main building of the complex today was not constructed until 1894, the waters of this hot spring resort have been mentioned in the Man'yoshu, a work of literature which dates back to AD 759 at the latest, so it certainly could have existed in Goemon's world in some form.

With the second castle down, the road to Chugoku opens, and with it some of, I think, the game's most interesting locations.  Bizen and Kurashiki are quasi-urban areas lined by white-and-black warehouses, examples of which can be seen in cities like Kurashiki, in Okayama prefecture.  Aki-Nagato is a coastal area with a giant red torii gate in the middle of thewater, modeled after the one off of Itsukushima (a.k.a. Miyajima), an island not far from Hiroshima.  Inaba is a vast, hilly desert, to which you may be thinking, "A desert?  In Japan?  Seriously?"  It's more likely than you think -- there actually is a plot of sand dunes in Tottori Prefecture named, obviously, the Tottori Sand Dunes.  Finally, there's a vast, hilly plains area with little rock plilars strewn about, named Akiyoshidai.  A mouthful, sure, but I didn't even have to break out the list of old provinces to locate that -- the real Akiyoshidai is a park in Yamaguchi Prefecture, near the western tip of Honshu. 

With the third castle down, you'll get cut off from your destination of Kyushu due to... I won't spoil it, but suffice to say, it couldn't have happened in a game less light-hearted in tone as this.  So instead, you'll be going north from Oedo Town into northern Honshu, current known as the Tohoku region.  Much of Tohoku, both in-game, and in historical Japan, is taken up by a snowy area called Mutsu; the real Mutsu province corresponds with four modern-day prefectures: Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate, and Aomori.  The big city around the Mutsu region is... Festival Village.  Again, that gives me little to go by.  There are lots of notable festivals in Tohoku's cities, such as the Nebuta Festival in Aomori, and the Kanto Festival in Akita.  But there is a cluehidden in the town's restaurant.  One of the HP-giving dishes on offer is kiritanpo, a dish of rice patties pounded into a cylindrical shape, served in miso soup.  And it originates from... Akita prefecture.  Well, that's good enough for me!

Behind Festival Village, you will find Mt. Fear, named after Osore-zan (literally, "fear mountain") in Aomori prefecture.  The real Osore-zan is known, among other things, for a festival (kuchiyose) in which blind mediums (itako) channel and contact spirits of the dead.  And indeed, you do this in-game.  Alternately, you can head back and take a fork southwards to the Waterfall of Kegon, where Yae can learn her mermaid power.  The real Kegon Falls is located near Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture.

With the fourth castle down, it's time to wrap things up in Kyushu.  Again, I shan't spoil how you get there, but much of it takes place in yet another castle level.  But it is briefly bisected by one last town area, Sogen Town of Bizen.  Alas, I drew a blank at the name alone; there isn't even a historical province in Kyushu named Bizen (that could be a mistranslation of either the Buzen or Hizen provinces).  So once again, I was forced to turn to the local cuisine for clues on its real-life counterpart.  One such offerring was sponge cake, described as a culinary import from the Dutch.  That clearly tipped me off to the city of Nagasaki.  See, for much of Japan's history until the Meiji period, the country managed to protect itself from colonial influences simply by shutting themselves off from all foreign trade -- with a few exceptions.  One of them was in Nagasaki, where the Dutch and Chinese were allowed to set up shop.  Although, sponge cake in Japan, where it is known as "castella", actually came from the Portugese beforehand so, close but no cigar.

Lack of cigar aside, this has been a delightfully informative journey, both for me as I wrote this article, and I hope for you, the reader, as well.  It may even get you to look at Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon in a new way.  Who knows, maybe you'll even visit Japan yourself and see the real-life inspirations behind the game's locales!  Special thanks to Zeality of GameFAQs.com for recording and posting the game's script (http://www.gamefaqs.com/n64/198022-mystical-ninja-starring-goemon/faqs/45558).

¹The four main islands of Japan refer to Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, and Kyushu.  However, Hokkaido, was never part of the Japanese state until the Meiji period, which explains why it is never visited in the game.

N64 Month: Goemon's Great Adventure

Goemon's Great Adventure

• Publisher: Konami
• Developer: Konami Osaka
• Release: Nintendo 64, 22 September 1999
• Genre: Action, 2D Platformer
• Players: 1-2
• Save: Controller Pak
• Rarity/Cost: Uncommon (US$30-100)

Out of the few pieces of media from the Ganbare Goemon franchise that have crossed over out of Japan, the one I'm assuming most of us are familiar with is the first Nintendo 64 game, sold as Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (reviewed here).  It is a really good game, even on its own merits, but if you're familiar with the other games, all but one of which we Anglophones were never granted the privilege of buying in our own market, it's a markedly different experience.  Whereas Mystical Ninja was basically a 3-D Legend of Zelda clone, the main series games, primarily on the Super Famicom, were more traditional platforming experiences.  Well, they made another game for the N64, one that followed this older formula, and best of all, it came out in America, as Goemon's Great Adventure.

So what is this classic formula?  Instead of cribbing from Zelda, GGA and the SuFami series have more in common with platformers like Super Mario Bros., except in "2.5D".  For the uninitiated, this means that while while you and all other characters are confined to a 2D plane at all times, all visuals are rendered in polygons (using the same engine from Mystical Ninja which, sadly, had become dated by 1999), and the paths may curve into or out of the background.  Even better, some levels have branching paths, which you'll have to explore at some point.  Progress through the game is controlled by how many Entry Passes you have collected, in a system similar to that of the 3D Super Mario series.  You get one Entry Pass whenever you clear a regular level for the first time, but in order to meet the requirements to continue, you'll have to earn more by completing missions from certain townspeople.  This collection quest may not be Donkey Kong 64-level egregious, but seriously, who likes these kinds of things?

The weapon upgrade system evokes Super Mario.

All four characters (Goemon, Ebisumaru, Sasuke, and Yae, the latter two unlocked soon after the start) once again have their specialties; for example, Sasuke and Yae can traverse underwater passages, while for some reason Goemon has been given a double-jump (the timing for which takes practice to nail down).  While it's only window dressing, I have to smile at Ebisumaru's main weapon, a paddle/spoon which knocks enemies into the background or screen a la TMNT IV: Turtles In Time (but don't charge up his projectile attack, just... don't).  This and other weapons can be upgraded through a power-up system used in the SuFami series and, in some fashion, even Super Mario Bros..  Picking up a Silver or Gold Fortune Doll upgrades your main weapon's strength and range, but each hit taken will take its level down one notch.  In a genius move, the control scheme allows you to use either the Control Stick or Control Pad for movement, with both the Z and L triggers used for projectiles.

The zany, Japanese-tinged humour so prevalent in the previous games is back with a vengeance in GGA.  Our heroes are invited to witness their friend's newest invention, a machine that can bring the dead back as ghosts, only to have it stolen by our villain, a female, faux-Catholic nun version of Ebisumaru.  Monsters themed after ghosts from Japanese folklore help to drive the cultural connection home.  Sadly the levels themselves don't get such a creative treatment; our heroes' quest does take them through the land of the dead (the easy way), but if you have fond memories of the Festival Temple or Gourmet Submarine Castles from the last game, prepare to be disappointed.

2-player co-op is available any time.

Seeing as how only one game in the SuFami Goemon series was ported outside Japan (the first one, sold as Legend of the Mystical Ninja in 1992), Goemon's Great Adventure's quirks may come across as more innovative than they actually are.  (They were to me; unlike the other entries of N64 Month, I didn't try this game until I was considerably older.)  But considering the franchise's relative absence in the occidental world, we should be embracing titles like these.  Fortunately, it deserves the recognition it failed to earn from us, given how fun, if unpolished, it is.  If this game encourages you to investigate the rest of the Ganbare Goemon franchise, then I'm happy to have done my job.


Graphics: 3 out of 5
Sound: 5 out of 5
Control: 3 out of 5
Design: 4 out of 5
The Call: 85% (B+)

Next Episode: The next game in N64 month concerns another quartet of oddball heroes - but from an entirely different island nation.

Game Review: Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

The following review was originally posted on GameFAQs.com on February 4th, 2008.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

• Publisher: Konami
• Developer: Konami Osaka
• Platform/Release: Nintendo 64, 16 April 1998
• Genre: Adventure, Platformer
• Players: 1
• Save: Controller Pak, 16 pages
• Rarity/Cost: Common (US$3-10)

I've covered the Ganbare Goemon / Mystical Ninja franchise before, but this is the item which should be the most recognizable for everyone outside of Japan: the video game Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for Nintendo 64.  As the first game in the series to be released for the console, in any region, it introduces a gameplay cocktail that was unique for its time: the expansive worlds and dungeon levels of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda series with the three-dimensional gameplay of Super Mario 64. The game adds some original touches to this mix as well, such as the four playable characters, each with their own special abilities, that you get to control over the course of your adventure. You are able to switch between them at will, but there is little to no difference in how they move and fight, so most of the time your choice of character will boil down to personal taste.

Yeah, it's a Zelda clone - but a darn good one.

While Mystical Ninja borrows the gameplay of 3-D platformers such as Super Mario 64, it is unable to shine as brightly. One of the fatal flaws that this game suffers is that there is no camera control. You can't rotate or zoom the camera; the only thing you can do is stand still for a few seconds to re-center the camera behind you. The R button isn't even used in regular gameplay; it could very well have handled this function manually! And although the world is split up into segments, as opposed to being one huge world, it still takes a while to get across them given your characters' fairly slow walking speeds. As a whole, the game still works, but manual camera control could have been a help here and there.


There's a fair bit of visual detail to be found here; the textures are rendered surprisingly well for the Nintendo 64, except for grass and road patterns, which look like green and yellow barf respectively.  Other than that, the graphics are on the ordinary side, with a bit of slowdown on just a few areas. But even if Mystical Ninja doesn't quite impress on a technical level, there's no denying that they help to create an amazing, memorable world. The areas are clearly based on ancient Japan, but with a whimsical fantasy twist. Each of the five different castles that you explore has a creative theme to it; for example, the Gourmet Submarine Castle is set in a modern-era submarine filled with oversized Japanese foodstuffs. The music is excellent, also mixing Japanese instruments into modern beats. Music in the castle levels also gets remixed, growing in intensity as you progress further into the level. Just have your TV's mute button handy for the songs with vocals, which are painfully corny.

You're in Mount Fuji - just roll with it.

All this is wrapped up in a story that is silly to the utmost degree. When the game opens, we find our heroes getting kicked out of a restaurant in their hometown of Oedo for trying to bum a free meal. Suddenly, a UFO approaches out of nowhere and shoots a laser beam at the Oedo Castle, transforming it into a European fairytale-style castle! And the culprits behind all this? A couple who seeks to transform all of Japan into their own personal theater. I could not make this stuff up. The game also capitalizes on its lack of seriousness by fitting plenty of jokes into the dialogue; it even has its own laugh track!

If, during the Spring of 1998, you managed to put aside GoldenEye 007 or 1080 Snowboarding  long enough to give this a try, you probably thanked yourself for it. Those of you who ventured off the beaten path and tried this game were rewarded with a memorable trek through a whimsical, whacked-out take on ancient Japan. Although time has not been so kind to this game, new gamers should still check it out, if only for its sense of humour.

Positives:
+ A fresh, funny story and setting.
+ Awesome music, even if the vocal tracks are an acquired taste.
Negatives:
- Lack of camera control.
- Some frame rate issues.

Control: 3 rice balls out of 5
Design: 4 rice balls out of 5
Graphics: 4 rice balls out of 5
Sound: 5 rice balls out of 5
The Call: 80% (B)

Anime Review: Legend of the Mystical Ninja

Ganbare Goemon.  If you’re reading this without having it translated, you probably don’t know what it is.  Long story short, it’s a video game franchise that’s been around longer than Metal Gear.  Most of the games revolve around the medieval Japanese exploits of our hero Goemon, decked out in  blue hair, kabuki face paint, and armed with… a pipe.  His friends include the chubby Ebisumaru, girl Yae, and robot Sasuke.  And if you think they’re weird, wait until you see the villains.  A Catholic priestess Ebisumaru lookalike, a parody of Commodore Matthew Perry, you get the idea.


In Japan, the Ganbare Goemon franchise is big – unbelievably big.  Like, don’t be surprised if a Goemon cosplayer shows up at your gym class to promote the next game.  Although it’s cooled off in recent years, this series has got over twenty games and spinoffs to its name – only four of which have crossed the Pacific Ocean.  So, given how huge this thing is, it’s only natural for an animated series of some form to have been produced.  And in 1997, the inevitable came into being.


Anime Ganbare Goemon, as it is officially called, was broadcast on the Japanese network TBS, Tokyo Broadcasting System, from October 1997 to March 1998, for a 23-episode run.  But even though it started just months after one of the games was released – and one of the most popular ones at that – the plot of this show isn’t just a retelling of one of the games.  That would have been too easy.  No, what we get is Goemon jumping into the real world to fight his enemies in an assault on the fourth wall like you’ve never seen!  …At least, it would have been that awesome if I wrote it.


As it is, Goemon and allies… somehow… make the jump from the Game World into the human world and join forces with Tsukasa, this dippy ten-year-old.  (What is it with ten-year-old heroes these days?  All I know is it would make a kick-awesome episode of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?.)  Together, they must fight the forces of evil who invariably cause chaos to summon a giant monster to attempt to cause even more chaos.  All this is done so that the demon lord Makuamuuge may enter the human world and conquer it for himself.  The only countermeasure they have against these threats is the giant robot Goemon Impact, who in this show must be summoned by Goemon eating a super-powered ohagi (bean cake) and blowing on a conch-shell trumpet.  And in case you're wondering, he only has to do that second step in the games, and then only when the plot lets him.  Here, the whole process eats up thirty seconds or more of valuable screen time each and every episode.  (Except for the one episode where they conveniently forgot to show him eating the ohagi and it wasn't so much as lampshaded...  Good times.)


The game-based characters are interesting enough, if only because that's how they were created for the games, in some cases over a decade earlier.  Goemon, our hammy, card-carrying hero, is just too good at being... good.  Ebisumaru, the Little John to Goemon's Robin Hood, is pretty much only a little more enjoyable than how much you like fat jokes.  Yae, the team's sole female member, is the "straight guy" and looks more awesome than she is.  And Sasuke - not that one, Narutards - is a little robot.  In this incarnation, he is used by his creator, the Wise Ol' Man Monoshiri to take pictures of pretty girls while being none the wiser.  Yeah, he's a perv.  Finally, Omitsu is Goemon's girlfriend/wife (it's never explained; I like to assume the latter), whose jobs are to provide him with the super ohagi and to get jealous over every girl with whom she misinterprets Goemon making a romantic advance towards.  That's about it.


Now onto the villains.  Seppukumaru, who was drawn from the fourth Super Famicom game, dresses in a blue bodysuit that bares his off-model midriff, wears one-ton bracelets (but doesn't do anything else with his super strength), and has a habit of attempting suicide after each of his failed plots.  Tagging along are the four Tsujigiri, these dumpling-like monsters who pretty much have no distinct personalities among them.  They do serve as decent matches to Goemon and company until the fight inevitably shifts to Impact and the monster of the day.  Halfway through the series, lord Makuamuuge swaps him out for Dr. Mudanashi and his android Protein.  Dr. Mudanashi's schtick is that he's obsessed with not wasting anything, least of all time, which almost comes off as amusing.  And protein's outfits and mannerisms not only manage to out-effeminate Seppukumaru, but he has a brief flash of love with Sasuke, a boy robot.  Yes, it's safe to say it: he's literally gay.  But this is soon forgotten in favor of Mudanashi crushing over Tsukasa's mom.




Meanwhile, Tsukasa’s involved in a constant love triangle with two other students in his class: Asuka, a girl, and Noboru, a rich snobby boy.  Noboru tries to use his resources to woo Asuka, but it always backfires, with her turning to the simple advances of Tsukasa.  These B-plots almost never intersect with the main stories, and mainly serve to provide some kind of moral to the viewers.


Now, believe it or not, this show has an all-star cast picked out for the English dub.  Well, as A-list as you can be in the anime dubbing industry, which is kind of like C-list overall.  It turns out that Goemon is voiced by none other than Vic Mignogna.  That’s right: Vic “Who are you calling a bean-sprout midget mon ami” Mignogna.  Also, Tsukasa is voiced by Tiffany “What are you, stupid?” Grant.  Oh how the mighty have fallen.  Vic's performance as Goemon is on the hammy side, with such tics as pronouncing his own name "Goy-mon".  Oy vey.  (Note that Vic did this job before Fullmetal Alchemist, the role that made him famous.)  Then again, the dialogues for both the English and subtitled Japanese have their own annoying habits, too.  In English, for example, the heroes' lines portray them as your average Saturday-morning defenders of justice (e.g. "For all that's good, Goemon Impact!"), whereas the original Japanese dialogue is a different shade of hammy (same scene: "Astonish the world, Goemon Impact!")


Legend of the Mystical Ninja may not do anything especially awful, but that's just it - it doesn't do anything especially at all.  Every episode follows the same structure: the villains start trouble, the heroes find out about it and rush to stop it, the fight evolves into a giant robot stock-footage fest, and once again the day is saved, or something.  Even genre-founders like Super Sentai/Power Rangers would mix it up by not using the Megazords once in a while, for example, but here you get no such luxury.  This show gets boring and forgettable fast.  There is certainly potential in bringing such a huge universe to the realm of anime, but so much of its potential remains utterly untapped.  I wouldn't always advise this, but maybe tying the plot directly to that of one of the video games would have been the smarter course of action.


The Call: 40% (F)


And now for another installment of "Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking".  The theme songs to the games take on the campy route I mentioned earlier, with one of them having been performed by Hironobu Kageyama, whose work includes some of the Japanese theme songs to Dragon Ball Z.  No, they didn't get carried over for this show, either; the intro and ending songs are just boring ol' J-pop.  But there's something in the ending song, "OK! OK!", that strikes me as familiar...  The last few notes in the song sound just like the title screen jingle from Contra!  Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go input the Konami code...