Goemon's Great Adventure

Ol' Blue Hair is back! Goemon and his friends are back again, and once more they've got to save the world from some of the most bizarre bad guys ever seen in a videogame! The lands of feudal Japan are under threat, this time from strange, fat Ebisumaru lookalike Bismaru, and it's left to a blue-haired ninja, a fat bloke, a demented robot and a cute girl with a penchant for turning into a mermaid to stop them.

In the first Mystical Ninja game the threat was from space. This time, all the trouble is down to the 'wise old man'. This bearded fellow, who proved so helpful first time around, has apparently been spending his time since the defeat of the very weird musical-obsessed aliens building a machine which can bring people back from the dead. Unfortunately, the dastardly Bismaru steals the machine while the wise old man is showing it to Goemon, and the malevolent fellow sets about loosing all manner of nasty ghosts upon the unsuspecting population of Japan.

Mystical Madness

The first Mystical Ninja game was a 3-D adventure in the same style as Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie. While the game itself was great fun, the massive size of the levels meant that it was fairly easy to get lost and a great part of your time was often spent wandering around from place to place not doing very much between objectives.

This time around that's all changed. The game has been broken into two distinct sections – towns and roads. The town areas are similar to those in the first game, with shops and houses and people wandering about. The streets in these towns are fairly linear in nature but do have a limited depth to them, while the interior of the houses and buildings are full 3-D as in the original game.

The road sections of the game, on the other hand, take on the form of pseudo 3-D platform levels with clever graphical effects giving the illusion of full 3-D. Although the platforms are made from polygons, you can only move 'back' into the scenery when the game allows you, and parallax backgrounds help create an illusion of depth. This means that the gameplay is much more straightforward than last time, because even though many of the road sections – particularly in the latter parts of the game – have different routes, it's not so much a case of exploration, more a case of simply getting to the end of the level in one piece by avoiding or destroying the hordes of creatures that attack you.

Ninja Nightmares

To give the game a little more variety and to make some of the puzzles a bit more tricky, Mystical Ninja 2 takes a leaf out of Zelda's book by using both day and night. At night, the road sections of the game are much more treacherous because you get a different variety of ghosts who are all stronger and more dangerous than their daytime counterparts. The people in the towns also appear in different locations depending on whether it's day or night, with the result that some puzzles can only be solved at a specific time.

As with Mystical Ninja, each section of the game is separated from the next by a temple or palace, after which a boss or bosses must be fought. This is usually followed by a first-person fight against an evil giant robot with you controlling your robot friend, Impact.

Aside from the switch from 3-D to 2-D, the biggest change to this game from the original is the addition of a two-player mode. As before, you start off with Goemon and Ebisumaru and pick up Sazuke and Yae along the way. This time, however, you can control two of the characters at once. You and a friend can play all the way through the game together if you wish, and it's often advisable to do so as some of the bosses – the robot fights in particular – are much easier to overcome with two characters fighting together.

Groovy Goemon

Mystical Ninja 2 is incredibly addictive in one-player and much faster-paced than the original, due to the platform nature of the majority of the levels. Playing in two-player mode is just superb, particularly since the characters can combine their abilities for more power and can work together to double-team enemies. Probably the best thing, though, is that you can switch between one- and two-player modes as you go, so that if you start a game with a friend and they then have to leave, you don't have to quit and start again but can carry on solo. Like its predecessor, Mystical Ninja 2 began life as a Japanese game and this is apparent from the rather bizarre narrative. The result is a very quirky and at times incredibly amusing storyline that it's hard not to find entertaining.

The most common criticism of sequels is that they're too similar to the original, which is what makes this game especially good. Even if you've played the first Mystical Ninja through repeatedly, the change of style makes this game a refreshing change without losing the characters and the quirky humour that made the first game so much fun. If you missed the first title or were put off by the size of it, then make sure you don't miss this one!

Goemon's G reat Adventure combines elements of 3D action and role-playing with tried-and-true 2D sidescrolling gameplay.

Goemons latest quest is a large and complex adventure that spans five expansive worlds, which you can play with up to four characters. Goemon provides colorful scenery with fluid polygonal visuals that often wind you through the same territories on different paths.

Unfortunately, looks aren't everything. The sound effects and music are blah--but they're only half as bad as the severely unresponsive controls that make precision jumping and attacking a pain. Even Gocmons most novel element, a two-playcr co-op mode, falters by limiting one character's movement and the others attacks. Goemon has satisfying visual impact for an N64 side-scroller; sadly, it stumbles on the gameplay basics.

The hero from last years Mystical Ninja is back--and with friends--in Goemans Great Adventure, Konami's new platform/RPG game. A mix of hop-n-bop action and interaction with non-player characters, GGA challenges players to reclaim a stolen machine that can resurrect the dead. Two players can play simultaneously. using piggyback attacks to pool their power in the quest to retrieve the stolen contraption. Because of GGAs quirky made-in-Japan feel and soundtrack, it may puzzle some American gamers. But if the dialogue is polished, Goemon could offer a cool co-op experience.

Goemon and Ebisumaru, the heroes of The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, are rudely called back from their tropical vacation when they learn that Edo Castle has been taken over by a mysterious foreigner, General Macguinness. The odd ninja couple is joined by Sasuke, a clockwork ninja, on their journey through Japan for a cataclysmic showdown with the General who has converted the castle into a flying battleship. On the way, the crafty bunch battle a huge variety of armored bunnies and clockwork traps in wacky oriental settings.

Like TLMN, there are towns where the heroes can rest up, eat, and buy helpful items like health-restoring rice-balls, armor, and umbrellas. One town has gambling casinos where you can shoot craps and play small games for cash, and even an arcade with Konami's famous shooter Xexex that can be played to the end of Stage 1! As before, your characters can be powered-up by scooping up cats. And to do battle with the giant army of mecha robots, there is Goemon Impact, a giant robot that you can fight the huge Bosses with!

Stage One

Here, you must journey through simple side-scrolling pathways beating the pulp out of clockwork samurai bunnies. After a while, you will enter a level that takes place in a sumo wrestling coliseum. Leap on giant abacuses and even take control of a sumo suit that you can use to trample the little bunnies!

Stage Two

Enter a goofy Japanese setting where bamboo bridges are cut apart by chain saws and a gigantic ogre will bust out the bridge under your feet! Then travel though a forest into a kabuki hall where those colored leaves float in the back and giant Kabuki try to take you out with their hairdos! It's a strange stage.

Named after a popular cartoon character in Japan, Konami's next release will be meant just for the Japanese market. Actually this is the third/in the Goemon series as the other two games were famicom softs. You must avoid the ghosts which chase after you while gathering treasure chests and power-ups. Good kung-fu moves and plenty of action make for a good action game.

With a playable version on hand at the recent Tokyo Game Show, Konami's N64 update of their classic Goemon series (sadly only the first SNES game reached these shores, as Legend of the Mystical Ninja, and then with probably the worst translation ever) is rapidly nearing completion.

While the actual structure of the game seems to have been carried over pretty much intact, the lightweight RPG/action platforming format has been given the expected 3D overhaul, and even Konami admit that it's expected to take Mario 64 head-on. Hopefully it won't merely be a Mario clone, though: Goemon always had so much more to offer, like a simultaneous two-player feature and loads of great little sub-games. You could bet on the races, vent your anger in the Mole Bash and even play perfect mini versions of other Konami games like Gradius and Xexe.Whether Goemon 5 will include a mini GTI Club is still unknown, but we can dream can't we?

Fortunately one thing Goemon definitely hasn't lost is its bizarre sense of humour. This time around Goemon and his usual entourage -- the rather mentally unstable

Ebisumaru, the robot Sasuke and the ninja/mermaid girl Yae -- take on the twisted might of the New Momoyama (Peach Mountain) Shogunate and their nefarious plans to turn feudal Japan into a stage musical (?!). Well, it makes a change to fascist foreigners in rabbit suits.

Goemon 5 certainly looks extremely promising and we'll be travelling all over 16th century Japan following Goemon's progress in future issues of N64 Magazine.