For November 2020, the retro games of the month shall be:
- The Legend of the Mystical Ninja – 1991 – action-adventure
- Meteos – 2005 – tile-matching puzzle
In 1986 Konami created an arcade game called Mr. Goemon, and a Famicom game called Ganbare Goemon! (Go for it, Goemon!). They would go on to release more titles in the series for Famicom, Super Famicom, Playstation, Nintendo 64, the Game Boy consoles, and a final entry for the DS. Most of these games would only see a Japanese audience, the exceptions being two N64 games, a Game Boy game, and this SNES game. In Japan it was titled Ganbare Goemon: Yukihime Kyuushutsu Emaki (Go for it Goemon: The Rescue of Princess Yuki), but for the Western release it was titled The Legend of the Mystical Ninja. It released in Japan in 1991, in the US in 1992, and in Europe in 1994.
Ishikawa Goemon is a legendary figure from Japan’s samurai era, an outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor (perhaps not unlike Robin Hood). His escapades were recounted (and embellished) in kabuki drama, and to this day he has continued to show up in works of pop culture, either as a young ninja or as a huge hulking bandit. Konami’s take on the character is decidedly sillier, giving him lighthearted romps in a wacky Sengoku setting full of slapstick and anachronisms.
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja is an early example of a Western localization attempting to bring over a game that was more steeped in Japanese cultural references than most other games coming over from Japan. A lot was altered, including the main characters’ names (Goemon and Ebisumaru became… Kid Ying and Dr. Yang). This was back in 1992 though, and it was much more likely a game of this sort would simply have just stayed in Japan (which is what happened with the two Super Famicom sequels that followed this one). It is interesting to look back and see how far the gaming industry has come in this respect – nowadays we can play stuff like Samurai Warriors and Okami, or Persona and Yakuza, and these titles can find a worldwide audience just fine.
This entry in the Goemon series might not have been a smash hit overseas back in the day, but these days seems generally-regarded as a standout title for the SNES. It can be played single-player or co-op with a friend. The gameplay for this is pretty varied. There are town exploration stages which play something like a beat-em-up, letting you move about forward and back (as well as left and right). In RPG-esque fashion you can also buy items and learn new attacks. And you can play all sorts of mini-games, which the Goemon series in general is apparently known for. Each stage in this game also has more standard side-scroller platforming, complete with a boss at the end. In two-player mode, one character can ride piggy-back on the other, to make tricky jumping segments more manageable.
Howlongtobeat dot com says this takes about 5 hours to play through. Give it a shot, and share what you think of its unique blend of gameplay styles! It can be played on the SNES, and on the Virtual Console for Wii and Wii U.
The “falling block” or “tile-matching” puzzle game genre has become a tough one to stand out in these days, thanks to the million Bejeweled, Puzzle Bobble, and Tetris clones that have flooded mobile phone app stores. This was a bit less of an issue back in 2005 for Meteos – but still, it’s easier said than done to come up with a new take on this endlessly-replayable pick-up-and-play genre.
Producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi (see: Space Channel 5, Rez, and Lumines) and director Masahiro Sakurai (you may have heard of the Kirby series, or the Smash Brother games) decided to give tile-matching games a shot on the Nintendo DS (which had just come out a few months prior to this). Also worth noting, Mizuguchi would eventually come up with a remix on the Tetris formula itself with Tetris Effect.
At any rate, Meteos is a puzzle game designed around moving blocks with the DS stylus on the touch screen (blocks are only moved vertically). Remove blocks for as long as you can, your game ends when blocks reach the top of the screen. To remove blocks, you launch them like rockets – this is done by getting three or more of the same-colored blocks together (either horizontally or vertically). Part of the catch is that the blocks will launch with any blocks stacked on top of them in tow – which is good, but that also means the pile of blocks might be too heavy for this “rocket” to actually leave the screen. Linking more of the same-colored blocks together in that pile can power up the “rocket” more. If you can’t do that, at least the top blocks that leave the screen will disappear before the “rocket” descends back to where it was before.
So the game quickly becomes quite frantic! But will Meteos hook you the same way games like Tetris or Puyo Puyo might have? I think it’s worth a shot. There is a Disney-themed take on this game also available for the DS, but that one allows you to move the blocks horizontally as well as vertically. Variations of Meteos were also released for cell phones, PC, and Xbox Live Arcade.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on either (or both) of these games as you play them over the course of November. If you finish, you can give a mini-review if you’d like. Let us know if you think these games stand the test of time!
