Famicom Title "Ganbare Goemon Gaiden: Kieta Ōgon Kiseru" Translated to English

These are some of my favorite games of all time! I wish more of them made it to the West, but I might have to find a way to get my hands on this cartridge so I can try out the new translation!

What a charming game. Everything about it looks, and sounds, wonderful.

I'd be all over this on Virtual Console. I loved Super NES Mystical Ninja and would love a new entry in the series. Come on Konami give us this (and Pro Evo Switch while you're at it).

Nice. It's great when more people have access to the Goemon games. It's easily one of my favorite game series (and one of the very few I have a complete collection of).

For me, this one was okay. It looks and sounds great, and it's humorous, but the combat is pretty basic, and all the dungeons only consist of winding hallways filled with random encounters. I guess almost all the RPGs were like that back then, but still.

@Krisi There is a certain purity to it all. I rather like it.

@Milton_Burle You mean the first one on the SNES, right? Just because there are actually 4 of them, plus a spinoff!

A new Goemon game would be incredibly awesome, but I doubt it's going to happen; the last one we got was on the DS 12 years ago. Since then, most of the main people who worked on these games have left Konami, and went to form Good-Feel (the guys behind Yoshi's Woolly World and Kirby's Epic Yarn), so as always, I'm dreaming about Nintendo buying the Goemon franchise, and giving it to Good-Feel to work on. That would be amazing.

Anyway, there are almost always new Goemon games you could play, as there are more than 25 of them. And it doesn't seem like it has a huge presence in the west, but actually 6 of them are available outside of Japan. That's still just a small part of the series, but if you think about it, six games is not that few.

-There's Legend of the Mystical Ninja on the SNES, which is also available on all of Nintendo's Virtual Console services.
-There's the first N64 title, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, which is a Zelda-like adventure, and is absolutely great in my opinion.
-There's the second N64 title, called Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon 2 in Europe, and Goemon's Great Adventure in the US, which plays like the "main" Goemon games starting from the second SNES game, which consists of sidescrolling platforming levels with some villages in between.
-There's the absolutely terrible Game Boy game, also called Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, which is also available on the 3DS eShop, but it's arguably the worst game in the entire series, it's a shame it was one of the games Konami decided to translate.
-There's also a localised version of the first Game Boy Goemon game, but it's only available on the European-only GBC compilation cart, Konami GB Collection 3. They also call this one Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, which is starting to become incredibly confusing, but it's actually a completely different game from what we got on the Game Boy, and it's absolutely better in every way, without any doubt.
-And lastly, the very first Goemon game, an arcade title called Mr. Goemon was actually released for the Xbox360 and PS4 online stores. The latter is a part of the Arcade Archives thingy, so I'm really hoping they are going to release it for the Switch as well.

But even most of the other games are perfectly playable with minimal to no Japanese knowledge, and they absolutely worth tracking down.

Woo, a @Shiryu article!

want mystical ninja 64 SO BAD!

Thanks for highlighting this, I'll be getting it onto my Famicom Everdrive. Is this the only Goemon game from the Famicom that's been translated?

Also another question if anyone knows the answer please. I've noticed when looking for Japanese games that sometimes a 'u' is used in a name, but other times it isn't. For example with this game, here you've called it "ogon" but when I've searched online it can come up as "ougon". I've noticed this on loads of Japanese games, usually at the end of a word where an "o" becomes "ou". I've always wondered why?

@GravyThief A "u" after an "o" makes it longer, so "ou" is basically a long "o". It's sometimes written as "ō". Some people don't bother with all this, and just type a simple "o", which I really don't agree with, because it changes the pronunciation, and sometimes even the meaning.

There's also "aa", "ii", "uu", and "ei", which lengthen those vowels, and some people also write them as simply "a" or "i", which is just as bad.

Oh, and there's sometimes also "oo" instead of "ou", but that's only in special cases, and it's pronounced the same way, so don't worry about it.

@Krisi thanks very much for explaining. I find Japanese a fascinating language from what little I know of it. And yes, I have come across the other examples you mention when I'm searching for Japanese games, though from memory the o/ou differences are the ones I've seen the most. Very interesting, cheers!

@Jack_Goetz Hey, I'm always around. Nintendo Life for, erm... Life!

@GravyThief Yes here are since none of the original Famicom games made it to the West.

I see @Krisi already explained the "ō" for you. Since we also use accentuation of vowel in Portuguese , I always try to stick to the original correct written titles of the games.

Looks cool, but I find 8-bit RPGs impossible to get to, they tend to feel so slow and clunky.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on the N64 is one of my most fondly remembered childhood games.

@Bobb Skip to 3:22 in the video.

Ganbare Goemon 2 on the SNES is also getting translated by Avicalendriya and DDS Translation, and they're almost done with it. https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=20026.0

@G-Boy Don't worry, I''m on top of that since it was firs announced last year.

It's unfortunate that japanese culture is so dead that we can't have anything charismatic these days. All copycats, all poopie I Am Setsuna JRPG.

Is the pipe a flute or just some regular plumbing made of gold?

@Fandabidozi It's a smoking pipe, Goemon's weapon of choice.

@Shiryu That game actually looks really fun too

Wanted to make a cute little note — this reminded me of when Demi @ NeoDemiForce translated Ganbare Goemon! Karakuri Douchuu for me many many years ago We were friends over IRC (Internet Relay Chat for those who weren't around when all the ROM hacking started). There's a shout out to me in the title screen

https://www.romhacking.net/?page=translations&action=images&id=565&imageid=title&orig=0

Goemon games are amazing and the lack of localization of more than just the SNES "Mystical Ninja" and Goemon 64 (Mystical Ninja starring Goemon) are a huge shame!

@G-Boy Thanks for the heads up. I had read about a SuFami GG2 project by Aeon Genesis years ago but it never seemed to go anywhere, so it's good to know that someone else worked on this in the end. I hope they all get translated, the SuFami ones, I own them all physically, CiB, even the Ebisumaru Puzzle game spinoff.

Nice but I'd sooner see all the SNES Goemon games translated. They're gorgeous looking games but sadly as yet untranslated, aside from the first one.

@moroboshi That was deemed nearly impossible a few years back thanks to the incredibly hard work to pull of. Yet, keep watching this space for further news... soon... ^_^

Glad there's finally a patch. This came out the same yr as Little Ninja Brothers, which my video store had as soon as it was released (the "RPG"ish sequel to Kung Fu Heroes). Very similar.

So many hours with friends put into "Dragon Power" (DBZ nes), KFH, and LNB during that late 80's period. By the time Legend of the Mystical Ninja (Goeman SNES) and Super Ninja Boy were released, we were already in love with the J aesthetic. I still boot up Goeman on 64 just to see Awaji Island (and the peach mountain shoguns/gang haha). And tread the shores of the sunset soaked area. What an unforgettable game that is.

@Metroplex360 There are actually 5 localized Goemon games, plus the original arcade release is available in the west as well (and that one needs no localization whatsoever). Still, that still leaves 20+ games to be in Japanese only...