Goemon's Great Adventure

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.