Re-release this: Ganbare Goemon 2: Very Strange General McGuinness

This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

As far as Americans knew it, there was just the one The Legend of the Mystical Ninja game on the Super Nintendo. And, given the sales figures for that game — Konami didn’t even bother releasing the North American or European sales data, but it sold nearly half-a-million in Japan alone — most Americans didn’t even know about that one. It’s not a surprise, then, even if it’s a shame, that when The Legend of the Mystical Ninja received a sequel, that it released in Japan and in Japan only. As did the sequel to that game, and the sequel to that game.

North America would have to wait until 1997 and 1998 for a Game Boy port and two Nintendo 64 titles in the Goemon series, but in the five years in between Legend of the Mystical Ninja’s international release and Goemon’s return, Japan received six games in the series: one for the Game Boy (that also released in Europe), one for the Famicom, three for the Super Famicom, and the franchise’s first entry on the Playstation. Let’s Go Goemon 2: Very Strange Genera McGuiness is the first of those SFC titles, and a direct sequel to The Legend of the Mystical Ninja. In Japan, that game is known as Ganbare Goemon: Yukihime Kyūshutsu Emaki, while Ganbare Goemon 2 (not to be confused with Ganbare Goemon 2 on the Famicom) goes by the name Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shōgun McGuiness. Ganbare means “Go for it,” by the way, which is why you’ll see these games sometimes referred to as “Go For It! Goemon” or “Let’s Go! Goemon” when translated literally into English.

If it ever felt to you like there was a huge gap in understanding between what you experienced in The Legend of the Mystical Ninja and Goemon’s N64 adventures, well, there was. The art style changed with Ganbare Goemon 2, for one, and new playable characters, like the clockwork ninja Sasuke, were introduced as allies. Goemon Impact, the giant mech that Goemon sometimes pilots to take on various bosses, also showed up for the first time in Ganbare Goemon 2, which is why he’s sort of treated as old hat in Goemon’s Great Adventure even though you yourself might be going, “Wait, a mech?” at that moment.

It also marked the series’ transition into more platform-first design, instead of being as much of a mix between beat ‘em up-adjacent play mixed with platforming, as The Legend of the Mystical Ninja was. It makes the game a bit easier, but it’s not like Konami played it straight, either. Did you already forget about the whole mech thing? Goemon Impact has to be controlled in side-scrolling sections first, where destruction of enemies and buildings helps to build up an energy supply, which will then be used in a one-on-one battle with another mech. Those are played from a first-person perspective and use Mode 7 effects to simulate a battle in a 3D space, and, once you get the hang of the timing of blocking and punching, you’re going to enjoy them quite a bit.

Playing Ganbare Goemon 2 underscores why Konami was such a great fit for Animaniacs and Tiny Toons video game adaptations. Spend some time with any Goemon, really, and it becomes clear, but Ganbare Goemon 2 was the point where things really started to get looney, as it were. Japan has been invaded by General McGuinness, a stand-in for Commodore Matthew Perry and his 19th century visit to Japan that opened up relations between that country and America. Except here, instead of it being a mission of diplomacy, McGuinness has brought along an army of robot bunnies and key henchmen dressed up in cute bunny costumes, all so that he can — wait for it — build a replica of Japan underneath Japan to preserve Japanese culture forever. Yes, Konami answered the question, “What if Commodore Perry was a otaku with a robot rabbit army,” something no one besides them were asking. But it’s great that they did.

The villages and towns of Ganbare Goemon 2 are now safe havens rather than another obstacle to overcome on your way to the platforming stages. These places are still full of all kinds of people milling about, but they’re no longer trying to kill you — they’re just walking around, doing their thing, going to and fro. There are some thieves to watch out for, but believe me, they’re drawn in shady ways so that you notice both the ones who try to take money from you and those who want to swipe your weapon upgrades, so avoiding them isn’t a significant lift. The in-town combat portion of Goemon is over, though, so you can just focus instead on exploring, on finding the inn or the hot springs or the shops for armor or food or minigames to play.

It feels as if the stages themselves are a bit shorter this time around, likely in part because you don’t have the two distinct parts anymore. This is, for the most part, just a straight 2D, sidescrolling platformer instead of having to fight your way through villages in a more beat ‘em up setting where you can move up and down and all around in addition to side-to-side, which you’d then have to experience in the first half of some stages as well before the checkpoints and switching up of the level design. Things are more streamlined here, but again, things like first-person mech battles help everything stay fresh, and, of course, the general design of what’s on offer does more than a little bit of work, as well.

There’s co-op once again, only now there are three characters to choose from. Goemon, naturally, as well as his returning ally Ebisumaru, and the “Clockwork Ninja” Sasuka, who was created by the Wise Old Man just like the mech. They all play differently, and in a way that also serves as different difficulty levels: Ebisumaru is the easiest to play as, Goemon the mid-range option, and Sasuka the toughest. None of them are necessarily worse or better options, as it’s all a feel and preference thing, but you’ll start with less money if you play as Sasuke, for instance, and the most possible starting money if you’re Ebisumaru. The animations for how enemies are defeated also differs depending on who you’re playing as. Sasuka slices robot bunnies right in half with his kunai, while Goemon bashes them on the head with his pipe until they explode. When Goemon picks up a cat statue to upgrade his weapon, his pipe extends, giving him additional range for his melee attacks, but for Sasuke, he’s now able to throw his knives a short distance.

Ridable robots are also a thing in Ganbare Goemon 2, often picked up from defeated enemies who were riding them previously. There’s a robot fish that lets you swim with ease but moves slow on land, for instance. These robots make levels easier, since they fire shots from their mouths and can defeat enemies at range, but there’s a drawback to them, which is that you won’t receive any money for enemies defeated using them. If your wallet is looking good and you want to preserve health, ride that robot animal to your heart’s content. If your health is fine and you need the cash, though, skip riding them, and do things the old-fashioned way.

Graphically, you can see Konami’s mastery of the Super Famicom hardware showing. There’s some slowdown, yeah, but that’s just the system we’re talking about. Remember, Treasure was formed by ex-Konami devs who wanted to make Gunstar Heroes for the Sega Genesis specifically because they knew it could handle all the action they had in mind in a way the SNES — which they were exceptionally familiar with by that time — could not. Some of the Sega does what Nintendon’t stuff could be overblown, sure, but not all of it. Performance aside, visually, Ganbare Goemon 2 just looks amazing. It’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s vibrant, it’s detailed. It manages to convey the same kind of vibe as the extremely busy and colorful box art of the Goemon games, which is no small thing.

The soundtrack that accompanies all of this is also exceptional, with the trio of Kazuhiko Uehara, Tomoya Tomita, Nobuyuki Akena taking a real liking to the bass effects of the Super Famicom to power many of the tracks, in a masterful blend of traditional Japanese instrumentation and more modern sounds that perfectly fits a series set in Japan’s past, but featuring robots and mechs. Also, “Samurai Woods” is absolutely just Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground,” but no one has to tell the feds about that. Hey, if society is going to let the Red Hot Chili Peppers get away with covering that song, then Konami can be excused for sticking a version of it into Ganbare Goemon 2.

Ganbare Goemon 2 was directed by Etsunobu Ebisu, who had, before this, been a programmer on the games. Ebisu is such a significant part of Goemon’s history that the character of Ebisuramu is actually named and modeled after him. He would end up as the director for the Super Famicom sequels to Ganbare Goemon 2, as well as Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, while serving in production on additional games in the series. Ebisu would leave Konami in 2005 to form Good-Feel, which, after nearly two decades, returned to at least the idea of a Goemon-style game with Bakeru, a 3D platformer released for the Switch and Steam. If you’ve been waiting for something in the vein of Goemon, there it is: consider it the series equivalent to the former developer spiritual successor trend that other Konami series like Castelvania and Suikoden had already been swept up in in recent years.

Ganbare Goemon 2 has still never been released outside of Japan, and frankly, might never be. It’s possible that it shows up on Nintendo Switch Online, untranslated as sometimes happens with previously Japan-only titles, but you’d miss at least some of the enjoyment of Goemon’s over-the-top dialogue and presentation if you couldn’t read what was going on because of the language barrier. And Konami hasn’t been nearly as forthcoming with Nintendo Switch Online releases as you’d imagine they’d be, either: The Legend of the Mystical Ninja hasn’t even made it there yet, so its sequels getting worldwide releases seems unlikely at this stage, too. But hey, maybe, like with the excitement surrounding Eiyuden Chronicle causing Konami to dust off Suikoden, maybe Bakeru doing well will cause them to remember that Goemon exists.

That being said, there are multiple unofficial translations of Ganbare Goemon 2 out there right now instead of just hypothetically, with a pair of English-language options by different teams, as well as German and Spanish patches. If you’re the emulating sort, that’s the solution to your problem of not having enough Goemon right there. And Ganbare Goemon 2 is absolutely worth becoming the emulating sort for if you’re not already there.

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