Soreyuke Ebisumaru - translated as "Go Forth Ebisumaru! The Trick Labyrinth - The Mystery of Goemon's Disappearance!!", is a pretty lousy puzzle game starring the titular fat ninja. Viewed from an overhead angled perspective, you are given a small level and must guide Ebisumaru to the end. He's not too smart and will follow the path laid out for him, except for the arrow tiles. Your job is to flip the arrow tiles so he gets to the end before time runs out. The clock isn't your only enemy, as you'll have to guide Ebisumaru away from bad guys, and also make sure you don't accidentally guide him off the edge. There are random items strewn about the board that give bonus points, although they aren't too important. This came out when computer rendering was all the rage and the cutscene graphics are all CGI generated. They look like a terrible precursor to the N64 games, although the music is pretty decent. Since it utilizies a skewed 3/4 pespective, simply moving the cursor is difficult, and overall the game just isn't much fun.

Mononoke Sugoroku is actually pretty similar to, if not exactly the same as the cult hit Culcept. Which is itself a combination of the card game Magic: The Gathering and the board game Monopoly. The title doesn't translate too well - "Mononoke" is a type of monster and Sugoroku is a type of dice game. You can play as eight characters - in additional to the usual Goemon foursome, there's Kurobei the cat, a living daruma doll named Darumaoidon, and cutesified versions of the wind and thunder gods, Fuujinsusume and Raijinsusume. It's a little weird that this title appeared on the Nintendo 64, as it's almost entirely in 2D. It may have been due to the four controller ports, since this is meant to be a party game. There is a single player mode, but it's very slow paced. And really, it's no fun to play a board game by yourself.

When you start the game, you have a deck of Ofuda cards, which you can set up on squares around the board. If one of your opponents lands on that square, then battle ensues. This may sound exciting, but it really just means they pick one of their cards to fight your card. Other than picking additional cards to boost various statistics, you don't actually interfere with the battle - if your card is more powerful, you win, and do damage to your opponent. If your card sucks, then you lose and get hurt. If someone runs out of HP, they're out of the game, so it's a simple contest of being the last man standing. Using the Transfer Pak, you can transfer monsters you've collected from the corresponding Game Boy Color game and turn them into cards to use here. There are 240 total cards. All of the monsters are based off of Japanese mythology, and the boards are usually pretty wacky - one takes place on top of a gigantic soup boul. It's an interesting concept, but you're really better off getting Culdcept for the PS2, as that's available in English.

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Way back in the day, more than a decade before Mononoke Sugoroku Konami had published an actual board game based on the Goemon video games - or game, actually, as it tied in directly with the very first game on the Famicom. Accordingly Ebisumaru, Yae, and Sasuke are nowhere to be seen, and all (up to) five players just take the role of Goemon in different colors.

It was hard enough to even unearth one copy of this game, and that didn't come with the manual, so there's no way to know the actual mechanics, but it seems like a pretty close rendition of the Famicom game, more precisely of its first levels that take place in the village, hence the subtitle Machi Hen ("Village Edition"). The Goemons run around the map, find or purchase powerups, gather gold and even descent into the underground on seperate playfields to search for hidden treasure. Instead of a dice, the game uses a transparent mallet, inside of which are three coins with different numeric values on each side.

Another one not much is to be said about, Ebisumaru Kiki Ippatsu is a typical LCD handheld action game were Goemon has to rescue Ebisumaru, who has been captured by the villains.

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In more recent years, almost every classic Konami franchise has been made into a Pachislot machine by KPE, the Konami Group's slot machine and pachinko business. Those are not the boring old slot machines at your local bar, but high tech devices where an entire adventure unfolds on the screen depending on your success while you're feeding Konami all your change. The soundtrack of these "games" even gets released seperately, although the one for Goemon is rather boring and inconspicios compared to the crazy music of the classic games.

It is highly unlikely that anyone in the West will ever get or even want to play this, but at least one can dream what a Goemon game of the HD generation would look like, if it was ever made.

Being one of Konami's more notable characters, Goemon made appearances in several other games. He's a starring character in both Wai Wai World games, a series of games on the Famicom that was essentially huge fan service to Konami fans everywhere. There were also levels that took place in Goemon world - the stages in Wai Wai World 2 look particularly reminiscent of the original arcade game. Goemon also showed up as a playable character in the famicom baseball game Ganbare Pennant Race and the MSX Parodius, as well as the Super Famicom Gokujyou Parodius. There is also a whole stage based off the Goemon titles in Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, including a boss that looks like Goemon Impact. Goemon also stars in the Gameboy Advance title Konami Krazy Racers (known as Wai Wai Racing in Japan) - one of that game's race tracks is also based off the Goemon games, with theme music from the N64 Mystical Ninja. Finally, there is a vague nod towards the Goemon series in Otomedius, whose only male main character is called Emon-5 (makes sense when remembering that 5 is pronounced "go" in Japanese).

Outside of video games, Goemon and friends have also appeared on a number of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, in an interestingly different style. Yae also got a hilarious edit in the English version of her card, as she didn't have quite as flat a chest in the original.

Many popular video games in Japan got made into animated movies in the early 1990s, and Goemon was no exception from that fad. Like most of the lot, however, Ganbare Goemon: Jigen Jou No Akumu ("The Nightmare of the Dimension Fortress") is pretty bad.

It starts out promising enough: A nice feudal Japan atmosphere is build up and immediately disturbed by a goofy white alien. The visitor terryfies the Japanese around him, until he spots two hot chicks in modern day clothes. By now it becomes evident that the cute little alien is controlled by a lecher, fat fish monster that likes to play with dolls and is out to kidnap Omitsu. Goemon and Ebisumaru miss the action becasue they're busy playing antarctic adventure, so they have to rescue her after the fact.

And this is where the movie falls apart: As long as it actually tries to be a Goemon story, it succeeds, but apparently the producers didn't think Goemon was interesting enough to sustain a 25 minute short on its own. So the movie has to send the heroes into the titular Dimension Fortress, where they are transported into various other Konami games, all with a completely different drawing style. The Vic Viper in Gradius takes off in form of an ugly CGI render sequence, Castlevania gives the heroes a much more realistic look, while Twinbee isn't too far away from the Goemon standard. In every game Goemon and Ebisumaru are transformed into the local heroes and do local hero stuff, until they notice that they're actually themselves. Each sequence seems to end on totally arbitrary conditions, as if they were just completed levels in a video game.

The animations are not very good to begin with, but inside the "games," most action sequences aren't animated at all, but simply shown as a montage of stills. Sometimes the movie cuts to "actual" game graphics, where Goemon suddenly is bound to the local physics, so when he gets consequently hit by enemies, he plummets backwards down the tower he just climbed, like Simon Belmont would. But even the most silly cut-ins can't hide the fact that the movie doesn't really know what story to tell.

Worst is the ending, though: The big bad gets transformed into some handsome guy, and Omitsu immediately decides she wants to marry him. She is then further established as the dumbest, most shallow bitch ever as she flees and dilligently comes back immediately times and again, as the toad gets transformed back and forth at an increasing rate. And then the sorry excuse of an OVA ends, just like that.

Anime Ganbare Goemon was originally aired in Japan on TBS from October 1997 to March 1998. Even moreso than the older OVA, the Mystical Ninja anime TV series is completely and utterly terrible. While the games have never been extraordinarily sophisticated, the staff behind the anime seemed to think that the primary audience were little kids and made a by-the-numbers children's show. Instead of taking place in ancient Japan, the setting is modern day Tokyo. The evil Seppukumaru (the bad guy from Goemon 4 SFC) escapes from the Game World and begins to wreak havoc across the city. A little kid named Tsukasa is playing his favorite N64 game, Goemon X, when Goemon and pals hop out of the video game to stop Seppukumaru's shenanigans. Eventually, Goemon and friends take up residence in their house, with occasional cameos from Omitsu and the Wise Man. There's also a completely irrelevant subplot involving Tsukasa and his crush on his lady friend Asuka, who seems more interested in the snobbish rich kid. Naturally, Goemon is there to help Tsukasa win the girl.

The artwork and animation is absolutely atrocious, and the picture quality on the DVDs is pretty bad as well. Goemon Impact makes an appearance each episode to fight bad guys in the requisite showdown, but even he can't save the show. For that matter, where are the goofy intro songs? All of the music is generic, laid back pop trash, which is absolutely nothing what it should sound like. Where is the whole sense of humor, for that matter? The anime retains none of the wackiness that made the video games so brilliant. An example of some of the lame jokes? The running gag is that Tsukasa's mother doesn't think that it's strange for game characters to be running around the house - she just muses about how short they are.

For some reason, ADV licensed the anime and began releasing it in 2003 as Legend of the Mystical Ninja, but you have to wonder what they were thinking on this one. Why would they localize a shitty anime based on a video game series very few people have ever heard of? The dubbing is, of course, pretty bad, and they tend pronounce Goemon's name as "Goymon". The DVDs are readily available in case you want to expose yourself to this atrocity, but it's hard to imagine anyone other than a five year old kid actually finding much entertainment with this.

After the anime series, a second OVA was produced, which starts with the same premise: Goemon and friends are still in modern day Tokyo and fight Seppukumaru, who in this episode has hypnotized all the kids and uses them as an army that Goemon won't fight. The main kids from the TV series are nowhere to be seen, and while there is a new group of main brats, the focus here is mostly on the Goemon gang and Seppukumaru.

With a running time of just about unter 30 minutes, the OVA begs the question why it couldn't simply have been just another episode of the series. There is a good bit of action, though, and if it was one of the episodes, it would be the best. The animation is also a wee bit improved, but not all that much.

Ganbare Goemon: Chikyuu Kyuushutsu Sakusen