We've reached the end of the daily conferences (except for whatever that weird PC Gaming one's about (probably PC gaming)) so now we can settle into a series of nightly shows and wondering how many of these announced games are going to end up delayed. But that's E3, and this is the Alternative to E3, so let's just forget that first sentence ever happened. Spin around three times and clap your hands: Poof! It no longer exists. It got poofed away. Don't go back to check.
Over here I'm still looking at N64 games, and especially those of a 3D platforming persuasion. I'm not sure if I'll ever get as in-depth with another platformer as I was with Super Mario 64, because that game really had no end of weird ideas, but I'm sure I'll do something with the other prominent staples. These Alternative to E3 subjects aren't precisely staples themselves, but I still consider all four of them important/fun enough to comment on in a one-off fashion. For the prior (and, eventually, subsequent) Alternative to E3 2015 entries, just check the table at the bottom of the page. Thanks, and continue to enjoy E3 or enjoy ignoring E3.
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja was a fantastic Super Nintendo game: actually the third (or fourth, or even eighth depending on the metric you want to use) in the Ganbare! Goemon series, it balanced top-down exploration, side-scrolling action and that Konami sense of humor that was distinctively, almost overwhelmingly Japanese. Repurposing the Goemon Ishikawa legend for a rudimentary Kabuki-themed Arcade game, Konami would decide to inject some humor into the world of one of Japan's oldest folklore heroes and continue pushing the envelope with each subsequent Goemon game, heaping all sorts of non-sequiturs and anachronistic absurdities on top of a solid bedrock of action-platformer gameplay.
These facets culminated, at least in the West where we only saw a handful of Goemon localizations, with 1997's Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (addressing the main character by his proper name, rather than the egregious appellation of "Kid Ying"). This game... is so goddamn weird. I suppose I'd be better off demonstrating:
I think I'd better leave it there, before I get into any more trouble posting all these giant screenshots while the site's already taking the strain of everything E3-related. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon is easily one of my favorite games for the system, and though its merger of action, adventure, RPG and platformer elements doesn't always mesh perfectly, the game's one of the funniest and weirdest that the US and Europe ever saw officially for the N64. It's a testament to the popularity of the original SNES game, I suppose, but then it's not like we saw hide nor hair of the subsequent four (!) Super Famicom games in this franchise. I guess it was more a decision borne of necessity: the system was lacking for early third-party support overseas, with most of the industry producing games for the PlayStation, so anything that wasn't shogi or mahjong was probably considered for localization.
Anyway, I highly recommend this one, though I'm sure you can all appreciate that I can't give this the same treatment that I did with Super Mario 64. It's weird, but in more of a stylistic/narrative way than Super Mario 64's many odd mechanical gimmicks and ideas. The open-world nature of it means I'll probably have to skip much of the gameplay, grabbing shots only for plot-integral moments and cutscenes - both of which lose a lot in staid screenshot form, including not least of all the amazing soundtrack.
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