Many people would debate when the Ganbare Goemon series peaked. For many people who grew up with the Nintendo 64, the first Goemon game for that system, Neo-Momoyama Bakufu no Odori (Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon) is the best in the series. For others, who either grew up in Japan during the time or imported the games, the Super Famicom era stands as the peak in the series’ history, with a split between Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shogun McGuinnessand Manjigatame as the best game. (There will be others who might vote for the original Karakuri Dōchū, or Ganbare Goemon 2, or Kira Kira Dōchū: Boku ga Dancer ni Natta Wake, but that is a debate for another time.)
It is therefore no surprise to see Manjigatame, together with Yuki-Hime Kyushutsu no Emaki and McGuinness, was made available on Nintendo’s Virtual Console service across the Wii, WiiU, and Nintendo 3DS, as well as the Nintendo Power service at convenience stores. Not only that, in a somewhat significant move, Manjigatame was also released as a mobile phone game for the J-Sky, iMode, and EZweb platforms in Japan in the early 2000s–the only Goemon game to have undergone that treatment. In fact, this mobile port is particularly of note here, as the whole game was distributed digitally in chapters, with the iMode port containing all of the chapters. And just like McGuinness, the minigame-like sections of the game were also ported as part of the Tsukai Game Appli mobile ports.
The Virtual Console port of the game is very good, although with a few asterisks. Many people complain about how the Virtual Console emulation displays Super Famicom games, but Manjigatame seems to suffer more than other Goemon games; the CRT filter dulls the colors of the game and, critically, makes the font used in the game very uncomfortable to read. It is very odd, given how good the CRT filter was for Yuki-Hime and McGuinness, but once you turn off the filter, you will find a version that plays great, and, unlike McGuinness, does not seem to suffer from input lag or other emulated-related issues. Unfortunately, one important item to note about the Virtual Console ports, of course, is that as of this writing, the Virtual Console, as part of the eshop service, is scheduled to be shut down in March 2023, taking down with it a significant source of the Goemon legacy that is officially available to play. I would have recommended this version to most people, but now I would encourage Goemon fans to look elsewhere.
Naturally, the physical cartridge versions are also a viable option if you want to play the game, but note that, like many other Goemon games, the game features a few significant bugs (including a couple of game- and save file-breaking ones) that were fixed with later re-releases. Information about these re-releases is hard to come by, and many sites simply label them as Rev 1 and Rev 2, but the actual cartridges are difficult to differentiate. (Prices have also gone up significantly in the past two years for a complete in-box copy of the game, and even loose cartridges are not so reasonably priced.)
As is increasingly becoming the case for the Goemon series, the game is perhaps most accessible via emulation. Rev 2, which I suspect is the version released for the Nintendo Power service, is the best way to enjoy the game.
The Mechanical Leg-Hold of DDS Translations!
Most Goemon fans are probably aware that DDS Translations released an English translation patch for Manjigatame in early 2020, alongside the translation for McGuinness. This was extremely welcome news for many Goemon fans in the west, as, unlike McGuinness, this game requires a working knowledge of Japanese in order to progress. However, due to a couple of lines, and especially one controversial exchange in the game in particular, the translation gained quite a bit of notoriety–something I will focus on in a future essay–which is unfortunate, as it is perhaps the group’s best translation out of the five they produced. Aside from some curious minor mistakes here and there, the translation really understands what the game is about, and comes alive after the initial chapter.
In a curious development, there are four versions of the English translation patch itself, as the translation group tried to fix various technical bugs that might have been introduced by the patch (originally, it seems the patch had to be applied to the first version of the game), or tone down the controversial elements of the translated text itself. The game has also been translated into Spanish by jackic, and features perhaps an even better translation, more in spirit with the original tone of the game in Japanese–although perhaps that is just a matter of taste.
Project Goemon 