Reviews from

in the past


it seems alright so far idk. it took me a couple minutes to understand what to do but it was alright. you jump and upgrade your weapons n stuff. you have to find 3 passes throughout the area to progress to the next level. i got to level 3 today.

The very first Goemon game. I've had a very keen interest in the Goemon franchise for a very long time but never got around to playing any game. I finally started with the first in the series and I don't really like to be too harsh to NES games, but there really are much better NES games. Having said that, Goemon 1 plays like a run and gun Zelda game without any of the puzzles or creativity. There's no map and every level feels the same - randomly generated. It's honest to God repetitive. Thank God for the internet otherwise I wouldn't bare this one. I know the series gets good from the SNES games but I'm still willing to give Goemon 2 a try to see if there are any improvements. Wouldn't really recommend this one unless you're curious to see how the Goemon franchise began.

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

Let’s just get this out of the way here: Goemon kicks ass. Ass. Do you hear. Okay. You may remember this fellow from a few games (three I think) called Mystical Ninja. But there were a whole HELL of a lot more in Japan. Yup. This is the first one. It’s pretty simple, but it’s fun, so yay. You run around and smack people (but not the ladies, please) and collect three passes to move on. I guess Goemon’s this hero fellow who gives to the poor and stuff, but it’s hard to tell. You can upgrade your shoes to run faster, and you get a slingshot, and a candle so you can see hidden stairways, and a whole hell of a lot of items that I don’t know WHAT they’re used for, and this sentence doesn’t make much sense. Just play the game dammit. Geez.

yeah this games fun until you realize its just a bunch of annoying mazes where you need to backtrack and find secrets to even progress

Me just starting this game: neat, it’s like a goofy version of every zatoichi movie I’ve ever seen

Me two hours into this game: WHERE IS THE FUCKING GATE


Buon titolo action, che purtroppo viene eclissato da titoli a esso contemporanei (tra cui il primo Zelda). Apprezzo parecchio la resa dei fondali e il tentativo di includere sprite di nemici assai variegati che potessero restituire l'impressione di trovarsi per le strade di un Giappone feudale: pescivendoli, guardie cittadine (che ti lanciano lanterne appresso), mercanti, ladri (che, quando colpiscono il giocatore, gli sottraggono alcune monete), uomini che trasportano delle lettighe (che, in un contesto di miseria, se entrano in contatto col personaggio giocante lo trasportano a forza a inizio livello e gli rubano alcune monete d'oro), e molti altri. Lungo il tragitto sono anche presenti animali ostili e alcuni demoni, in particolare in stage boschivi o lungo il mare.

Durante i singoli stage, è possibile acquisire e acquistare varia oggettistica: può essere equipaggiabile o utile per recuperare vita. C'è anche la possibilità di ottenere una fionda, con cui atterrare i nemici dalla distanza. Strumento molto utile e che riduce drasticamente la possibilità di toccare inavvertitamente un avversario se, invece, si prova ad attaccarlo da vicino con la pipa (kiseru).
Per passare allo stage successivo è necessario trovare, in quello corrente, tre pass. Alcuni di essi si trovano in stanze segrete, ed è curioso come, per esplorarle, si passi a una visuale in prima persona tipica dei dungeon crawler (non si avvicina comunque al genere, non essendoci puzzle o combattimenti da svolgere in queste sessioni, che sono oltretutto assai brevi e lineari).
Purtroppo questo è anche uno dei motivi principali per cui come gioco non mi è andato particolarmente a genio: alcune di queste stanze sono sotterranee e in posizioni totalmente casuali. Per poterle individuare, è necessario che il personaggio salti su di esse. Il salto è l'azione svolta anche per aprire scrigni e vasi, ma nel caso delle stanze sotterranee il gioco mi è risultato inutilmente tedioso a fronte della possibilità di adottare un qualsiasi altro stratagemma per permettere l'ottenimento di tali pass. Alternativamente, per scoprire tali passaggi, si può acquistare una candela (di durata temporanea) in grado di svelarli: anche così, si tratta di un sistema tedioso e superfluo.
Il livello di difficoltà non è molto alto, ma procedendo con gli stage questi si arricchiranno di pericoli e la partita diventerà più dinamica. Inoltre, finita una partita si ha la possibilità di ricominciare da capo a difficoltà più elevata.

The first Goemon game on home consoles. It borrows a bit from The Legend of Zelda, especially with that top-down view, in that there are secret passages here and there. But the core of the gameplay is still a bit too basic to really still be interesting forty years later : all you have to do is kill enemies and find hidden keys to exit the levels. And that's it.
Not really worth anyone's time besides the historical aspect.

You mindlessly wander around trying to find out what to do. What riveting gameplay.

Definitely an interesting one for sure. Like many NES/famicom games, if you don't have a guide or at the very LEAST a manual to tell you what everything means, you will be absolutely SOL. Progression through the levels is tied to finding specific passes either in first person dungeon mazes or in secret areas that can only be found by jumping over the tile on the level that the entrance is on, so without a guide you are goin to be doing a LOT of wandering/jumping around to find everything. The game does have a little bit of leeway for the guideless players in that you can purchase candles to make the secret passages visible for a limited time, and you can spend a lot of money to buy a pass just in case you REALLY can't find that last one, but on the whole I highly suggest heading to good ol gamefaqs before hitting this game up. Most of the games difficulty comes from its obtuseness as there really aren't many demanding action setpieces (with the exception of a BS difficulty spike halfway through the game with regards to some precise platforming over instant death pits), so it's not one of those 8-bit games that comes at you both with insane challenge and obtuseness.

Overall, it was aight. I guess you could probably beat this guideless if you had a LOT of graph paper on hand but I just dont got the time for that nawsay? For being the first goemon game on a console, it's a solid start.

祖母が大好きだったゲームです。

missed a pass on one of the cancerous sea levels and was not going back through all that

the town levels are awesome though

A good action game. Your objective is to go around finding secret underground passageways and collect 3 "passes" in a given level. Once you have three, you must find the exit to advance to the next level. You earn money by finding it and killing enemies along the way which you can spend on various things. My biggest complaint is that it's too easy to fall off ledges to an instant death, which is a big deal since there are no continues.