It’s been a long time since we saw a new Mystical Ninja game, or Ganbare Goemon in Japan, but a little glimmer of hope appeared for fans as Konami recently purchased the Goemon.com domain. [Thanks, Go Nintendo.]
The domain is currently blank and it didn’t show anything new other than a redirect to the official Japanese Goemon page, but the fact that Konami purchased it is actually pretty significant to fans who’ve been waiting for a new Mystical Ninja game.
The last game Japan got was Ganbare Goemon Pachislot 2 for Pachislot machines in 2011. Before that, Japan got a series of Ganbare Goemon: Tsukai Game Appli games for mobile phones in 2002 and 2003, and it also got a futuristic spinoff called Goemon: New Age Shutsudo! in 2002, and Ganbare Goemon: Tokai Dochu Oedo Tengu ri Kaeshi no Maki on Nintendo DS in 2005.
The series has seen all kinds of spinoffs and smaller main entry titles, but the last time it was localized outside of Japan was Goemon’s Great Adventure for Nintendo 64 in 1998. The year before that we saw the release of Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on Nintendo 64 as well.
While a new Goemon game would be awesome, this could simply be Konami sorting through their IP domains, so we’ll try not getting our hopes up too high, but we won’t blame you for being a tiny bit excited considering how long the series has been dormant in both Japan and the West.
