Games from Across the Multiverse: Goemon: Boiling Over!
While I cannot specify how or why, I have been given the ability to connect with my alternate selves across the multiverse indirectly. This provides me with a window into many of the infinite possibilities by sharing retrospectives written by another self from another reality. This retrospective comes from the Third Strongest mole of Verse 1001, where Konami seems to be in a much better place, starting with a soft reboot of one of their most beloved series: Great Ninja Goemon.
It’s strange to think that the video game development giant Konami was once in danger of fading into obscurity. Perhaps somewhere in the multiverse there is a world where they continued on a downward spiral to become a shell of their former self, but that could not be further from the truth today. Many would point to 2015’s souls-like Castlevania: Cadenza of Doom as the point where Konami reversed it’s fortunes and earned a place on the top of the list of gaming’s most talked about companies, paving the way for such ambitious projects as next-year’s “open universe” Gradius reboot, and while that may be true in terms of financial success, the template of adapting well-known beloved franchises for the modern age began with the oft overlooked late PS2 era release of Goemon: Boiling Over!
Releasing on the Playstation 2 just before the Playstation 3 launch later the same year did not do the game any favors in sales, and neither did the public’s general unfamiliarity with Goemon. Even the Japanese audience seemed unimpressed, let alone the global market that hadn’t received most of the past games. This is likely the reason the game featured relatively few characters or elements from past games, with Goemon himself as the only playable character, and longtime companions Ebisumaru, Yae, and Sasuke, reduced to minor NPC roles. The idea seems to have been to reboot the franchise with a global, modern audience in mind. The sales numbers indicate that this did not exactly work. Which is a shame, because the game is actually incredibly fun, if a little limited in its scope.
While some may dismiss Boiling Over as little more than another GTA clone and ultimately a cash grab, as someone who loves this series there couldn’t have been a more perfect fit of a classic character with a modern gameplay style. Besides, I can’t think of any alleged “gta knockoff” that has this much style and charm. The game is really just a sandbox with the “heat” meter (indicated by a visibly heating pot of boiling water, in reference to the Goemon of legend’s execution method) rolling out more and more hostile forces as Goemon causes trouble. This is in keeping with the earliest Goemon games, where townspeople could be attacked but it would cause characters around to become hostile until you left. But the sandbox also fits well with one of the series other long-standing staples: tons of mini games, many based on Konami’s past. Just like playing Gradius in the original Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Boiling Over’s main city includes a number of hidden arcade machines, some of which are very easy to miss. I actually first played Jackal inside this game and that alone might have been worth it.
Aside from the basic premise being a stroke of genius, the actual gameplay occupies a unique niche within the sandbox genre. With an emphasis on evading enemies to lie low while the temperature meter dies down, the game avoids the repetitive nature of it’s beat’em up-like controls by encouraging the player to run when things get tough. And the classic use of thrown coins as Goemon’s main projectile weapon means that players will have to weigh the cost literally if they choose to rely on a more indirect approach to combat. The most frequent way to accomplish this is through the town’s rooftops like any good ninja, which leads to occasions for platforming. While this could have been a real benefit to the variety in gameplay, this game doesn’t really work too well as a platformer. Similarly, the dungeon-like mission areas that take place outside of town show how tedius the game can feel when focused only on combat or platforming, especially since these areas are the easiest to farm money. The most fun to be had is in the town area, the most expansive in the game, which features plenty of missions to do but is of course mostly fun for messing around as much as possible.
The other part of Boiling Over that stands out is its sense of humor. While certainly juvenile and very Japanese, the localization team did a great job with the difficult task of adapting things to a worldwide audience with varied sensibilities. While some decry any and all changes from the japanese release, in my opinion, this only enhances the humor in most cases. Call it censorship if you must, but the creativity shown in keeping the tanuki statues testicles out of view (from all possible angles no less) is impressive. The game itself is very aware of how bizarre some of the changes can be and chooses to simply revel in it. This can be seen at the bar where the patrons are all enjoying non-alcoholic “funtime juice”…. with a clearly wasted man outside who explains he got kicked out after drinking too much. All in all, I find the level of humor paired with restraint to be just right. While not exactly squeaky clean, it’s commendable that this was a game that was still more or less appropriate for kids…. I think.
The absence of Goemon staples is felt all the more because this game didn’t receive a follow-up. It’s easy to think that the team, under a tight schedule, had to withhold some of their ideas to meet the deadline with the hopes they would be able to implement them in a sequel that was never meant to be. How cool would it have been to demolish the entire town piloting Goemon Impact? Had I played the game at its initial release, I would have been anticipating a sequel for a long time. As it stands, it seems more a reminder of what could have been, but also, as I began this retrospective, a game that showed Konami’s path to the future: marrying its back-catalogue of beloved IP to new-school gameplay styles with a unique twist. While the series has been dormant since, it’s a victim of that very formula’s success, as the recent Castlevania revival and other projects have diverted attention away from Goemon. Perhaps he’ll get his time to shine again soon.
