Welcome to VC Weekly, N-Europe’s guide to the wonderful world of Nintendo’s download service. Written by Sam C Gittins

Me re-releasing an already revamped review? Which was originally written by my predecessor Jordan Khoviteri-Zadeh, so as to live off his past glories? Of course! For this is VC Weekly which most likely wouldn't have existed any other way. So although this edition may contain another game which has been re-released again, we should definitely be grateful for what we have, safe in the knowledge that we'll hopefully be seeing completely unreleased titles in the future coupled with more reviews written from the ground up. Anyway enough from me and on with the game! 
  
Available for download this week we have...   

The series which this game is from is without a doubt one of the most insane and misunderstood franchises ever made; The Legend of the Mystical Ninja will be unknown to most however, the N64 sequels Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon plus Goemon's Great Adventure are cult classics, it will be a great day when we finally get those two titles and indeed more N64 games on the Virtual Console. For now though we have the rather brilliant SNES iteration to be very thankful for this rather original platform game set in a fictional version of feudal Japan that's about as grounded as a helium-filled balloon on its way to the earth's atmosphere, this wacky approach makes for a rather refreshing adventure.  

When it comes to the storyline introduction it is to put it simply a little weird; Goemon and Ebsisu-Maru (known as Kid Ying and Dr. Yang in the Western releases) are sat at home when they hear about strange spirits at their local temple, taking control of other villagers oh and naturally a princess - named Yuki - who gets captured so you'll have to rescue her too. There are some comedic touches within the game that will make you laugh, for example sometimes the enemies will wear random hats or differentiate themselves in some way, the character designs themselves are quite funny as well, just one look at Goemon himself is usually enough to put a smile on most peoples faces.

Playing a little like the great NES title 'River City Ransom' you run in either direction attacking and killing enemies and collect money from them which you can take into stores to buy items, food and talk to people for information plus play mini games such as: whack-a-mole, mazes, lottery dice, a trivia quiz and a 3D labyrinth style puzzle. You start the game with just, what seems to be a smoking pipe to attack with. Later on, once you have money you can throw that at your enemies to kill them. You can also equip certain special moves which can be bought from judo training centres. The great thing is, this game can be played with two players. Making it even more frantic as you can ride piggy back on each other making this is blast to play, if you are playing the home console versions that is, sadly the two-player option is not fully functional here thanks to the technical trade-off that is the New 3DS Virtual Console; it's just as well that the game is still fun to play solo but this is something which must be addressed for Switch VC releases without question. 

Goemon... patiently waiting for Konami to start making games again.

Graphics are another strong point as the game uses nicely detailed, colourful sprite work, the cut-scenes are also extremely well done with some early 'voice acting' used while backgrounds plus scrolling foregrounds are also utilised to give a slight depth of scale to the proceedings. The musical score is well suited to each area and the sound effects are well placed, always remaining relevant and constantly keeping that all-important Japanese feeling running through it all the time so as to keep you encapsulated within its wonderful world.

It's a shame that you just don't tend to get games like this any more as The Legend of the Mystical Ninja is a rare example of a charming, colourful adventure title which actually has a fair amount of depth to it which used to be more frequently witnessed during the nineties, in today's market though you very rarely get to see such brilliance which is why releasing it today is a stroke of genius. For those of you who have yet to play this gem then I absolutely implore you to do so, especially if you happened to miss your chance when it appeared on the Wii VC a few years back; don't make the same mistake again as here we have a true classic which deserves the new lease of life that it's getting on the Wii U and now on the New 3DS plus all of the positive praise from the Miiverse community. Now we wait in patience for the N64 sequels yet again, it won't take that long for them to appear surely? (We're still waiting Konami, only almost TEN years later since the initial Wii VC release!)

That's it for another installment of VC Weekly which will return again soon. So until then, enjoy the rest of the week and Game On!