Leg­end has it Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja ori­gin is great

The quirky nin­ja series had a rous­ing start on the Super NES

Every­one must start some­where, even video games. Even the most suc­cess­ful video game series have hum­ble begin­nings, where new ideas are brought to the table to estab­lish a hope­ful­ly suc­cess­ful series. So, it goes with one of my favorite series, Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja. While it’s not super pop­u­lar here in the West, Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja opened the doors for the series to make an impres­sion on me in the late 1990s. It’s debat­able, though, if it cleared up the mys­tery sur­round­ing the appeal of the series for me.

Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja is weird and anachro­nis­tic in every­thing that it does. Set in an alter­nate feu­dal Japan, Goe­mon and Ebisumaru (Dr. Yang and Kid Ying renamed in game) real­ize there are some strange hap­pen­ings going on in Oedo. After some inves­ti­ga­tion, they dis­cov­er that Princess Yuki has been kid­napped and they set out to res­cue her. Along the way, they meet up with an ally in fel­low nin­ja Yae, fight future ally Sasuke and trav­el to dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate loca­tions in Japan. This should sound famil­iar because it’s basi­cal­ly the plot of the excel­lent GI favorite Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. Swap some ele­ments and char­ac­ter names and you’ve got the basics of that game. 

But what sets it apart from some of the lat­er entries is the pre­sen­ta­tion. Leg­end, unlike Star­ring Goe­mon, is a side-scrolling affair. The health meter and the pur­chase of dam­age-negat­ing items are the same, but instead of being an over-the-shoul­der 3D romp, this plays more like The Leg­end of Zel­da: A Link to the Past. And that works well in its favor. The game looks nice and has charm. It’s bright and col­or­ful with big sprites and inter­est­ing ani­ma­tions. For an ear­ly Super Nin­ten­do title, you can’t go wrong with look­ing like a nice hop ‘n’ bop. The sound­track is suit­ably nice as well. It’s no Star­ring Goe­mon but it has a few decent tracks that will remind you of the sound the lat­er games are known for.

Because it’s like Link to the Past in looks, it’s a lot like that game in playstyle as well. The con­trols work well with the SNES lay­out, and it’s easy to get things going when you want to move around the play­field. My only gripe is that it’s a lit­tle hard to remem­ber which but­ton con­trols spe­cial moves. Oth­er­wise, it’s a stan­dard action plat­former for the SNES, which means it’s going to play clean­ly and make no fuss about its mechanics.
Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja is a decent West­ern begin­ning for the Goe­mon fran­chise. It has a lot of charm, it looks good, plays well and does­n’t for­get its roots. As the intro­duc­tion to the series in North Amer­i­ca, it made a good first impres­sion with its quirky sen­si­bil­i­ties and gave birth to a legend.