Ninja Jajamaru-kun

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/jajamaru/jajamaru.htm

There's a lot of games in this series, and none of them are particularly outstanding, although a few are kinda good. I mostly wrote this out of my own fascination that a series could be this prolific and yet there's barely anything documented about it (in English, anyway.) I discovered it after playing Game Center CX for the DS - one of the game series, Haguruman, was based off Jajamaru-kun, which I wasn't familiar with at the time.

Game Center CX article coming in the future, I guess.

[zzz]

I've been interested in seeing this series go up here for years. Very cool.

I pretty much agree about the games being mixed, quality wise, but there are a few pretty good titles in the series.

[Shinigami]

"You already don't have something to do here!" ;D

[Weasel]

I played Maru's Mission as a rental back in the mid-90's...I had no idea it had such a heritage. I thought it was just another underlooked Game Boy platformer.

[Allie]

Ginga Daisakusen also got fan-translated at one point, but I don't know if that's of any consequence to the article or not....

[Deleted]

I remember playing the MSX games for hours in the late 80s. Always wanted to know more about the series, and now I can. Thanks, Kurt!

[vgninja]

Cool article. That N64 pad pirate Famicom thing that I got as a gift (not by choice) has Ninja-kun built in.

Just a couple of things. In the third paragraph for the first Ninja-Kun, it says "Ninja-kun was also ported to the MSX and Famicom by Famicom". The pictures in the prototype Taro's Quest are in anime/manga style, but a more realistic one rather than the cartoony one of the original.

[beam]

Great article !

I am new on this board but am lurking from time to time. I mainly read the articles.

For now I have some corrections to add.

It seems the 32 bits revs are not the same game at all. I mean the games are totally different apart from the mpg videos. Stage layout is different, there are no 2d bonus stage in the psx rev nor is there any map between stages.

There's a complete review there which list all the differences.

In fact the saturn rev is a sort of update of the psx version. None the less they are 2 different games. The saturn one is the gold version, notice the kin (gold) kanji in the title.

release dates :
Ninja Jaja Marukun: Onikiri Ninpoucho, psx 02/21/97
Kin Ninja Jaja Marukun: Onikiri Ninpoucho sat 10/09/97

Now, I mainyl played the saturn rev through the demo featured in techsaturn magazine back in the days. I bought the game 6 years ago but never played it seriously. In fact I got deeper in the demo version ;D.
I aquired the psx rev but never gave it a spin. If I find things worthy to mention I'll post there.

[Discoalucard]

Thanks for the heads-up. I noticed the different titles and release dates but assumed they were the same since they had the same cover. Let me know if you find anything interesting!

[Bloodreign]

Didn't know Ninja-kun had so many games in his history, some are a nice little diversion, especially the older games in the series.

[Haz]

Nice one here, disco. I've only played Ninja-kun, Jajamaru-kun and Ginga Daisakusen. never knew there were others.

Also, what emulator did you run Jajamaru no Daibouken on? Both of mine (VirtuaNES, FCE) ran it with the scrolling all fucked up.

Also, I'm looking forward to the GCCX article (if you're gonna work on it )

[Yuan]

Hi. Nice article. I've been a fan of the series ever since they were "accidentally" sent to me with my Famicom back in 1980-something.

I actually got to finish Ashura no Shou; it's a rather hard game. But I never got to the end of Ninja-kun or Jajamaru (if they have, that is).

One little correction: in the comparison screens of the first Ninja-kun, you accidentally put an Ashura famicom screenshot instead of a Ninja-kun one.

[Discoalucard]

Argh. I forgot to upload the picture, so the server picked the next closest match. And now there are more FTP issues and I'm locked out totally. Oh well, thanks for the heads-up!

Also:

hazumu said:

Also, what emulator did you run Jajamaru no Daibouken on? Both of mine (VirtuaNES, FCE) ran it with the scrolling all fucked up.

Try a different ROM. I ran into the same problem, but a different version worked just fine with FCE.

[Haz]

Tried every rom in the set there was. I got the same problem with the [o1] and [HM03] versions, [b1] was just a fucked up version of of the original Ninja Jajamaru-kun, and [b2] wasn't working...

Could you send me yours?

[crithit5000]

Hi folks.

Page 1, paragraph 6: Verb needs pluralized, also wrong word.

There are even three different paths at the beginning of the game, which depends depend on the card you select one when you start.

Bonus on page 2, paragraph 5:

cludgy

What we have here is an amalgamation of the words 'clumsy' and 'sludgy', or just a typo. I call bonus because 'clumsy' and 'sludgy' are great ways to describe Dragon Quest's interfaces, so I vote for 'cludgy' to become a real word.

Aw, update: Apparently people use this term based from this word. But still, bonus!

Page 3, paragraph 3: Misspelled word.

For starers starters, it looks and feels like a huge Super Mario Bros. 3 clone.

Page 3, paragraph 6: Misspelled word.

It tries to keep the cute and goofy aesthetic of the old games, although the numerous CG cutscenes are embarassingly embarrassingly dated, and the designers forgot Jajamaru's most memorable aspect - his huge, distinctive eyes.

Page 3 paragraph 7: Wrong punctuation, there should be a comma after the word 'right'.

By default, the camera always faces forward, so Jajamaru automatically strafes when moving left and right, which makes it a lot easier to control than most 3D games.

Page 4, paragraph 1: Misspelled word:

Jajamaru primarily attacks with shurikens, although you can find other weapons - in addition to a homing boomerang-type weapon and the tram cart (like the original game, it grants you temporarily invulernability invulnerability), you can also call firestorms and lightning waves to cleanse the screen of foes.

Might of missed a few minor things here and there...I'm sort of half-asleep.