Ganso Jajamaru-kun (Wonderswan)

 

 The original Ninja Jajamaru-kun was a fairly early Famicom release, and is typical of such, being made up of very similar stages that gradually increase in difficulty, and through which the player progresses by killing all of the enemies, rather than by reaching a goal. Also typical of many games of the time, there's various little semi-secret methods for scoring extra points (and by extension, gaining more lives). Wikipedia says that Ganso Jajamaru-kun is a remake of that original game, but I'd say it's really a sequel that happens to skew closer to the original than the earlier sequels did (as they tended to follow the trends in the platform genre in the late 80s and early 90s).

At first glance, it is very very similar to the original game: each stage has eight enemies roaming around a stage with four floors. Parts of the floors can be destroyed from underneath, and some of these destroyed floor panels will reveal power ups. There's also the secret power up that will only appear after you've already had three different power ups, that summons a giant frog for you to ride around. But there's some new stuff. Like the sakura petals the princess drops aren't just optional items to get more points and access to the bonus stage. In this game, if you don't collect a petal on a stage, you'll have to go back and do the stage again before you're allowed to fight that area's boss. (Boss fights being another new element that wasn't present in the original).

 

There's some other eccentricities I've noticed regarding this petal business. When you finish a stage, if you didn't lose a life, you'll get a time bonus. It's pretty easy to zoom through the stages quickly and get a big time bonus, but the clock starts at 120 seconds, and the princess won't drop the petal until it reaches ninety seconds (I word it like this because if you collect the watch item that adds seconds to the clock, she still waits for it to say ninety, rather than when you've been in the stage for thirty seconds). So you might want to repeat stages for more points. Except! That after every boss you beat, the amount of points-per-second awarded for time bonuses increases by ten. So while you'll get more points in the short term by repeating stages, this means your score won't be increasing as quickly as it would if you just progressed through the game normally (plus the repetition is a hassle).

 

There's some improvements over the original that really stem from the fourteen years between the two games' releases. Like, the controls and Jajamaru's movement just feel smoother, more responsive, and generally a lot better in this game. Furthermore, it looks great. It's obviously all rendered in eight shades of grey, but the backgrounds are beautifully drawn, and there's even the occasional full screen piel art cutscene. Though it's a game that was old-fashioned on its original release a quarter of a entury ago, Ganso Jajamaru-kun is still a game that I think is a lot of fun, and definitely worth your time (though like almost all Wonderswan action games, it fetches a completely obscene price on the secondhand market in 2025, so definitely just emulate it).