Play Ganbare Goemon - Mononoke Douchuu Tobisuise Nabebugyou! (Japan) Online

Game Overview

Oh man, Ganbare Goemon – Mononoke Douchuu Tobisuise Nabebugyou! is one of those weird little Game Boy Color games that somehow sticks with you. You start off as Goemon (or Ebisumaru if you're feeling chaotic) just whacking ghosts with your pipe in this side-scrolling romp through haunted villages and spooky forests. The controls feel surprisingly tight for a GBC title—none of that slippery platforming nonsense.

What really makes it special is how unapologetically Japanese it is. There's this one level where you're jumping across floating tanuki statues while dodging umbrella ghosts, and I remember thinking "yep, this is peak Goemon." The mononoke designs are equal parts creepy and silly, like someone took traditional yokai and cranked the absurdity dial.

It's not as polished as the SNES games, but there's charm in its jank—like how Ebisumaru's belly bounce attack sometimes glitches through platforms. If you can track down a copy (or, uh, "find" it), it's worth experiencing just for that late-90s Konami weirdness. Just watch out for the possessed kappas in the third stage—they're jerks.