Table of Contents
Page 1: Ninja-kun
Maru's Mission / Oi Jajamaru! Sekai Daibouken - Gameboy (1990)
Jajamaru and Sakura (dubbed "Maru" and "Cori" in the English release, just like the prototype version of Squashed) are vacationing in America, when Sakura is abducted by some evil creature. Jajamaru must travel the globe - beginning in New York, and fighting through Romania, Greece, Egypt, Brazil, and finally Japan - to find his Sakura. In certain stages, you can even flip Jajamaru's gravity and travel on the ceiling. Each location has some creature from myth or folklore - you fight the Wolfman and Dracula in Romania, for instance. Each level has a midboss, some of whom will reward you with a special weapon to fight the main boss. When you beat the Golem in Greece, you'll be rewarded with a mirror, which will help you fight Medusa. Strangely, the designers couldn't think of anything interesting to do with Brazil, so you fight the Hydra and Cerberus there, which are definitely not part of Brazilian lore at all. Every few stages, whenever you need to cross the ocean, you're sent to a brief underwater stage. Rather than swimming to the end, you just dive around in a small pond, shooting spears at sharks until you've killed them all - something Greenpeace probably would've freaked out about, had they found out.
Despite its relative simplicity and immense amount of slowdown, Maru's mission is actually a lot of fun for an old Gameboy title, and its humorous premise makes it worth looking into. The final boss even urges you to write into Jaleco of America - I wonder if they ever wrote anybody back.
Maru's Mission
Maru's Mission
Maru's Mission
Ganso Jajamaru-kun - Wonderswan (1999)
Even though it's in black and white, it's actually preferable to the Famicom game, if only because it controls smoother and feels more stable. There's also more variety in the backgrounds. It also has a tremendously heartbreaking Game Over screen. You see Jajamaru getting beaten by the Catfish Pirate, who laughs at him, before a different ninja comes out of nowhere, kicks the bad guy's butt, and rescues Princess Sakura on his own. Then you see a heartbroken Jajamaru, having failed in his mission, witness some other chump winning the girl. How sad.
Jajamaru-kun Jr. Denshouki
Jajamaru-kun Jr. Denshouki
Jajamaru-kun Jr. Denshouki - Jalecole Mou Arisourou - Gameboy Advance (2004)
It does a good job of expanding on the elements of the original games, but it can get a bit cheap and annoying. In the original game, if an enemy bumped into you, you'd be stunned for about a second. Here, you're incapacitated for several seconds, during which the enemy will continue to bounce on you until something finally swipes in for a mercy kill. The small screen makes it hard to see off-screen enemies, who, like the original game, can attack without notice. Some of the stages are annoying designed, sticking you in narrow passages with plenty of enemies, making it difficult to face against them all at once unless you have a magic scroll. In other words, expect lots of cheap deaths.
Jajamaru Jr. is kind of fun, but ultimately rather insubstantial. Apparently Jaleco felt the same way too, and that's where the "JaleCore" (short for "Jaleco Collection") plays a role - in addition to Jajamaru Jr., you can play emulated version of five old Famicom games. These include the first two Jajamaru games, City Connection, Exerion, and Formation Z. The extra titles aren't particularly great, and the graphics are squashed due to the lower resolution of the Gameboy Advance.
Jajamaru-kun Jr. Denshouki
Jajamaru-kun Jr. Denshouki
Jajamaru-kun Jr. Denshouki
Ninja Jajamaru-kun: Pen wa Ken Yorimo Kyoushi de Gozaru - Nintendo DS (??)
Pen wa Ken Yorimo Kyoushi de Gozaru
Strategy Wiki - Jajamaru-kun A guide to the original Famicom game.
Jajamaru Gekimaden Strategy Guide
Page 2: Ninja Jajamaru 1, 2, 3
Page 3: Ninja Jajamaru 4, 5, 32-bit
Page 4: Ninja Jajamaru Portable
American Cover
Maru's Mission
Maru's Mission
This Gameboy title is the only entry in the actual Jajamaru series (not counting Ninja Taro) to make it to the States, under the name Maru's Mission. (The Japanese title means "Hey Jajamaru! Great World Adventure".) It's a side scrolling action game similar to the second Famicom title. 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 invulnerability), you can also call firestorms and lightning waves to cleanse the screen of foes. Your life counter is located in the lower right corner of the screen - you can take plenty of hits before you die, and each captured spirit from a fallen foe with net you five health points. You only have a single life and no continues, but it's so easy to replenish your health that the journey shouldn't prove to be difficult at all.
GBA Cover
Jajamaru-kun Jr. Denshouki
Jajamaru-kun Jr. Denshouki
The Wonderswan Jajamaru is essentially an enhanced version of the original Famicom game. The tiny portable screen isn't tall enough to display the entire vertical playing field, so it needs to scroll up and down as necessary, but otherwise it's pretty much the same. There are a few new power-ups, like a sword and a boomerang-shuriken. Additionally, collecting the cherry blossoms thrown by Sakura is now mandatory - if you miss one, you'll have to play the stage over when you reach the checkpoint. Every four stages, you'll reach one of these checkpoints, a special stage which scrolls vertically upwards, culminating in a boss fight. It adds some much needed variety to the formula, although they're generally harder than the regular stages.
GBA Cover
Jajamaru-kun Jr. Denshouki
Jajamaru-kun Jr. Denshouki
Even though there are numerous Jajamaru titles, the series has went through so many different genres that none of them play like the original game. The Gameboy Advance game, Jajamaru Jr. Denshou Shiru, is about as close to an update of the original Ninja-kun/Jajamaru-kun games as you can get. Playing once again as a tiny cute little ninja, you need to run around a short stage and kill all of the enemies, most of whom are the same as the original game, and are even introduced in the same order. Every five stages, you face off in a boss stage against the Catfish Pirate, who tries to confuse you with multiple clones. Unlike the Jajamaru of the past, Jajamaru Jr. attacks with bombs, although they work the same way. You can eventually unlock two additional characters - the original Jajamaru, who wears a different color outfit, and Jijimaru, an old ninja master. ("Jii-san" is the Japanese word for "old man" or "grandpa", hence the pun.) Although there are no more blocks or ceilings to break, there are now straw treasure chests throughout each level that holds power-ups. These take the form of four different elemental scrolls, which can be activated at any time for a variety of special powers.
DS Artwork
Pen wa Ken Yorimo Kyoushi de Gozaru
Pen wa Ken Yorimo Kyoushi de Gozaru
In 2006, Jaleco announced a new Jajamaru game for the DS, whose subtitle roughly translates to "The Pen is Greater than the Sword." Other than some magazine spots, it seems to have fallen off the release schedules, so who knows what has become of it. It looks to be another update of the original game, similar to the Gameboy Advance installment, although using different graphic designs.
Links
Lost Levels - Taro's Quest About the cancelled NES RPG.
Lost Levels - Squashed About the cancelled NES action game.
Jajamaru Gekimaden - Walkthrough Japanese site, complete with maps.
The Gaming Sanctuary - Super Ninja-kun A review of the SFC game.
Satakore - Jajamaru More pictures from the Saturn game.
