Jajamaru

It sounds best if you just cough the word out It’s time to wrap your tongue around Ninja Jajamaru-kun, as ININ Games has released a few localized collections of his most prominent adventures. While this was one big collection in Japan, for what I can only assume are localization reasons, they’ve been split up into three different releases. Buckle up; I’ll outline them here. First, we have Ninja JaJaMaru: The Great Yokai Battle +Hell. This is a brand-new game for the series that acts as a celebration of its history.…

But they’re in space The Ninja Jajamaru-Kun series took a hard left turn after Jajamaru no Daibouken. Considering it started as something of a rip-off of Ninja-Kun after Jaleco published the Famicom port of that game. It never really had a strong identity, but Jaleco was going to throw it against the wall as many times as it could until it finally stuck. It never stuck. Reinvention didn’t work. The biggest offshoot was Ninja Jajamaru-Kun’s attempts at JRPGs, but 1991’s Ninja Jajamaru Ginga Daisakusen for Famicom is…

Daibouken means “big adventure” I have a serious soft-spot for Jajamaru-Kun. It was Jaleco’s almost-classic series of games. None were all that great, but they tried their little hearts out. 1986’s Jajamaru no Daibouken was the second game in the series (third if you count Ninja-Kun). Super Mario Bros. dominated the previous year, so for the sequel, Jaleco decided to change the formula to be more of a side-scrolling platformer. 1986 was the year that Metroid and Castlevania hit the scene. Next to them, Jajamaru no…