Ganbare Goemon 2 is where the series starts getting weird

destructoid.com:

It’s an absolute crime that we got so few titles from the Ganbare Goemon series in the West. Not that all of them were terrific, but they almost always tried new things and were usually enjoyable. We didn’t see our first until the third (Fourth? Fifth? It’s complicated) game in the series, localized as 1992’s Legend of the Mystical Ninja on SNES.

While the original Ganbare Goemon on Famicom got the series off to a good start, it would be 1989’s Ganbare Goemon 2 that would establish one of the franchise’s hallmark features: simultaneous co-op.

As the story goes, Goemon is in prison, where he meets his soon-to-be BFF Ebisumaru. Ebisu-chan tells of a mystical treasure. Bored of life in prison, the duo decides to just leave and traipse across Japan to look for this treasure.

There’s a lot borrowed and a lot changed from the first Ganbare Goemon. The original title had a pretty strict gameplay loop of having you seek out three passes in each level to proceed. While that makes a return for some stages, Ganbare Goemon 2 shakes things up by ending others with bosses and cutscenes. There’s less emphasis on finding holes in the ground by jumping over them. It also doubles down on the mini-games and anachronism jokes.

The Goemon series has never been totally straight-faced, but there’s an obvious decline into insanity throughout the titles. Ganbare Goemon 2 for example, has yokai-interrupted strip shows, the option to run into the women’s bath, and a store that sells Konami game cartridges that changes the enemies into popular characters from other games. While there are no roller-skating giant robots just yet, the weirdness Goemon is known for is in full swing.

It’s also where Goemon really begins his traipse across Japan. Most