The Thwomps from Mario 64 even put in an appearance

Being squashed back into two dimensions hasn't cramped Goemon's style. And he's still running with his old gang, kicking butt in platform world. But why the retro feel to his performance?
Martin Kitts

So, Konami - what happened? We were happily looking forward to the sequel to last year's excellent adventure/RPG Mystical Ninja, the first 3D outing for the extremely odd, extremely Japanese, blue-haired medieval legend, Goemon. More of the same would have been more than welcome, but for some bizarre reason Konami have seen fit to send the pipe-toting superhero back to his SNES roots with a retro 2D platform game.

It's a mystifying decision, and a few hours spent in the company of Goemon 2 is enough to show that it hasn't really paid off. The game uses most of the same moves and features seen in the Goemon games of half a decade ago, adding nothing more than a little extra visual flair to prove that it's actually running on a 64bit machine.

Just as in his previous outings, Goemon's traditional chums - Sasuke the automaton, Ebisumaru the fat boy, green-haired girl Yae, and giant town-stomping robot Impact - are all included as playable characters. They're all beautifully drawn and humorously animated, with Ebisumaru's anatomically impossible back wriggle never failing to raise a smile or two, but they're wasted in something with such basic gameplay as this.