Games of the Abstract: Ninpen Manmaru (1997)

 

Developer: TamTam

Publisher: Enix

One Player

Sega Saturn

It's cool.

There are many Sega Saturn games - the tragic nature of the console is that, out-of-step of trends, and Sega making huge mistakes when Sony entered the console race with the original Playstation, a console which had secret gems became marginalised and affected access to these games. All because they faced new competition, dominating the generation even over Nintendo, which had the tenacity of a young boxer slaying the legends in its footsteps in the ring, many games are difficult to acquire on modern consoles. Even the way the Saturn was built, where the polygons were four sided than the standardised three, alongside being built with dual-CPU architecture and eight processors means that even emulation by fans was difficult for decades.

It has made preserving these games more difficult, and aside from bootlegging, you have many Saturn games selling for inordinately high prices, more so as Sega in the West did not commission titles to even leave Japan which became cult hits. Ninpen Manmaru is not one of those games - this is not a Radiant Silvergun (1998) or even a Princess Crown (1997), those two in particular helped by being good enough they were re-released - but it is a fascinating curiosity. In the early time of the three dimensional platformer here is another game in that genre literally waddling out of the gate, when Nintendo would create the gold standard in the world's eyes in Mario 64, and Crash Bandicoot would appear for the Playstation, only in 1996 a year before. It is obscure game from this genre, a licensed title for the Saturn when the console had, over its lifespan, a history of struggling and trying to wrap itself around polygons for successes and failures.

Ninpen started as Manmaru The Ninja Penguin, a manga by Mikio Igarashi started in 1995. Published in Monthly Shōnen Gangan, that was actually part of a multi-media empire including this manga imprint that is Enix, who many of us know more for videogames, especially when they and Square joined in 2003, but was in the nineties publishing many games. This is an era of cult hits like Mischief Makers (1997) on the Nintendo 64, and many strange and fascinating games in general for many consoles. The developer TamTam, obscurer, may have allegedly had its roots in the high school computer club its founder Atsushi Kanao came from, creating the studio in June 12, 1991¹. Going on over the decades on multi-consoles, from Playstation 2 to the Nintendo DS, sadly TamTam entered bankruptcy proceedings in November 2017¹. Most of their titles, if not all of them are obscure to the West. There is however Shinseiki Evangelion: Eva to Yukai na Nakamatachi (1998) for the Sega Saturn, a mahjong game based on the legendary animated franchise Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), but one which not only includes female characters from that anime, but from others also created and owned by studio Gainax at the time, including Gunbuster (1988-89) and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990–1991).

Ninpen also had a forty eight episode anime from 1997 to 1998 when this video game tie-in was released, when it was decided to strike when the iron was hot on this franchise. This may also addresses why the game was never released in the West, as much anime which never came over to the West even in the modern day, as much as this being the problem that Sega barely released legitimate cult hits to the West in general for the Saturn. Clearly, from the cut scenes in a cutesy and almost crude form in the game, still images like children's very skill doodles, this was a family show for kids.

Ninpen is as cute as you can imagine, a female voice actress (Haruna Ikezawa in the series and the game) providing the squeaky voice of the character. Ninpen is a male penguin member of the Nenga clan², welder of the divine art. His titular master Nenga, a sombre purple bear, however thinks his potential is not fully used. Bribing his with golden origami paper, because origami paper is a treat for Ninpen, and golden sparkly paper will be a treasure, Ninpen has the confidence to follow Nenga's task - to go to certain points on a map, a journey towards the ninja mansion, facing members of the clan in tasks Ninpen must complete, under a strict time limit, to proceed to the next area marked on the map he is provided.

The immediate thing to notice is how, in context for a 1997 platformer for the Sega Saturn, how distinct this looks. Never was there proof of the surreality of platformers, in this bright and abstract world of floating platforms and a sky rich is bobbles of cloud. It looks gorgeous in context, with the additional surreality there. Inexplicably your opponents, Ninpen only able to jump and avoid enemies, are for many stages anthropomorphic stationary, like sentient pencils and thick waddling erasers, even if the stages are more abstract in grass land and general multi-colour fragments than, say, the Picture City stages from the 199-5 Rayman platformer set in a stationary world. The music alone, scoring this, offers a shot of pure joy, where baring one snow stage with purplish-pink ground that allows a larger jump, and the Ninja Mansion looking like a Mario level crossed with a death trap, most of this feels like the vague fantasia of the mind in a good way.

The gameplay itself is a bit more complicated. Actually, the better term would be, for a game you would sell to children, deceptively evil even when you find charm in this. This presents intentionally a platformer which is difficult, but also how this shows how 3D platformers struggled to figure out aspects like movement and the camera. Ninpen drives like a tank - at points, I found myself with the cruelty, and guilt, to swear internally at the poor creature because, unlike even Crash Bandicoot from this era, Ninpen has a sluggish turning speed of a tank alone even if he charges about. Forwards goes forwards, but backwards will mean literally turning back than a shuffle back. Left to right are arches, and the shoulder buttons on the Saturn joystick are vital for precise turning moving or still, when you turn to shift where to head, as this is a precision platformer. Ninpen cannot attack, but his special move is the super flip jump. This however can only be done when you jump three times in succession, which offers a new challenge in that, with precise floating platforms, including those you cannot reach without the super jump, you have to plan when to do the three jumps, even in a tiny space, and pray you got it right.

The controls, once you figure them out, work, but any game unless entirely broken and impossible to beat can, technically, be played; most of Ninpen is pretty simple, that you avoid enemies, jump, and that the only collectable are coins, a hundred getting a life, all very simple. The levels play, in their tiny form, with being slight puzzles, as you have to find switches to unlock the direction to go, which offers an interesting take on the platformer. In mind to its mechanics however including requiring a special jump to reach some to progress, and that some feel like mazes, there are moments like some leaps of faith which do cross the line to not fully fleshing out this new genre's sense of fairness, and at times being mean. The bosses, less battles baring one, with your clan members are the moments I could live without and do undercut the game in quality badly. The platforming, once you accept its limitations, has virtues. The bosses are, depending on the challenge, not fun if completable. Not actual combat they can vary from chasing after the most coins in a stage, one being a maze with one switch to find, one bumping the other off the stage, and the least fun involving having to run away from the other until the time limit ends. The final boss, the final stage, which with master Nenga involving this is a long two minutes or so, and is a chore leaving a bitter taste to what is, warts and all a charming game.

Baring this, the only other gameplay aspect of note are the poseurs, which are coloured bubbles with negative and positive effects. Positives including health replenishments, or a super jump, whilst the negatives add a curious challenge, either restricting your pace from the constant run or preventing jumping, all alongside an inherent cuteness that, say with the negatives, their iconography include doodles of stickmen having headaches/migrants and/or anxiety attacks, befitting a rather anxious and unconfident penguin ninja you play. Considering, if you run into a wall, Ninpen at full speed will knock himself silly briefly, it is cute even in a game with some mean tricks up its sleeve to have a protagonist who is a lovable klutz. The meanness I felt for the penguin is contrasted by how utterly cute and sweet the game is as much as he is, in its bright polygon aesthetic to the music adding to this.

The game is a flaw creation, aged from the attempt by a developer to try this genre which was frankly new and, even closer to the 2000s, would have still struggled with mechanics like of the camera when the fifth generation of game consoles went into the sixth. Alongside the diehard fan base for the Saturn in general recovering games like this, the charm alone has so much to appreciate, and as an attempt at this for the Saturn, visually and in presentation this is a commendable effort for those involved to produce. You just have to bear in mind its limitations.

 

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1) As documented on the Sega Retro site for TamTam.

2) In 2022, an English fan translation, based on one partially completed as far back as 2002, now exists, a pertinent reminder that, whilst games like this are not held as worth being preserved by companies, the fans will preserve and even provide Western translations themselves.