Hi there! Me and my team are designing an educational game mainly focused on teaching math to young students age 9 to 13. Now we find ourself in the game design phase where we have to choose the right path to follow before thinking in how to do it. When I was a child, I tried to finish the whole super nintendo / sega genesis game list playing and finishing titles from A to Z regardless of games being boring or funny (that´s how I actually discovered gems like Live a Live, Final Fantasy II or Terranigma :)) this has actually helped me a lot in the creation of games and software in general, I just try to pick diffirent elements from different games to make new creations.

So for this math-game proyect I was thinking in getting inspiration from this gem: Ganbare Goemon: Yukihime Kyūshutsu Emaki a.k.a The Legend of the Mystical Ninja. and that´s why I would love to know your feedback in order to know if this could be a good idea or not. 

So my idea is to have a little story like in that game, and let the students explore a town, a planet or wherever where they can play around, beat some enemies, find new items, solve some math puzzles, quests and sidequests, . One of the main element that I liked from the mystical ninja was the possibility to talk to NPC´s who help you obtain new items , buy new things and solve quests that help you go further.. I´m thinking in using this characteristic element of an RPG to actually teach the students new content or test their abilities using the chat relation between player and NPC as well as sidequests.

I also liked a lot the implementation of mini games inside the core game (there are shops in the town  where you can play arknoid or even gradius just by spending some coins), a property which we can also use to actually test the students math abilites through the implementation of some mini games.

I really enjoyed the feeling of playing a platform, a good RPG and a beat´em up at the same time with the possibility to explore and play mini games at your own pace and that´s just what I would like to offer the students... the possibility to learn math at their own pace, play different kind of games inside a core game and give them the possibility to buy new items or abilities in order to help them go further in a non-linear story. I´m sure you can understand what I mean if you have played the legend of the mystical ninja before, if not you can take a look of this well done review done by snesdrunk 

So, I would like to read your feedback, what do you guys think about that? Do you think it could work?

cheers!

Mystical Ninja is my favorite series and I really like the SNES entries.  Before you start I recommend playing Goemon's Great Adventure 2 on N64, it's an update of the same formula as the first SNES game.

If you are going the educational route with this formula you have to fit some history in there.  One of my favorite things about the Mystical Ninja series was how it incorporated so much historic Japanese folklore and culture as well as geography.  As for the math part, I think the most natural way to incorporate it would be to have loot from the dungeon that can only be turned into currency via math based mini-games, maybe at crafting stations that scale in both difficulty and payout as the game progresses.  A good use for the in game currency would be to build up the town and unlock new buildings.

I don't know if you should base the game in Japan seeing as how it's already been done a million times by the Japanese.  One of my other favorite SNES games is Pocky & Rocky which is the same aesthetic but in a SHUMP.  There are countless other games that use historic Japan as a setting.  If you are dead set on Japan as the setting it could still work, I personally would like to see this same formula applied to other locales.  Since it is a math game set it in a place that had a concept of the number 0 like the Mayans, Arabs and Indians, or set it in Italy around the time they switch from Roman to Arabic numerals.  Come to think of it Italy during the renaissance would be a cool setting.  Pick one or two historical figures to base your main characters off of, work da Vinci and engineering in there and travel around the peninsula collecting things and visiting other areas.

1 minute ago, Pushmenot said:

Nice theory regarding going the educational route regarding the  Ninja Mystical series. I'll have to take a look at Goemans great adventure for SNES. I hadn't heard of this game until now.

It's just the PAL localization of the N64 games.  All of the English SNES localizations deviated really hard from the source material to the point Goemon and Ebisumaru were renamed Kid Yin and Dr. Yang, but it was a great game none the less and I'm glad they decided to release some of the series outside of Japan.

But yeah, the "Great Adventure" games were on 64 and I recommend them highly, the PAL region's SNES games were still called "Mystical Ninja" from what I remember.  The second N64 game didn't get a US release so it never came out under the "Mystical Ninja" title, but it was still translated to English and released elsewhere.

The 4th SNES game from Japan under the "Ganbare Goemon" titles is also really good and unlike 2 and 3 you don't really need to know Japanese to progress because it's a straight forward platformer.