BODY: A 40-year-old ninja is trading pixel-perfect platforming for a blade-swinging loot grind. City Connection has announced "JaJaMaru no Hyakki Yakou-den," the newest entry in the long-running Ninja JaJaMaru-kun series, and this time the pint-sized shinobi is starring in a full-blown hack-and-slash.
The game is slated for a 2027 release on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam. City Connection opened the title's Steam store page on August 25, giving fans their first official look at where the franchise is headed next.
The shift to the hack-and-slash genre—known in Japan as haku-sura—is a notable departure. The original Ninja JaJaMaru-kun, launched by Jaleco in 1985, was a single-screen arcade-style action game, and most later entries stuck to platforming and side-scrolling roots. Recasting the character in a genre built around procedurally driven combat, escalating enemy waves, and loot progression signals a real attempt to modernize the property rather than simply repackage nostalgia.
The subtitle itself leans into folklore: hyakki yakou refers to the "night parade of one hundred demons," a classic Japanese image of yokai marching through the dark—fitting thematic fuel for a game about a ninja cutting through hordes of monsters.
The insider take
City Connection has quietly become one of Japan's most dedicated stewards of dormant retro IP, having absorbed the Jaleco catalog and steadily rolled out JaJaMaru revivals, collections, and even entirely new spin-offs over the past several years. From a Tokyo vantage point, the surprise here isn't that another JaJaMaru game exists—it's the genre gamble. Betting a decades-old mascot on hack-and-slash mechanics, and confirming a Switch 2 version this early, suggests City Connection sees the franchise as more than a nostalgia line item. Whether Western players who never grew up with JaJaMaru will bite is the open question, but a 2027 window and a live Steam page mean there's plenty of runway to build awareness.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).