Shinobi

Developer: Team Shinobi    Publisher: Tengen     Released: 1989    Genre: Action

Shinobi is a great arcade game that drained quarters around the world. I loved it even though I lost plenty of money to its ridiculous difficulty. But it was a Sega game and even back then I knew, Sega and Nintendo don’t mix. Or so I thought. Tengen’s unlicensed NES port of Shinobi should have been a dream come true. Instead it is a terrible game that only slightly resembles the game it is based on. Stay the hell away from this one or you will regret it.

Revisiting Shinobi is interesting. The original arcade game is a vastly different title next to its console sequels. The gameplay has more in common with Rolling Thunder. The game has a methodical pace in contrast to the fast paced gameplay of the later games. The goal of every level is to rescue the kidnapped children of the Oboro ninja clan. I say rescue but it isn’t as though they tried to hide them, they are all in plain sight. It sounds simple enough but is anything but in practice.

Shinobi is light on power-ups. Aside from your unlimited supply of shuriken Joe will either kick or slash enemies that come too close. Tengen based their port on Sega’s Master system version which introduced a number of changes. Chief among them were the addition of a life bar and additional weapons. The extra weapons are not present sadly but you can extend your max hit points which is a huge boon. You can also hold multiple charges of ninja magic. Sadly magic is downplayed in the game. You can only use ninja magic at set points which defeats the purpose and you have to earn a near perfect score in the bonus stages to earn it. They should have stuck with giving out extra lives like the arcade.

I made the comparison to Rolling Thunder earlier for a reason. You aren’t ducking behind doors to avoid fire but the game does take place across two planes. All enemies are deliberately placed in areas that make you think before taking action. There are plenty of boxes and other objects to hide behind when necessary although in this version it is not as important. That was one of the best aspects of the arcade game, the way the levels were laid out in such tricky ways that a regular soldier posed a significant threat. Between the single hit deaths and the clock it put the pressure on you to move fast although the game would punish that style of play. That is no longer the case in the NES game.

The level design in Shinobi has been changed significantly and for the worse. The careful staging of enemies and other elements is completely no more. Most enemies are right in the open and easily dispatched. In fact if you crouch and walk you can avoid anything thrown in your path! The cool vertical scrolling levels are now generic side-scrolling stages. They were a nice change of pace and I do not see any reason for the change. You no longer have to save all the children in the levels which further erases everything that made Shinobi unique. I’m struggling to come up with anything good to say about the game.

Shinobi had some cool boss battles in the arcade. They have sort of made it over intact but are a nightmare for a few reasons. The awful hit detection is the main culprit. The first boss has a very particular hit box that is near impossible to hit. If you make it past that it gets worse. The Black Turtle Helicopter and its seemingly endless supply of ninja pose a larger threat because you can only throw one shuriken at a time. Granted the game wisely caps the enemies at three but that is more than enough to be overwhelming. The final boss is so ridiculous I still don’t know how I beat him. It is like they were actively trying to make the game bad.

Normally I would not comment on it but Shinobi is an aggressively ugly game. The NES has a limited color palette but somehow but the artists seemed to have the wrong color choices at every turn. The game somewhat resembles the arcade but is hideous to look at. Sprites are barely distinguishable and the entire game screams amateur effort. Add to that the one grating music track and you have a game that barely a step above the many unlicensed titles with no budget from China.

In Conclusion

Pretend this version of Shinobi does not exist. The world largely has with good reason. Play Ninja Gaiden for your ninja action kicks. Thank me later.