The GG Shinobi (1991) - Game Gear
Taking a hint from all of those crazy sentai shows, The GG Shinobi lets you play as a group of five ninjas of different colors, each with a unique weapon, ninjitsu and skill. You begin with only the sword wielding Red Ninja, but you choose your levels in a Mega Man-esque stage select. When you beat a level,
you rescue one of your compatriots and can switch to them at any time - Pink Ninja tosses bombs and can climb on the ceiling; Yellow Ninja attacks with energy blasts and can walk on water; Blue Ninja has a grappling hook that can be used to swing on certain pegs; and the Green Ninja wields shurikens and can double jump.
It's a great idea and it really gives some variety to the gameplay, but when you begin with the game with just the Red Ninja - with his pathetically short attack against enemies that take two or more hits - the game gets very tough, very quickly. Your short life meter doesn't help matters either, as you can take between two and four hits before you bite the dust. Other than the screen smashing difficulty, The GG Shinobi is enjoyable.
MP3s
GG Shinobi
GG Shinobi
GG Shinobi 2
There are some amusing moments - although your weapon is a dumpy sword, you can find
shurikens (in extremely limited quantity) and machine guns (one of the only "cyber" parts
on your ninja), and the ninjistu fills the screen with gigantic, pixellated scrolling text
announced the attack you are using. Also, one of the bosses you fight is a bulldozer.
I don't know why that's funny, but it is, I assure you. Regardless, the only good thing about The Cyber Shinobi is that it is fun to mock its terribleness. I was actually able to tolerate this trash enough to reach the second level, which I consider to be one of the paramounts of my gaming career. No, really.
Cyber Shinobi
Cyber Shinobi
So what's the problem then? Well, take a look at the screenshots - all of the sprites are digitized actors in rather goofy looking costumes. This was at least a few years after Mortal Kombat was around, so
theoretically this fascination should have worn off, but apparently the designers were
still enamored with characters that looked real. Except that, in execution, everything
looks just a little bit silly, especially the animation. It gets even worse when you fight more supernatural creatures - it was really awesome fighting dinosaurs and whatnot in the 16-bit games, but now that they look like toy models, it all looks just a wee bit ridiculous. Still, this is the first Shinobi game with blood, and it is cool to slice bad guys in half, with a spurt of blood as their torso falls off. If that wasn't laughable enough, after each level
is an FMV cutscene telling the story of ninja Sho and his quest to rescue his woman Aya. I don't know whether the developers were paying homage to cheesy Saturday afternoon ninja serials, or they just didn't have a budget, but this is a C-grade level production with
cheap locations, terrible acting, awful lighting and some massively dated 80s-grade synthesized music. Vic Tokai left the speech in Japanese and subtitled it, but it's still extremely corny. As long as you don't try to take it all too seriously, Shinobi Legions
is pretty fun.
Shinobi Legions
Shinobi Legions
Shinobi Legions
American Cover
GG Shinobi
GG Shinobi
The GG Shinobi 2: The Silent Fury (1991) - Game Gear
The GG Shinobi (simply referred to as "Shinobi" for American and European releases) is a decent miniaturization, with gameplay similar to Revenge of Shinobi, but with some nifty new elements to compensate. The graphics are excellent, and the soundtrack features all new
music from Yuzo Koshiro. Presentation-wise, Sega didn't cut any corners.
American Cover
GG Shinobi 2
GG Shinobi 2
The Cyber Shinobi (1990) - Sega Master System
The Game Gear sequel pretty much follows its predecessor, but refines some things
to make it a somewhat better game. In addition to rescuing the four ninjas, there's
a crystal hidden in each of the stages. You'll need to find all of these crystals before
advancing to the final stage. It adds a bit of replayability, even if you get frustrated
when you have to play the stages over and over to find them. The difficulty has been
adjusted, thankfully - enemies take less to kill, so the earlier stages of the game
aren't as drastically difficult as they used to be. With the addition of a password system,
The GG Shinobi 2 makes for one of the best 8-bit portable action games out there.
European Cover
Cyber Shinobi
Cyber Shinobi
Shinobi Legions / Shin Shinobi Den (1995) - Sega Saturn
Calling "The Cyber Shinobi" (or "Shinobi Part 2", as noted on the title screen) the worst Sega Master System games ever would be a slight exaggeration - but not by much. Released only in Europe, The Cyber Shinobi (dubbed "Shinobi: Part 2" on the title screen") combines two subjects, cyborgs and ninjas, that should result in pure awesomeness. Yet somehow, it falls flat on its face. Maybe it's the terrible controls. Maybe it's the choppy animation. Maybe it's the fact that jumping in a merely impossible task. Or perhaps it's the fact that hitting an enemy is nearly impossible
with your incredibly short weapon. Or it could be the fact that the entire upper third of the screen is taken up with a useless status bar. More concretely, it's probably because the developer
forgot to program things like "hit detection", resulting in a game gone totally awry.
Japanese Cover
Shinobi Legions
Shinobi Legions
Cinema Scenes
"Shin Shinobi Den" (New Shinobi Story), or "Shinobi Legions", as it was redubbed by American
publisher Vic Tokai, was an early Saturn release that used digitized graphics for all
of the characters. The game gets a bad rap because of its dated look, but behind the unpolished surface lies a decent action game that, while not the apex of the series, is still a pretty fun 2D action game. Taking control of a new ninja named Sho, the controls and gameplay are very similar to Shinobi 3, although a little more sluggish. For the first time, there are separate buttons to use a sword and throw shurikens. And compared to the
other games, there's a far bigger emphasis on swordplay than ever before, since the shurikens are slow and fairly weak, New moves include a spinning sword slash and a downward thrust manuever. Unfortunately, while
there are still some ninja magic skills, you find them throughout the levels and can't
cast them whenever you want.
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