After the longest break for the series yet, Shinobi finally returned on the 3DS in 2011. In Japan appropriately titled Shinobi 3D, Sega's Western divisions apparently decided to compete with Ninja Gaiden in name confusion, which is now the fourth game in the series that's called just Shinobi (after the original, the first Game Gear game and the PS2 one). Since big old Japanese companies don't actually develop games anymore (unless it's Sonic), the new entry was outsourced to American company Griptonite, mostly known for licensed titles on various handhelds and download services. With their remake of the Atari classic Warlords a few months prior, they shifted gears, however, and so Shinobi is already their second reimagening of a classic video game series.
Griptonite decided to use Shinobi III as their role model. A fine choice, since it's the best game yet. Aside from similar gameplay, you'll see a lot of enemies and setpieces taken from both Super Shinobi games. Like those two, the new Shinobi opens with a stage seemingly set in feudal Japan, before it switches to more futuristic stuff; only this time, it's really set in the 13th century (the guys at Triptonite apparently didn't do their research, since shinobi didn't really appear before two hundred years later), and Jiro Musashi is then teleported through time into the future for unknown reasons. Here he gets captured by an equally unknown military force, but a fly from his time that sat on his sword during the transition wakes him up and kills everyone, except one female soldier because... because... he always wanted a rival slash potential love interest that goes nowhere?
Cutscenes like that are interspersed throughout the game. They're hand-drawn 2D (no 3D effect here), but the animation is very minimalistic. Think Neo Geo game intro quality. They're usually short and speechless save for some random quotes from Bruce Lee's philosophical journal, but what makes them annoying is that they can only be skipped after watching them once and when the game saved the status, which only happens at the end of a stage or when hitting retry at a game over. So frequently quitting and retrying forces you to watch them again and again.
Veteran fans will feel right at home from the start, as all the abilities from Shinobi III are back. Walking/running is now conveniently realized with the analog nub instead of double-tapping, making the game feel more fast-paced. Shuriken use is also modernized: there are seperate buttons for the sword and shurikens, and the throwing daggers are now drawn from an infinite pool, although Jiro can only throw five at a time. Afterwards they recharge slowly, downplaying their role a little bit, but also making their use more tactical than a question of ressource management. The four ninja magic techniques got additional shuriken-strengthening traits, only the suicide bomb has been replaced by temporary invincibility and super strength, that leaves the hero with just one speck of health, so it's still best used just before one is about to die.
But Jiro also has a couple of entirely new tricks up his sleeve, like a grappling hook that can be shot straight upward to cling onto ceilings, and he can also slide to pass under low passages (unlike Joe Musashi, Jiro can not walk in a crouched position). The rest of the abilities are all related to swordfighting: the right shoulder button can now be used to deflect attacks (similar to Shinobi Legions), although the timing has to be spot-on. When an enemy is unaware of Jiro's presence, he can take him out silently, Tenchu-style. Finally, melee attacks are now chained into strings of combos, and there are several new moves, like a sliding attack, a slash that lifts enemies into the air and a guard breaking charge attack. But no worries, Shinobi didn't turn into a Devil May Cry-esque combo fest like Bloodrayne Betrayal. The basic enemies still go down with a single stroke and even tougher ones don't last long, either, but they can be juggled further to maximize scoring. Blocking an entire machinegun salve with your sword and then destroying your foe with a fluid counterattack just feels great, and when things go wrong you'll always know it's your fault and the game gave you all the tools to do better.
The system to determine your score is more elaborate than in most shmups. Not only killing enemies awards points, but also each blow that leads to their death, with varying values for each move. Blocking attacks will also raise the score, but getting hit is punished with a deduction. A special meter can be built up with combos for even higher scores. Each additional level raises a score multiplier and makes Jiro's weapon glow brighter, But take one hit and it goes all back to zero immediately. Finally, at the end of each stage you get penalties for every second you go over the assigned standard time for the stage and for each magic use. You can even save replays of good runs, although there seems to be no way to share them with other players.
What makes the new Shinobi a worthy follow-up to the classics, and puts it heads and shoulders above almost any other 2(.5)D action game nowadays, is the brilliant stage design. Right in the first stage the game demands a well-timed combination of the double jump and grapple hook. Each stage has at least one hard to reach or hard to find hidden area, and just like in the good-old days, the game gets hard fast, and excruciatingly so. The once again awesome bosses range from old favourites like the helicopter to a huge robotic shark, and demand not only the right approach, but also ninja-like reflexes to beat them. Unlike the previous games, though, the game is saved after each stage, and you also get unlimited credits. But if you lose your last live in the boss fight, you're still gonna go back to the very beginning of the usually very long stage. Unless you're playing on the easiest of the four difficulty levels, which not only makes the enemies weaker, but also grants unlimited lives. But you're not likely to die that much in this mode, anyway—its almost too easy, safe for a few bits of brutal platforming towards the end. "Hard" and especially "Very Hard," on the other hand, make even the original games look like child's play. One life at three continues against much harder enemies, anyone? Shinobi experts will be glad to hear that the game pulls none of that patronizing "finish the game on normal to get the higher diffictulties" nonsense.
Griptonite even brought back the cool shuriken shooting range bonus stage from the 1987 classic, although it's a bit easier to win here, and awards further bonus points instead of extra lives. Only the parts where Jiro rides various vehicles in an angled perspective are a bit dull, but nowhere near as long and boring as in Nightshade. In a desperate attempt to use more functions of the 3DS hardware, the surfing sequence is controlled by tilting the handheld. That doesn't make it more exciting though, but only more awkward to control. There's also some missed opportunities, like when Jiro jumps on a rocket, and then the game just cuts to him already at his target. Now that could have made an interesting tilt-controlled sequence. By far the best of the bunch is the ride on the After Burner jet, if only for the awesome use of that game's theme music.
Otherwise the music consists of a much more usual modern action game rock/techno soundtrack, ditching the jazzy vibe of Shinobi III and the many different styles from Revenge. It does keep lots of generic "oriental style" melodies and chinese flutes, the kind you'd hear in martial arts movies. No doubt this soundtrack is more befitting to the game than the Genesis ones, especially with its faster pace, but it's also less memorable. The exception here is the excellent, almost Western-like main theme, which will haunt your mind long after you've shut off the 3DS. If Sergio Leone had ever made a ninja movie, surely this is what Ennio Morricone's soundtrack would have been like.
There are some minor issues left, though. Sometimes the commands to cling onto ceilings and for ducking can feel a bit iffy. That's because when you want to do either in transition from running, the analog nub has to point at the exact top/bottom location for Jiro to switch between commands. Ninja magic is selected via touch, but since most players probably won't have the touchpen ready, they'll get fingerprints all over the lower display. Placing the selection in the pause menu like in the Genesis games would have been the better choice.
Maybe the reason for dropping the "3D" in the Western release title was this: the 3D is simply not very good. This doesn't just mean it isn't inventive with the technology and doesn't add much to the experience—although that is the case too—the effect is just, plainly and frankly, broken. There is no angle you can hold the DS in to prevent some object throwing faint duplicate images, and most of the time one of those objects is Jiro himself. It isn't that obvious in front of bright backgrounds, but when the contrasts are high, it's terribly irritating and probably damages your eyes even more than "normal" 3D. In 2D the game looks decent despite PSOne-era detail levels, although it always seems like it lacks color, as every area has a very dominant color. So you got orange stages and blue stages and white stages, but when a stage is orange, it's very orange.
The main adventure in Shinobi 3D is only about as long as Shinobi III, but Griptonite packed their game with a ton of replay value, and then some. Besides the excellent scoring system, there are dozens of "achievements," which unlock a myriad of different extras. There's the obligatory artwork artwork and movie galleries, as well as a music test, whith every single item hidden behind requirements ranging from "Complete level X" to "Beat the final boss without taking any damage." A neat little extra is the "history" menu, which spills trivia about all the previous games. But you also get different costumes and weapon replacements (including a golden axe, a chainsaw and a chicken!), and even cheats for Jiro. All beaten levels can thankfully be selected seperately to hunt for missed achievements and higher scores. Finding two skull coins in each of the 8 stages opens access to a difficult VR challenge map, which focuses on Jiro's platform abilities. 13 more can be unlocked by meeting other players via Street Pass (or by using up the Play Coins you get for running around with the 3DS set to standby). Here you get to run around in an 1987 Joe Musashi memorial outfit, but all of them demand perfect control of your ninja skills, as every single hit is an instant kill. A lot of time will pass until one has mastered them all.
There are few other classic game reimagenings that do such a great job at modernizing a franchise while still capturing the original's spirit as well as Shinobi 3D. It effortlessly plays in the same league as Bionic Commando Rearmed and Contra 4. While not quite perfect, especially considering the graphics and the botched 3D mode, it's one of the best games in the series yet. But also viewed simply as an old-school 2D action platformer, Shinobi 3D is quite excellent.
