Retronauts - 675: Shinobi - Mission 1

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

With the series poised for a comeback in 2025, Diamond Feit, Stuart Gipp, and Thomas Nickel uncover the secrets of the ninja in this first podcast about Sega's Shinobi games. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

This week in Retronauts, sit, Yamato, sit. Good dog. Welcome, everyone to, everyone to retronauts. Welcome to the first of what I'm going to say will be a two-part series. I pray it's two parts. As we talk about Shinobi, the magic, the mystery, the wonders of Shinobi. I'm your host, Diamond Fight. Am I a ninja?

I'm not saying. And here with me are two guests from the European region of the planet Earth. Let's start in the UK, which is not Europe, but it's close enough. Yeah, well, it used to be, but hello, I'm Steuogh, and they call me Shinobi because my knob knob goes down to my shin. That's not true. I don't know why I said it. It's a huge mistake.

It's a lie. It's much less impressive than that. Hello. I see you're playing the part of Blue Ninja today. You're working Blue. I am, yeah, I'm afraid so. Dear Lord. All right.

And joining us in the nation of Germany. Hello, my name is Thomas Nicol, and I affirm the demand that my name is put with the copyright into the title of this podcast. I think we can make that happen. We'll see. We'll see. Is that a C or a TM or an R? Should be a C, I guess. Okay. All right. Well, you know what? You've got a C in your last name. So we'll put a circle around that C. That'll be okay, right?

Yeah, that's fine. I think that making a demand like that makes you a bit of a C anyway, to be honest. Hey, hey, hey, Stu. Do you need a drink of water? What's going on here? It's finished now. I'm sorry. I can't pass up on a position easy like that. Okay, okay Yeah, fair enough You know, I love you, Thomas Of course I do

Even if you still get that I make it a game for me Anyway, we have collected ourselves here today Talk about Shinobi Sega's long-running, question mark franchise about ninjas And in order to tell the story I want to take a few minutes here

Not too much time, don't worry about it There's no test You know, there's no quiz at the end of this podcast but I just want to go over what the hell is Shinobi? Because when we think of Shinobi, we think of ninjas, but what's the difference? And I'm here to tell you what the difference is, because I live in Japan, and I've studied the language for quite some time. So the basic version, basic, is that Shinobi is actually the older word than ninja.

And they're almost identical. They're almost identical. They're both revolve around this verb, which is Shinobu, which is actually about like, bearing and enduring hardships but now of course because it's been used for you know like a century with ninjas people also talk about like sneaking and stealthiness but originally it was about like

you know hardships or whatever but the verb is shinobu and you put that in a noun form it becomes shinobi and if you write them out Shinobi Nomono which is like a Shinobi person basically would just be shortened to Shinobi and if you write them kanji

those two kanji also look like ninja which is a long story but I'm giving you the short version But there's a long history of Shinobi being found in ancient Japanese texts and even texts that were written by foreigners, for example, the Nipo Jisho, which is something that I think was written by the Portuguese when they visited Japan in like the 17th century. So they had like Shinobi in the dictionary because that's a word they heard. So it's out there. It's written down. We have records of it.

It wasn't the only term. There were lots of words for people who did this sort of stuff. and some of these words just didn't catch on. Like, Rapa, soupa, daco, can you imagine? It doesn't sound as cool. Amazing. Dacquel guidance? That does not sound good at all.

I'm sorry, daco guidein. No. Donald daco. It sounds like taco. I'm hungry now. It's pretty close. Yeah. Anyway, this word that we know now, Ninja, really caught on, I would say, after World War II,

and then it, like, blew up big in a big time, in the 80s because there was a real ninja boom in pop culture, both in Japan and then, by extension, the rest of the world, because everyone got crazy about ninjas, because we thought, this is the coolest thing ever. They cover their faces, and they throw smoke bombs, and they might have magic powers, and everyone just said, yes, they have magic powers. And we just accepted this for the last 40-plus years. Yeah, I mean, think about the 60s, James Bond, for example. You only live twice. We have ninjas in there. Yes, that's true. That's late 60s. Fun fact, by the way, the secret ninja training ground that they go to is actually Himaji Castle, which is one of the most popular tourist destinations in all of Japan, so not very secret. I'd like to go sometime. I didn't manage when I was in Osaka a couple of years ago. Yeah, it's still standing, Himaji Castle. You can go there. It's lovely. It's a little bit,

it's not quite close to Osaka, but if you take the train from there, you can get there. It's like a day trip. You know, it's nice. It's from Kanzai, roughly, right? Yes. Yeah. It's west. It's west of Osaka, it's west of Kobe, but it's not as far as, like, Hiroshima. It's, you know, it's in the middle there. Okay. But, yeah, that's a good example of an early, like a relatively early pop culture, English language pop culture, talking about ninjas.

And presumably, I guess, Sirian Fleming probably heard the word somewhere when he was doing research. Like, oh, ninjas, sounds great. Okay, we have ninjas. Suramen. So with all this information, I was curious to know, was Shinobi your, your first ninja. Like, did you learn about ninjas from Shinobi or something else? And I'm especially just because I know Europeans have very different attitudes towards the martial arts and ninjas. In America, we had a ninja in every driveway and every cooking pot. Like,

we were just drowning in ninjas throughout the 80s. But I want to know your story. Let's start in the United Kingdom where I don't even know if it's legal for you to say the word ninja. But go ahead, Stu. Tell us. Well, nowadays, I don't think it's really an issue. I mean, The main issue that the UK seemed to have was with, I don't know how to pronounce this correctly, probably because it was banned, but Nunchucks, Nunchuku. Yes. They weren't allowed to be shown on TV or, by extension, the cinema. I assume there was some sort of regulation because it was, you know, the British Board of Film Classification who just give films their rating and ask for cuts if they need them by law, basically. And I guess Shinobi kind of got away with it because video.

games didn't actually have any formal regulation at this point, to my knowledge. I mean, we're pre-mortal combat, so I don't think those laws really applied, but, like, Enter the Dragon, on the poster for that, the Nunchika has been changed to, like, a bow staff,

but it actually kind of looks like he's just holding a big baguette, which is quite funny. And then, you know, later Soul Blade, Lee Long's weapon got changed to the San Setsicon, the staff with the three sections, so kind of triple nunchukes in a So I don't know what's going on with that.

Yeah, I mean, three are fine. Two are very dangerous, obviously. Three, it's okay. But the one everyone knows, obviously, is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was changed to Teenish Mutant Hero Turtles, for God only knows what reason. And Michael Angelo's sort of action shots were just removed,

like, until he had his weapon replaced in later season with, like, a grappling hook. But, like, the most ludicrous one is, secret of the original Ninja Turtles movie. I don't think it had much in the way of censorship. It may have. But the second one, Secret of the U. use, which I think is pitched younger in general.

There is a sequence where they use like a string of sausage, like a link, sausage links as a, as a, as a kind of a bit, you know. And that, they were like, there's like a story about this on the sort of BBFC website where they're like, okay, we can't cut the sausages, that's ridiculous. We just need to confirm absolutely from the film, because they are, in fact, sausages and not nunchugs.

So they asked them and they're like, yes, they're sausages. I'm like, okay, we won't cut that, we won't cut that. But then James Furman, who was at the top of the BBFC at the time, is like, no, we're cutting the sausages. They look a bit like nunchucks, cut them out. And James Furman now, you know, dead, which is, you know, very sad, but also great because now we've got ninjas again. And yeah, the BBFC and their sort of general censorship is one of my hobby horses, so thanks for letting me talk about it even briefly. They didn't seem to affect Shinobi for whatever reason, I guess, because video games weren't really looked at, then maybe if this had still been enforced when formal sort of regulation

came in, that may have become an issue. But no, we had games like Shinobi on a master system. We had the ninja on the master system. You know, there's plenty of ninja games, plenty of ninja stuff. But anything with any sort of martial arts movies, you're going to see many minutes of cuts. So it's almost not worth watching the UK versions at all. I would say Shinobi is pretty light on Nunchucks. You don't see it that often.

The games we talk about today. I think that the Nunchucks, well, we'll talk about it, but I think that as far as the first game goes, they're not actually in the arcade version, just the Master System one. I could be wrong about that. But I remember I had that game, and the manual has got the Nunchucks in their clearest day,

drawing of them, picture of the Nunchucks, saying, hey, kids, go out and get some nonchucks. I think one of the reasons they were so banned is because, A, imitatable, I guess, but B, also they can be concealed, and that was a big deal. for us for some reason. Sure.

I mean, if you're going to conceal a weapon, you know, there's going to bust up the nunchucks. It's just not going to happen. But, yeah, all I'm saying is, this past weekend I watched Bruce Lee's The Way of the Dragon. And at one point, he very casually reaches into his pants and pulls out, not one, but two pairs of nunchucks. And then he beats an entire alley's worth of Italian thugs,

just brutally. Like, it's not even close. Wow. He even lets one of them. He lets one of them take his nunchucks. And he's like, okay, go ahead, swing your nunchuck. And the dude hits himself in the head. Like, it's pure comedy.

Pure comedy. Yeah. That would all be gone from the UK version, all of it. They were just cutting him walking into the alley and then next step you're cut. And then he'd just be in like McDonald's or something. Being like, well, that was a really hard fight. Thomas and letting us about the way of German ninjas. What happened over there?

Well, it's interesting because, I mean, Drabony is notorious. censorship, right? But in this case, nobody seemed really to care too much about all of this. So the Shinobi games were in stores. The ninja was in stores. We had a few name changes, of course. I mean, ninja guide became, I think, Shadow Warriors, right? And another one became blue shadow, stuff like that. But the big ones, they kept their ninjas, especially the Sega ones, of course. And I actually checked today on my boxes. It clearly says ninja on the back. So the one thing that happened, one game got to the German index, which meant no more sales, no more writing about it.

But we'll get to that when we get there. But in general, not much of a big deal, actually, in Germany, which is surprising, I think. If I may, is it Der Ninja, D-Ninja, or Das Ninja? D-Ninja. Dair Ninja, okay. They're quite daring. Too bad. I was hoping for a Dye Ninja Nye, but no.

I'm afraid not. If you were to go for plural, of course, that would work. Right, right. The Ninjas, the. So let's dive into the series with, of course, the very first game, which is called simply Shinobi. It debuted in the arcades, 1997, and then they port it to, I would say, just about every single possible platform at the time. And even subsequently, you know, there are still stories of people porting Shinobi to other consoles to this day because it's a popular game. people love to work with it.

I was even surprised to learn of a Java port for mobile phones in the year 2000, which is okay, sure. Someone wanted that. That seems super early, even for a phone, like mobile game as well. I mean, if it's Japan, it makes sense. You know, Japanese cell phones were already pretty feature-rich by the year 2000. Feature phones, yeah. I mean, I can see that game working pretty well on the phone if, you know, one button to sort of

jump between the two levels, one middle button to. fire and left and right and maybe six or something to jump. I can see that working. I would probably play that. I mean, if you're on, if you're on the train, you're like, what are you going to do? Not play Shinobi? Yeah, exactly. Come on. Just plays play Shinobi. What do you do? What are you doing? Read a newspaper? Come on. It was still better than the spectrum version, which wasn't actually that bad for the spectrum, honestly. But, you know, it's a spectrum game. So it is what it is. So Shinobi is primarily the brainchild of a man named Utaka Sugano, and we actually have a link to it in the show notes.

I found an interview with Sugano in Portuguese, a 2017 Brazilian interview in Portuguese. But you can translate it on the internet. You can go ahead and do that and learn about how he worked in this game. He described his role as game mechanics design, level design, bonus stage design, screen layout, and sequence design and so on. So he was definitely the head of this game. It was his baby, if you will. Yeah. It does have

a feel to it. It does... A lot of stuff he did. Well, I think it has a sort of a nice authorly feel to it that does kind of carry across to the other games in a way. It is quite... I mean, I don't want to jump ahead, but you've noted here that it plays a lot like

Rolling Thunder, which it does. Yeah. I think it is a more varied game than Rolling Thunder and it has a sense of set piece kind of design as well which I'm very fond of I mean in the first game in the original arcade version for example like at the end of the stage the first stage you'll get like Kenna attacking you and then walking off like

they establish that you are moving through a story you know in a way that a lot of games still didn't yeah it's definitely got a nice feel that there was someone behind there making sure it matched a vision, basically. There is also one thing I played the game just this morning again,

just again to get a feel for it. And one thing I noticed is from all Shinobi games out there, this one feels the most like a ninja e-game because in this game you are actually required to well, I wouldn't say do stealth, but you have, I require to play smart. So, you know, there's these guys walking around

with the shields up, for example, right? Yeah. So they are often paired with guys with guns, so you can't just attack head-on. You have to switch the plane, walk behind them, and attack from behind. So this is, I would say, rather ninja style at least. A lot more than later on. Yeah, they carry that forward as well in stuff like Shadowdance. But, yeah, there's a nice sense of strategy to it with the sort of layer switching.

And, you know, the fact, I might be mistaken on this, but you have to rescue all the hostages to clear a level. Yes, you do. I think in the master system port, which is the one I spent the most time with, which we'll get to, you don't have to do that. That's one of the changes they made. But here, it's not like they're hidden necessarily, but it adds another layer of like, I can't just ignore these guys.

I've got to go up there. You have to jump into danger. And some levels are a bit more sprawling than others. So you have to really go and search for that, for them. Yeah, hostages are often guarded by strong enemies. So you have to, like, figure out what's the best way to get behind them or maybe attack them from a distance and then approach the hostage safely afterwards. So there's definitely some strategies.

There is an incentive as well as just because you have to, because those ostriches will grant you point bonuses and power-ups and things as well. So the more you say- The power-ups are big deal, I would say, in this game. Oh, yeah. I mean, in all of them, but in this one especially. Because, you know, when you have them, all of a sudden, the shield guys become a lot less dangerous

because you can just autify them to death. Yeah. Yeah, all of a sudden your ninja goes from throwing stars to gun, which is a pretty big upgrade, just to have a gun. It's quite funny, actually, because I don't really think of ninjas as using guns necessarily. It reminds me of that bit in the first terror fire when the clown pulls a gun out and just shoot someone, which is really funny. Yeah, and again, in the master's version, which I mean, I did play the arcade one because I played it this morning as well.

It's hard as hell, I find. Once you get past level one, that thing takes the gloves right off. Once you see Marilyn Monroe, that's it. You are in trouble. But the Master System version changed it up because, of course, the original arcade, it's a single-hit death deal. You can't take any damage. The Master System, you can take quite a bit of damage. You have about 10 HP and a host of new weapons and things.

It really does feel like a loving, sort of careful port of the game, and it's still my preferred version. The arcade one is still excellent, still very playable. I think it's on... Well, it says here it's on Sega Ages, which is how I'm pretty sure I have it on Switch. But I have this weird idea that it's been delisted, but I could be wrong about that. The recent Sega purge, I believe, was Steam, not Switch. Right, right, okay. Yeah, the Ages games are all still there, luckily.

That's good, because they're excellent. Yep, that's the best. Was it on the 3DS? I don't think the first one was, no. Right, right. They did Shinobi 2 on DS. Yeah, they did three as well, didn't they? Yeah, we'll get to that as well.

I would have meant the Japanese 2, the Western 3. Right, right. Sorry, I didn't realize that it was done like that. That's interesting to know, actually. So, Sagano said it took about 10 months to develop the game, and he actually cited the American Ninjas boom as a reason for the game existing. It's like, I guess, there's evidence of other games doing this in the 80s. I know that Capcom, when they were making Final Fight,

they heard about the ninja boom in America, and like, oh, make sure there's a ninja in this game. America's love ninjas. so that's why you have Guy in Final Fight because they decided Americans live ninjas, so that's only two years later than this, so Wow. Japan knew. Japan knew we wanted more

ninjas. And they were right. Indeed, Sagano even talked about this is an amazing, he said he had the idea of a joystick that would have, instead of a ball at the top of the joystick, the shape would be a ninja star and so you would actually be sliding the controller like upwards

to pretend to throw ninja stars in the bonus stages, which It sounds really cool, but also sounds like it probably would have cost a lot of money to make a custom joysticks, so Sega said no, thanks, but it's cute. That would have been very cool. I mean, this was the same year as the Ninja Warriors, I think, 87, so there was definitely something in the water. Taito's extremely good game. You know, we're getting a bit of a ninja boom happening again now, aren't we, with the Ninja Warriors again and Shadow of the Ninja Reborn from the same developers. They love Ninjas now.

Well, ninjas don't go out of style They're always cool It's true I see now I want to find out When Ninja Spirit came out So I can see if this was just the year of ninjas I mean, I know Ninja Guiden 88

Yeah Ninja Guiden in Japan was 88 So it's very It's very close All these ninja games I like it I love it more please Yeah I mean let's be honest here A ninja is basically a written game design

Right there right I mean look at what they can do in theory What they're all about you have to make a game out of them. There's no way around it. They're great as heroes and their greatest villains. Works both ways. Yep, Sub-Zero and Scorpion.

Then Quay versus whatever Scorpion's one is, I forget. A yellow guy. Yellow guys, that's one. Yeah. One thing you mentioned Diamond. Yes. You mentioned the bonus stage already, and I think the bonus stage for this game

is the big set piece of the whole Shinobi game, because I have a feeling, that might be what they came up with first when they thought about the joystick doing it looking like that and it's really impressive even nowadays I think. Oh yeah, that's what I thought as well the idea of flicking the thing up to throw

into the screen like first person that bonus stage is hard it's really hard to get a full clear I very rarely managed it on the master system and it's the only way to get ninja magic so I basically just didn't see most of the ninja magic because it was just so difficult to get it but the game was beatable without it, thankfully.

I'm not sure if that's true of the arcade one, but yeah, you'd have to be real good. Oh, man, the arcade one, yeah. Well, in the arcade's case, it's only for about getting extra lives, and you have to get every single ninja to get the extra life, otherwise you get no bonus whatsoever, so it's a very tall order. I have to, when I played this as a kid,

I found the loss when the quite detailed ninja jumps right in front of you, arm it outstretched to strike and it makes this noise I found that genuinely quite upsetting like I didn't want to fail because I didn't want that to happen it was intense it's a kind of jump scare yeah

it's a bit you know like in Operation Wolf the guy who jumps into the foreground and shoots you yeah it's a big sprite same effect keep those ninjas away from me please very small sprite ninja's fine big ninjas no thanks

but I must shout out here the composer Yasuhiro Kawakami, who was a new hire for Sega at that point. And he made all the music for Shinobi, and I would say Shinobi has some very good tunes in it, really good. And Kawakami would go on to make music for the arcade version of Eswat, Super Art Type, and a few years later, just the god-to-your-s soundtrack for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. So, Kawakami, one of the greats. One of the greats, Yasuriko Kawakami. It's very It's very catchy all of that's like the basic one for stage one, but this, like, that's like the basic one for stage one. but there's another tune for later stages that's just a little it's a little more moody but it's also

very pleasant and the bonus stage is very very chipper and the boss the boss theme is a little a little quieter it's more it's more threatening you know yeah i think it's all it's all very well handled i believe the music the music uh they ported it of course to the master system version it's very very good there as well the master system i think has a really nice sound chip i don't know exactly what it is. I mean, not with the FM add-on, because I never had that, but like, it's a PSG. Yeah, it's the same as, I want to say it's the same as the NeoGeo Pocket, because it really does sound like that, but it's, there's something quite atmospheric and pleasant about it, really. Well, if you know what you're doing, there certainly is, not everybody did, though.

So, there's not much of a story to Shinobi, but I do want to highlight the fact that we have, the hero has a name. The hero's name is Joe Musashi, and he's here to fight a crime. And he's here to fight a crime syndicate who's called Zed. Remember that name? It's been a couple again later, Zed. And as we mentioned before, it's basically plays like Rolling Thunder and that you're walking left to right. You can hold up or down on the joystick and jump between planes or sometimes you'll jump over a fence. There's no doorways. You're not looking for ammo. If you want to attack with a shit again, you can attack with should again. You have unlimited ammo. Don't worry about it. But if you attack someone up close, you automatically use a melee strike. And the game gives you bonus points if you beat a stage without throwing any shirt again.

So that's something you can do if you want to get more points. Wow. I can barely beat the stage while I'm throwing the shirt. You also have once per stage Ninja Magic. Now, Ninja Magic is a separate button. It's basically get out of jail free card. You press this button and something happens. He has a couple different effects that cycle through, but basically the effect is the same.

You press the button. He says some what looks like gibberish. I don't think it sounds like Japanese to me, and then something like lightning shoots out or double shoot out or little tornadoes fly around, and it will just kill all the regular enemies on screen. If you're fighting a boss, it will damage the boss a couple times, but it won't kill them automatically.

But it's good for getting out of trouble. And that also, if you beat a stage and you don't use Ninja Magic, you get more bonus points. So the game has a lot of tools for you to use, and it rewards you for not using them if you elect not to. And to spoil a bit already, it also punishes you if you don't use anything or if you are too good over the time. But we'll get to that soon, I guess.

Now, as we mentioned, the arcade version Shinobi is basically a one-hit kill game. But there is something unique in that you must be attacked. So if you just walk into a guy who's walking at you, you just sort of bounce off each other and makes it like a little, oh, noise. It's like, oh, and it doesn't hurt you at all. But if they kick you, if they stab you, if a guy is a gun and shoots you, then that's it, that's a hit, then you die. Yeah, and that's a great thing because it makes you all, again, play tactically

because sometimes it's even good to bump into enemies, so you can disrupt their attacks, especially when you have a gun fighter. Yeah, you can jump between planes and land on a guy purposely, and you'll knock him back. You know, if you're on a stage that have pits, you can knock guys into pits, but of course you can get knocked into pit yourself, so you have to be careful. Yeah, you better be.

Also, there are enemy ninjas who are a lot harder to do, with because they basically always have their swords out. So if they jump at you and their sword is out, then that's an attack. So you're dead. I say a lot of the time it's actually, though it's not always possible, a lot of the time with the enemy ninjas, it's best to just try and kind of get under them and get away from them, especially if they're on the screen with other enemies, because this game is very good at placing particularly the shooter enemies in a place where you can't crouch

under their bullets because you're on an elevated platform of some sort. and it gets Yeah, it gets difficult Even the master's conversion once it introduces Like the enemies that are prone Very hard to hit You can't hit them with shirikans You have to be close to them

And if you've got one of those And you've got an enemy ninja And you've got another shooter in the distance Or someone worse yet Who throws that sort of boomerang-ish weapon That goes back to them, the shield Then you are in deep sludge To quote a goofy movie

Yeah, that's when you should really whip out your ninja magic because when the screen's really full of ninjas, you are in trouble. And I don't have any ninja magic, because I'm shit. And the ninjas are very tricky in this game because enemy ninjas can just appear. Like most enemies in the game, you know, they will approach you or they'll walk from offscreen or maybe they're stationed off screen and you walk into them. But ninjas can just sort of materialize out of nowhere.

And there's at least one stage I can think of where you see the exit, you walk towards the exit, and suddenly like five ninja just appear all around you. And it's like, it's a real, oh shit. moment? Like, oh! Mm-hmm. Yeah, the fact that it can come from behind you at any point almost is it's brutal. I mean, talking up the difficulty of it, I mean, it's not the hardest game, even the arcade one. It's not unfair. It's not unfair. No, no, no. Because there is precision. You have plenty of options. But if you're not prepared to play methodically,

you are going to get your ass handed to you, basically. The mast system one is a lot fairer, but it still has its sticking points. So if we're going to talk about the bosses, I'll talk about that then. Yeah, well, the basic layout of this game is that there are five missions, and each mission usually has three or four stages, and the last stage is just a pure boss battle. And in many of these missions, you will see the boss ahead of time, who will either attack you or maybe threaten you. Some of the bosses are kind of weird, you know, the boss of mission two is basically a helicopter. You fight a helicopter, okay. The mission three boss is really weird, and it's like a stack of statues you have to destroy

and then behind it is like a big head that shoots fireballs at you it's also really hard to this one yeah you really you have to fight you have to attack the statues very quickly because they constantly advancing you and there's like a there's an electric field behind you

that automatically kills you so you have to like hit them really really quickly in the master system port that boss is called Mandara it's a yep that boss in the master system port is the absolute skill check because, okay, the way that the weapons work in that version is you can collect upgrades for them

and you go from shiriken to faster rate shiriken to, I think, knives, to bombs, to the gun. And if you get to that boss and you have anything other than the faster shirikins or maybe the knives, I think it's quite literally impossible. If you have the gun, the fire rate's too slow. It cannot kill them fast enough. There might be a way to do it that I'm not aware of, but I can, could not get past that unless I had that specific weapon, which means tactical not collecting hostages. However, you don't know what you're going to get from hostage until you've collected

them, unless you've memorized it. So if you do accidentally upgrade your weapon to something like, God forbid, the really terrible bombs, you are again in deep sludge to once again quote a good movie. A movie is going to keep coming up, I think. But yeah, that bit's hard. I mean, I can beat the Master System one, and I have beaten it legit, which I'm quite pleased with, because I did when I was a kid, and it's not a particularly easy game, but that specific boss, my God, and once you've beaten those statues as well, you've still got to destroy the head, and that's not easy either. No, no, it moves up and down, it attacks you, yeah, it's tricky. And, of course, if you die, you lose your weapon, so you're effed, to put it politely. And you start over, so the statues come back, so yeah. Oh, yes.

And again, I want to stress this, I could be wrong, and it could be doable using some tactic I'm not familiar with, but all these years I've not figured it out. So I'm prepared to put my sort of head in the guillotine here and say, I think that for the more reasonable player, for the sort of layman, it's not possible without those weapons. I know in the arcade, I know in the arcade there is a way, again, because you don't die by just bumping. into the statues, they just knock you away like a regular enemy, there's some way to get sort of, like, get in the statues, and they might, they can bump you out behind them, and then you just get past them. But I don't know how to do that reliable. I don't know how to do that reliably. I tried that on the SMS. I tried that on the MS, and it doesn't work. I couldn't get it to work. If you get hit by them, you will be knocked to the left towards the electric field,

and if that field touches you, it's a one hit, kill. I also tried in the arcade game. Not a chance in the arcade game. I couldn't make it in the arcade game. I think you have to be really good to pull that off. But also, I did a bit of research about the arcade game, about that boss in the arcade game, and from what I found out, it looks like each status hit points depend on

how many times you died before. So if you died a couple of times, there will be weaker. If you just finished, played the game on one single life, they will just waste you. Wow. And that is... I read that. I can't verify that.

But holy shit, that is something. That's one decision. And of course, that's a poison for speedwinners, I guess, or poison for people who want to pay it on one credit. Which, by the way, we should also mention, in a sense, you don't have to clear it on one credit, but the game does disable continues during the final mission in the arcade. So if you get to the final mission, or if you get to the last boss and you run out of lives, that's it. Sorry, you'll try again. I haven't faced the final boss in the arcade version. I imagine it's a lot harder than it is on the mask system,

but the way he attacks on the mask system, the Mask Ninja, he sort of, as you've noted here, he will use attacks that are similar to your own magic, like summoning clones and such. But the way you can defeat him is he's always got a shield around him, so projectiles will do nothing. But if he'll jump around on the screen, and when he lands, the shield will disable briefly,

and at that point you can do a melee attack. So you have to get good. but it is fun. It's a fun fight, unlike Mandara, you know. I do like the fights with Kenno in the helicopter because the helicopter is just, you just feel cool taking down a helicopter by shooting up this tiny little window on the bottom of it

and landing those precise hits. Also, it feels really good when you hit. Yeah, and it makes a great noise as well. He's like, bling, bling! And you really get that sense of, I am shattering this windscreen and the person inside this is going to die today. I'm going to be able to be.

I'm going to be. So as a lot of So as mentioned, there were a lot of ports for Shinobi. been talking a lot about the Masterson port, which made a lot of changes, and he's obviously a big fan of that port. I thought it was interesting that there was a NES port by Tengen, which is very clearly based on the Masterson port. Like, you look at the graphics, you hear the music. It's very clearly derivative from the Masterson version, but that version sucks, so don't play that one. I remember it has the horrible looking almost sort of VGA-ish graphics,

doesn't it? It's ugly. It sounds bad. It's all around really bad. Do not play that NES game. Sorry. Was it licensed? I mean, is it even official? Tengen, at that point, I don't know. Tengen had some, Tengen did some official versions, but that might have been unofficial, you know?

Yeah. Did they also do the Fantasy Zone port for the NES as well? I don't know all the Tengen titles. I know Tengen did do Rolling Thunder in America for NES. Oh, wow. But that was official. But it came in the weird cartridge, so it was kind of like, hey, why is this cartridge so big?

And as I also mentioned before, there's a Sega ages version, which offers the ages mode, and in Ages mode, it makes the game a little bit easier. It gives Joe one extra hit, so you don't die in one hit, you die in two hits. But because it's a modern port, they also go in, they go in and tamper with some stuff that's probably some lawyer told them to cut out. Like, there is an enemy in the game who climbs on a wall, and he's wearing red and blue, So it kind of looks like Spider-Man, and they change the colors that enemy shows to look at Spider-Man anymore. Put a pin in that listeners, because we will not.

That's not the last mention of Spider-Man of this episode. He's sort of an inverted Spider-Man, but he also does what are very clearly Spider-Man poses as well. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, that's just Spider-Man, isn't it? Also, Stu, you mentioned the posters of Merrill Monroe, which is at early level. Yes. If you play the Sega Ages version, those posters are removed, and it's replaced with Altered Beast, which is kind of cute. It could be argued that Marilyn Monroe herself

due to the sort of corruption in Hollywood did become something of an alter beast So it does thematically Sort of work I don't mean it I'm not having a go at her I'm having a go at the monster That is the Hollywood system

I also think they removed these posters entirely In some previous ports I think there was one on One of these sonic collections On the PS360 or so Where they put in Shinobi And they just removed the posters entirely So I think it's good that we got at least an alternative from M2.

Yeah, this game has been reissued many many times. Beyond the ports, it's also been reissued in many different formats. It was on virtual console. It was on Xbox Live at one point. Yeah, I remember that. That annoyed me because they used the art from the Mask System version with the white grid and everything. And I was like, holy shit, they ported the Masked System Shinobi to the Xbox. I got to buy this.

And I bought it, and it was the frigging arcade version. I was so disappointed. So, yeah, during the, if you pick, if you play a reissue this game, it's kind of a coin toss, what was, what's in there, what's been removed, but the Sega Ages version is still readily available. And that's, so that's what I mean as far as like, if you want to play this today, the Sega Ages version is very good, but you are playing a slight edited version. However, Thomas, I know you pointed out this Neo Geo port. The Neo Geo port looks great. And that, of course, doesn't have any changes. That's just the arcade game. That's a pretty impressive one, I think. Yeah, I checked that out recently. And, yeah, they just put it off. I mean, of course, the NeoGio can do that, but still, I think parting that over is quite the achievement. I think for me it sort of highlights a bit. It will come up again later, but it does make me a little bit sad.

I mean, there is so much preservation of retrogaming today, like way beyond what you'd expect. I mean, it's just shit like Ernest Evans is coming out again, you know. And I'm delighted that it's coming out again. But it sort of does bum me out a little bit that when games like this do get re-released, it's almost always what's the best version let's put that out

because sometimes what could be considered a worse version like the 8-bit port to me is the definitive version of this game is the version I want to play and I do honestly think

it's the best game as time as far as gameplay goes but we're never going to see it again because Sega has some sort of bizarre a version to making any mass system stuff available anymore since like the Wii some of it was on the virtual console

but only like I think like only like Sonic games maybe Not that I'm complaining about that. It just, I don't know, it would be nice if someone would put the Spectrum version out on, not the Spectrum version, that would be awful, the Master's version out in some form, so people could play it and go, oh, yeah, this is a really interesting remix slash definitive version of the game. But it's never going to happen, and that makes me a little bit sad.

Oh, well, at least I would say one thing that makes it a bit better is you can really buy the original game pretty cheaply even nowadays. Oh, yeah. It's dirt cheap, yeah. that's not, it's, it's neither rare nor for some reason desirable, despite the fact it's one of the best Master System games, in my opinion. Stewardship, all games are good, but only one game is Shinobi on Master System. It's true. That's the plan for the sequel to the book is just 400 pages about Shinobi for the Master System.

Though I think I already wrote up Shinobi for the Master System in the original book. So, yeah, if you want to read me saying basically the same shit I've already said today just now, buy my book. There's other things in it too, which I've also probably, probably already said on this podcast, but, you know, you can't bring this podcast with you to the toilet, can you? Oh, shit, you can. It's offering nothing. Well, you can't at least use a podcast on the toilet for other things, so that's something. It's true, it's true. And I have to admit the paper for your book is pleasantly soft.

Oh, Jesus. That's harsh. It is. Harsh but fair. Yeah, just like Shinobi. Hey. Thank you. Well, let's move on to Well, let's move on to Shadow Dancer, which was a 1989 arcade release,

followed by a number of ports, including Sega consoles, but we'll table that for later. We'll get back to that in a second. You may surprise, of course, why would you make a sequel without the name Shinobi? Why would you call a Shadow Dancer? And one possible reason is that Sagano, who is the main man behind the original Shinobi,

was not involved in the sequel at all. He had moved to Sega of America at this time. So that might be one reason why they gave the game a different name, even though it's very clearly a Shinobi style game. Its gameplay is almost identical. You know, obviously it's got new graphics, new sound, what have you. But it's very clearly, everything looks like Shinobi. But they don't call it Shinobi. They call it Shadowdance. Very odd. This is also the final arcade release for Shinobi. Only two games came out for the arcades. That's crazy to think about, isn't it? Like, we have a quote

from Sagano who says, games multiplayer are more likely to generate profit. Even though Shinobi's gameplay was popular, its style was single player. Can't argue with that, unfortunately. I think that's more or less held to this day I can't think that there is a Shinobi game that even has multiplayer like a single one in the whole series maybe there is and I don't know but I don't think so it's a very solitary activity being a ninja

I can't think of one I don't think there is yeah the only thing I'm going to point out out of pure pedantry is I would be surprised if Revenge of Shinobi didn't turn up as like a mega play game or something like one of those play choice kind of style Sega arcade machines

that they had, but that's pure pedantry, so yeah. So gameplay wise, again, this is almost identical to the first Shinobi. You've got, you know, you've got ninja stars, you're walking right the right, you're jumping between planes. It's not Joe Masashi, though. The new hero is called Hayate, and

the hostages are gone. Instead of hostages you now are diffusing bombs of some kind, but you still get power up, so it's basically the same mechanic. It's just instead of a little person-shaped thing, it's a little bomb-shaped thing. And there's bonus stages. Overall, it's a little bit shorter.

There's only four missions. And I know the very last fight, you're fighting an enemy outside of, like, a space shuttle that takes off as the battle ends, which is like, I don't know why that happens. I don't know what the story is this time. I guess Zed wants to go to space, or they don't. It's a strange game for sure. There are a lot of, again, sort of set PC touches that I do enjoy. like the final boss, this actually might, I don't think this is just the master's inversion,

but the final boss in this game, you're fighting this kind of, as the word, like, Konoichi, the sort of female ninja, in front of the space shuttle, launch pad, but before the fight, both of you, you know, kneel or crouch,

bow to each other, it's very honourable and, you know, let this be our final battle. There's something very cool about that, I think, especially since it's not easy, and none of this game is easy. I think it's even harder than the first one, honestly, even though you've got the dog.

Yes. Well, let's talk about that dog. That is the main new innovation. Dog. A good boy. He's a good boy. The dog's name is Yamato. This is all written down, by the way. I'm not making this up. Here's name is Hayate, and the dog's name is Yamato.

Yamato walks along behind Hayate. Yamato barks at enemies, and you can send Yamato to attack an enemy, and then Yamato will sort of like growl at them and, like, latch under their arm. You know, like when police dogs try to subdue someone, like they grab their arms. So while they're being held by the dog, you can just kill them. But if you don't kill them fast enough or if you try to sit in Yamato against a very strong enemy, Yamato will fail and they will basically injure him so he can't do any more actions. So they don't, there's no blood or anything.

Indeed, it's all rendered very cutely because he just turns into a puppy, and that means he's harmless. But it still breaks your heart whenever you hear that pained yelp though. The dog makes a noise, and you don't like that. You don't want to hear that noise. The sort of strategy of that is like, as an example, with similar level design to the original Shinobi, for example, you'll have an enemy behind a crate or something, and they're crouched down,

so you can't shoot them without getting into the line of fire. But if you use Yamato, which I believe is a crouch and attack, he will leap over the crate, and he'll wrestle the enemy, which forces them to stand up and puts them in the line of fire. So then you can stand up and take them out safely. So there is strategy there As I mentioned, I think they've amped up

the difficulty even more, especially the fact that with the sort of air quote superior graphics, the graphics are a lot busier and harder to read, I think, in places. Like, at the airport level, there's just stuff everywhere all the time. Yeah, also, of course, the sprites are really large this time, and it also makes

it a bit more fussy all around. Yeah, they're big sprites, yeah. But I have to say for, I think myself, it feels worse than the original Chinobi. it just feels a little bit more loose and sorry for saying that a bit more janky as well it's just not as tight

as the original game was you know yeah for me it's again we're going to get to it obviously because you've alluded to it already diamond but for me I'm glad it exists because it means that the home versions exist which for me are basically overall great

much better games using the same sort of mechanics I don't hate this by any means. I think it's fun. I think the boss fights are unbelievably unfair in places because so many of them have quasi sort of timed elements to them. There's at least two bosses

that are essentially advancing walls of death that you've got to hit very precisely when they've got their shield down and when their weak spot is in certain position. And the set pieces are cool and exciting, but good luck getting past the second boss is all I'm going to say. Yeah. So when it came time, and obviously, again, like Shinobi, Shadow Dancer was ported to all sorts of devices and home computers. But when it came time for Sega to port it to their own consoles, they took a slight different approach. First of all, they changed the new name. So the home ports from Sega are called Shadow Dancer, colon, the secret of Shinobi. So they put the Shinobi back in there to let you know this is a Shinobi game.

Hey, it's Shinobi guys. Come on. You like Shinobi. And we do, we do like Shinobi. So good. them. Good for them. Yeah, I'm much more familiar with these versions. I don't want to talk people's ears off. Should I talk about the SMS version just for a bit? Go ahead. Start with that one first. The Mars System version is actually remarkable for several reasons, and not all of them are good.

It's close to the arcade game. It has the same level archetytes, but it's a cut down. There are only, I think, four levels in the whole game plus bosses. And the levels are not long, and the levels are not particularly difficult. Because there are fewer enemies on the screen. There's only like two max, I think.

because in this game, for a master's game, it has some, I'm going to just swear, some fucking remarkable sprites. Like, they are really impressive. The animation is really good. The sprites are really big, and the sprite flicker is surprisingly limited. It's there, but it's not as crippling as you'd expect. And I think that's because there are only ever about two things on the screen ever at once. The levels are very flat. There's one particular level in a sewer that is effectively a straight line. But the fact that these are sprites, big sprites, and they're not background. I don't know exactly how it works, but I know that a lot of big things you see on the master's are actually part of the background, so they're not really technically sprites. They're not moving. But these are, and it's remarkable, it's very impressive.

I'm going to stop saying remarkable. I said it like ten times. I need to get a thesaurus. And it's got my own frigging dog. They got rid of the dog. I mean, he's kind of there, but he's not with you. And that's like the fun of a lot of the fun of that. Yeah, in order to reduce the number of objects on screen, Yamato is not seen.

You can still summon him and you can still use him in certain situations. But Yamato is not walking behind you the entire time, which makes the game a lot less visually fun, in my opinion. Yeah, there's also some sampled speech in this game, which on the mask system is not common. Not common at all when you use ninja magic, for example. I mean, it sounds awful, but it's there. Yeah, you know, it's a case. it's one of these cases where, yes, it's cool they pulled it somewhat off, but maybe they should have gone for a different approach for this port.

Yeah, it's one of those, they spent too much time, like so much time wondering if they could that they never considered whether they should or whatever the quote is from that. Pretty much that. Fantastic Jurassic Park movie, yeah. But, you know, the Sega found a way. It's sort of. We should mention, though, this is a 1991 release, so it's kind of late for Master's

Yes. And this port was not released in America or Japan, so... Apollo Mousa represent. Hmm. But before that, this is kind of, we're going kind of out of order here, and I'll explain why. Before this game, before that game came out in 1990, they released a Genesis Megadry version called Shadow Dancer Secret of Shinobi. But get this. It's not a port of the arcade game.

It's actually an original game. It is. What a game. It's so good, yeah. The levels are different. The sprites are all different. The music is totally different. It's now set in 1997 New York City, and something terrible has happened.

Like, the city's on fire. And I feel like this decision to make this sort of, like, some sort of near future game gives the entire adventure a much stronger identity. The music, shout out to Keskehahara. Keske Tsukhara. Sorry, it's a hard name to say. Great FM synth sounds, like, awesome sound effects. Really cool. Reiko Kodama, graphic design, hell yeah. We love Reiko Kodama on this podcast. Yeah, on this podcast, we stand.

The bonus stages have been rejiggered so that instead of doing a first person ninja shooting, your ninja is now falling through the sky, and the ninja are attacking from beneath and you just shoot the ninja as you're falling, hitting them. It's really cool. It is completely unhinged. You know that bit of that movie? The other guys, when the rock and Samuel Jackson just jump off.

It reminds me of that a little bit. It is absolutely unhinged. You've got that you're falling between skyscrapers, furiously throwing like ninja stars that move even faster than you while you're falling, and then you just land on your feet because you're like some kind of cat. Well, I guess you're a ninja.

A neko ninja. That's a thing, right? From, what was it? That bunny. It was like a yojimbo. That's it. You're a neko ninja. But it's also more forgiving because if you beat the bonus stage and you get all the ninjas,

you get three extra lives. Easier said than done. Yeah, not as hard as the original. Oh, it is very easy. You can tease that stage very easily. You just go all the way to the left because when the ninjas turn around, right, they stay a little bit longer on the side and then you can hit them. Yeah.

If you head over, it's the same in the... Sorry, Thomas, go on, I don't mean to talk about you. No, just if you stay on the left, then you will usually always get all 50 of them. You've reminded me of something I really want to mention about the master's-system one, because I found it out this morning, and I was furious. They have ported the different special stages from the arcade version, including the one where you're throwing... The news are shuffling along on the size skyscraper coming towards you.

It's like the one from the original Shinobi, but a little bit different, right? Yes. Now, I have tested this extensively, using the... rewind function on the emulator. It's rigged. You can't win. You can't win. It's rigged. The final ninja, no matter what I did, no matter where I was positioned, I tried it over and over again, and the stars just went through the guy.

It's rigged. You can't win it. It's bullshit. I'm furious. Stuart, I tell you what, next time when you go to Japan, you join us, then we go to Sega and we just beat the guys up, all right? Or we could just throw Ninja stars at them while they try and shuffle down Sega towers. I think, Diamond, is that okay? in Japan, or would it be frowned upon? I really don't think you should be throwing anything at any skyscrapers. I got to be honest.

The last guy would be coming out of Snigar Towers, I'd be throwing IngerStars at him, and they'd pass right through him. He'd jumped down to cut my head off, and my last thought would be, oh, it was real, so I'm not upset anymore. And then I would, my head would go flying across, roll into a manhole or something, and that would be the end of me, and that it would be the end that I've always wanted. That's how trying to go down, I'm sure. also Yamato's back

Yamato's on screen the entire time you can summon Yamato you do all the all the Yamato stuff is there I also love that when you have a boss fight there's always like a bolt of lightning that comes in and like the boss like appears magically it's a really cool effect it's so cool

that they're big bosses the set piece feel is back but here it's up to 11 I mean you mentioned the burning city at the beginning like the manholes that will explode upwards with this plumes of fire falling masonry everywhere and again it's hard

but I think it's a lot less hard and a lot more fair I love the music as you've mentioned but I also love the sound effects like when you get hit and it goes like doda da da da and like freezes dramatically your motto is used in a more

precise way because you have to hold the B button to charge him up it only takes a second but you hold that release and he'll attack at the wrong time again he'll turn it into a puppy but after a while he will return to full sites he will undergo a growth spurt and become a big good boy again. So, yeah, tremendous game

in this. Really, really, really, really good. One of the best ones in the series and a little bit overlooked, I think, compared to what's coming. Yeah. Because I like this better than, I like this better than the next one. I'm just like holding my hands up, but I really do. Oh, boy. But, yeah, I mean, I just said, I think more people should play it. I just said, I think the arcade game fell a bit janky, and this one is the exact opposite of that. It feels incredibly tight and incredibly precise to play. It's amazing. It took me a long time to play this because they did back in the PS2 and PSP

days as Sega Megadrive slash Genesis collection came out by backbone and for absolutely no reason whatsoever that I can fathom it wasn't in the UK version or the PAL version. It wasn't on it. Why? My fault. Our fault. That's Germany.

God damn it, Germany. Is it anything you won't ruin? Right? We are terrible. But yeah, the thing is Shadow Danza was spanned in Germany back in day. Only the Mega Drive game, as far as I know. And the reason why, I can't say, to be honest, you could, of course, interpret.

The dog might be a reason, of course, because you can stick your dog enemies, but on the other hand, if you hit an enemy, there is an effect when you hit them, that you could mistake for blood. I don't think it's supposed to be blood, but you could. So, for whatever reason, they banned this one. All the others were fine, but this one was banned until, I think, not too long ago.

I think they got it from the index when they did another collection where they finally put it on the one that was on Switch and on PS4 and so on. That is astonishing to me. I mean, it's a shame because... I mean, I don't mean it what I say about Germany. I love Germany.

And one day I will go to Germany and we'll play golf or something. But yeah, it's a shame because it took me a long time to get around to there. But because of that, it makes it more special in a weird way, you know? This game was one of the later Mega Drive classics that I got to play It's on the Mega Drive Mini 2 as well

But I don't know how many people own a Mega Drive Mini 2 Or whether you can still get the Mega Drive Mini 2 Because that thing always felt very niche even at the time It was the niche of the niche, yeah But I'm a bit like you in that regard Because for me it was the first Shinobi game I've ever played Oh wow, really? Yeah That's a good start

Absolutely, yeah I got that from my American aunt because, as I said, band in Germany, so for the good stuff, you have to look elsewhere, and that first impression was really something. I was really into that, and of course, after that I had to get all the other ones I could get my hands on. That's a little bit like how my first live wrestling show was Kazajika Okado versus Minoru Suzuki. It's ruined. Like, it's like I've seen the best first. It's crazy. Royal Quest, my friends. Royal Quest at the Copper Box Arena. What a great show. Nothing to do with

Shoneby whatsoever, but there you go. There is one small bummer, though. If you play one of the modern reissues of this game, the title screen will look a little funny because in the original title screen, the ninja is standing in front of what's supposed to, what's obviously supposed to be New York City, and there are two twin towers behind him, and if you play a modern version, they've edited that title screen graphic to make the two towers into one big tower, and it looks conspicuous and stupid, and it's just like, what are you doing here? We can't even look at twin towers anymore, and come on. It's just dumb. I find, I do find that odd.

I mean, we don't want to get into that, obviously, but I do find that a little bit just kind of like, those things existed, you know? Everyone knows that they existed. And it's, it's, I do think it's a very strange thing to, to edit them out. Like, maybe at the time, I get it. It's so conspicuous, you know. Around, around when it happened, like, I sort of get that they were editing things like

The Simpsons and that Spider-Man trailer got pulled. But, like, now, Everyone knows it's an old game. The context it's being presented in as a retro compilation of some sort. No one is going to look at that and go, that's outrageously offensive. I don't get it.

I really don't. I'm sympathetic if people are upset by it. I really am. I can see why, because it was so seismic and horrible if you were there, and even if they weren't there, it was horrible. Everyone remembers where they were. But I don't think anyone was going to look at Shadowdance

and just go like, 9-11, yeah, you know. I mean, if they're not going to take out the city that's been completely destroyed. That's, I don't know. I didn't get it. It's weird. But yes, it is a little

curious because this is a 1990 game based on a 1989 arcade game, but this was the second Shinobi game to come to the Mega Drive Genesis, because later in 1989, we got an actual Shinobi sequel called the Revenge of Shinobi or in Japan, the Super Shinobi. Something funny about a Mega Drive game being called Super Something. That's a very snows thing to do, isn't it? I think that's, that, again, that was the Japanese title. And, yeah, they did not use that title in America for sure. So, by the way, I read the interview with OBA, with the planner and coordinator of the game.

And what I love what he said is, yeah, we used to put the super prefix on many games, but we just, for Shits and giggles, we put in The Super because we could. These were the times. Well, Japan loves this definitive article, The, they put The on everything. You know, like, you go to the convenience store and get, like, the chocolate or the coffee. Like, they do it all the time, so. Oh, wow, I got to try this. I mean, I think this is the, I think Revenge of the Shinobi,

I think this may be the game most people think of when they think of Shinobi, because it was so everywhere and widespread and available so frequently and so often repackaged, which we'll get to once we've discussed the actual content of the game. Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Again, it's a weird timeline thing. So because the Revenge of Shinobi did, was such a, you know, was an early release, first well, it was an early release in the lifespan of the Mega Drive Genesis.

So, a lot of, and I had it, a lot of my friends had it, a lot of us played it. So, because this one came first, by the time the Shinobi Shadow Dancer came, came out, I was like, oh, wait, this isn't like, Reven to Shinobi. This is like the old arcade game.

Like, so in my mind, I was like, this feels like a step backwards. Now, obviously viewed today, I think all these games have their own merits, but at the time, at the time, at the time, coming from this game, I thought Shadow Dancer was like, oh, this is weird, we're going back to that style of game? Okay.

I like the dog, though. So it's a little confusing. But yeah, this is 1989 in all territories. But yeah, it did very, very well. It was also ported to Xbox Live, PlayStation Network. It was on, this is kind of strange. It was on the Mega Drive Mini in Japan, but then it was on the international Mega Drive Mini 2, along with the Shadowdancer game.

I guess because it was a copious oversight or conspicuous oversight, not copious. It was both. It was copiously conspicuous. I think I can explain that a little bit because what they did for the Megadriff Mini 1, they tried to have usually one game from a series on there, and for the West they decided to do Shinobi 3,

which they thought was the more modern one. So I guess that is why we lost it in the West. But I would like to give a bit of context for the release of Super Shinobi, because when you look at the Mega Drive release history, right? Until this game, we had mostly arcade ports or rather shitty exclusive developments. Yeah, this had to be one of the early standouts, for sure.

I think it was the big early standout, because I think this is the game that really showed, okay, the Mega Drive can do amazing graphics, can sound great, and it can at the same time deliver a long, complex home console experience. because nothing before did that I would say maybe

maybe Mystic defender did it this was I think a tiny bit earlier Is this pre-sonic? This is pre-sonic Oh yeah Absolutely yeah Long pre-Sonic

This was I think The biggest game on the system Before Sonic came along And otherwise I mean we had stuff like We had of course Golden Nexus amazing Goals and Ghosts is amazing

And stuff like that But it's arcade ports Right So they have this arcade philosophy behind them And this one It's a really It's a long complex

home console game, that you really play for a long time to finish, and that doesn't have this arcade idea of, you die every couple of minutes, so you can put in another coin. I think this game is more like, it retains the, to some extent, the different planes that you jump between, although the focus on those is more limited, but it's more to me like an expansion of the later stages of the original Shinobi, because you get more sprawling stages, more sort of quasi-puzzle stages. And of course, the fact you have a life bar now makes it feel to me like it's a sequel to the master system game rather than the arcade one in a sense. This was also a very widespread game. I'm not sure if these were a thing in the US and Japan,

they probably were, but the Mega Games compilations where they would include three different games on a pack and more later. Mega Games 2 was probably the most widespread one I saw and it had this golden axe and streets of rage now that's a banger of a cartridge that's a good compilation yeah and I think that was a pack in with a lot of places as well because everyone had that and that

is where I first played this game and was absolutely destroyed by it because it's really quite difficult the change to the fact that you've now got limited shuricans I mean they're everywhere but they are limited unless you use the

code to get unlimited which I usually do because I'm crap. It also quite easy to do that. It is. And it's really cool and interesting as well. It's like set the sound test to Shuriken, go to set your Shuriken's to zero, and then I think hold right, and the zeros will merge and form an infinity sign. How cool is that? Very cute. Very, very cute flex. They didn't have to do it, but they did anyway. Yeah. This game is full of stuff like that. It's an absolutely, it's an excellent game.

The game is a giant flex. Yeah. It's not my favorite because I think some of the level design is a bit I think it's really hard in a frustrating way when you've got things like spikes or the sharp bamboo reads all over the place and you've got

some sort of erratic level design for me but it's still excellent like it would be insane for me to say it was bad because it's definitely not and the music is incredible in this game

if I may chime in here so as I said my first game was a shadow dancer and right after I played that game I got money I had an imported, I got an import copy of Super Shinobi because I was really into it. And the first time I played it was a bit, this weird, it's a bit slower, it's a bit smaller. But over time, it really grew on me. And I would say nowadays, this is actually one of the best action games ever made for any console period.

At least that's my opinion. I mean, I think that my issues where they are based solely, they're skill issues, you know, as they would say now, in the YouTube comments. because things like the somersault jump that you do, which is not optional. You have to do it. It's very important. I think pulling that off, that pulling that thing off,

I find a little bit too finicky. You have to get the timing really well down. Yeah, and that's not a knock on the game. It's a knock on me. Like what I'm saying here is I'm not good enough at Super Shinobi. Whereas when we get, it might not be in this episode, but things like Shinobi 3,

I think they refined it just about enough. Whereas this to me is, a little bit dated from the sort of slow movement and stuff, but I think it's the point of the game in a way. The amount of expansion is, yeah, it's very, again, it's very methodical, like almost all the the Shaby games. They're very, they're not high,

I wouldn't say it were high octane action games, there are a lot of action, but you are looking at what's happening, you are reasoning how to approach these things. I don't think you're timed or anything, so, or if you are, it's plenty. There's no time we're going on these things. Yeah, you need to get good.

And of course, in the later game, you can block projectiles as well, which also gives you a bit more breathing space, whereas in this, you're going to get sort of not spammed, but you're never not in danger. You can block if you have the power up, but only then. Oh, you can. Okay. All right, let's, I'm glad we all love this game, but let me just, let's set some, some ground here, just explain what, who made this game and why we enjoyed so much. So, yeah, the credited planner coordinator this time is Noriyoshi Oba, and there was a interview translated by some schmoplations, where he outlined a lot of details about making this game. and as we's, you know, a lot of, as we've gushed already, this is a very showcasey game for the

Mega Drive Genesis, and that's on purpose. You know, they definitely, they made, they made an effort to use as much of the console as they possibly could to make the game look and sound incredible. And I think they did their job. I think they did job wonderfully. I'm pretty sure this is the first game I owned for the Genesis that wasn't an arcade port. I'm pretty sure. You know, I know I got mine with a bunch of arcade games. I'm pretty sure this is the first one I bought, like, okay, this is an original Genesis game, and oh, I love this. This is for me, absolutely. Mm-hmm. It's definitely a system seller. Absolutely. I believe so. Like, there really was nothing else like it, and the fact it's not an arcade port, as mentioned,

the only place you're going to play this is on the Mega Drive. You can't go and just throw a quarter into an arcade machine and have a go at it. Big, big game for them, big game, which is something that I feel maybe gets overlooked a fair amount. And I mean, nobody overlooks this. game, but people only overlooked the impact it had, I'd say. And obviously, because it's designed for home console, they thought about it, they wanted to make it a longer game. It is, it is indeed a much longer game. I think there are what, I think there are eight, seven or eight total, like worlds. It's eight stages, yeah. Yeah. And each one has multiple areas per biome as well.

You start off with a life bar. It grows as you play. If you get high scores, you get longer life. Now, since you have a life bar, that means enemies. he's now hurt you on contact, so you can't do the old, like, bump off enemies, you know, that costs life. There's plenty of pits, there's lava, there's this bottomless things. There is no saving, there's no passwords, so unfortunately

you can't, you know, when he started off, you start at the beginning, you have to do that all the time. The bonus stages did not make it. Oba said he wanted to include bonus stages, but in the end, they couldn't fit them the memory, so... I'm not surprised. They had a thought for it, but they couldn't make it work. Oh, by the way,

I would like to add one tiny bit of information because I mentioned Oba a couple of times. Oba is also the guy who made a couple of games later on like Skies of Arcadia and so on. And you know, back in the Dreamcast, when Sega had all these different studios with their individual names, right? There was Overworks, and Overworks

was based on the name Obar. So in Japanese, of course, it's the same pretty much, so it was Obar works in a way. That's cute. So that's maybe what his biggest legacy in a way nowadays. And based on this, it seems like he certainly does. I mean, he's a giant, a lot of game design, I think. He's a ton of amazing games. Not enough people put respect on that name, I would say.

I tried to get him from an interview once, but he left Sega at that point already, and yeah, he's not easy to track down, I guess, nowadays. So, according to Oba, this game takes place three years after the first game. It is still Joe Musashi, even though he looks totally different. He's now dressed in all white. The first game happened, so Zeed is dead, but now we're fighting Neo-Zeed. They're back, and they're new. So, Neo. Yay.

The hostages are gone. Don't worry about hostages anymore. Instead, every level just has these little crates. These little crates are everywhere, and you have to find the crates and break them open, and you can get more shit again or power-ups or even extra lives, right from bonus magic, although those are obviously very rare. Health refills. A bit of energy.

Bombs. It's right. You can find a bomb, the bomb just blows up. Yeah, the bombs, they have a time a bit if you step on them, the time. counts down faster. I think you have to pay attention to what you're doing, which is I'm not crazy about that. I feel like power-ups should be power-ups,

but that's just me being a bit wingy. They're not random, like they're always fixed, so if you play the game enough, you know exactly where everything is. I think it would have been cool if the bombs, maybe they do if they also hurt the enemy, so they had some kind of utility, but it's just

a very minor complaint. It's a very minor complaint, really. Indeed, if you know where the secrets are, There's a couple of spaces where you can actually stock up on extra lives. I know there's one in the factory stage where it's actually a double one-up, because in order to get the one-up, you basically don't fall into a pit and die, but it's a double one-up. So if you keep doing that over and over again,

you will actually accrue lives, even though you're dying each time, which is cute. Yeah, there's quite a few games on the Mega Drive and other film that's where they have things like that in there, like little loops where you can stack up lives, and I'm grateful for them. Yeah, the same thing happens in the plane stage. because the plane stage, that is also, I think, a bit of the skill check of the game, because they have doors that open and close. If you are in front of the door, when it opens, you are sucked out. Life is instantly gone.

That's really hard. But also in that stage, there is a double one-up hidden. So even if you die a ton of times, you'll still get stronger all the time. And all the lives in the world won't help you with some of this game. Well, they actually do, because I want to go through the magic system quickly. Yeah. because life's heavily factor into that. Yeah, the magic is back, and what's different this time is that you have four different spells to choose from, and each one has a different effect.

So up until this point, the magic has basically been a single, you push the button, you kill everything on screen, that's the end of the story. But now you have magic that used strategically, and again, the basic is you get one spell per stage, if you don't use it, get bonus points, but there are occasionally you'll find extra magic, which is, very rare, but you can find it, and that can play into your strategy if you find extra magic spells. But the four spells are very simple. One of them is you create a fire that just damages everything on screen. It's very standard. The lightning spell gives you a shield that takes up to five hits.

It can be very useful against certain bosses that sort of, you know, are in your face. There's a jump magic, which is, again, if you're in certain stages that actually have a lot of tricky jumps, or there's one stage that is almost entirely vertical, if you cast the super jump magic, you can clear that stage in like three seconds. You just jump all the street at the top. It's easy. And most interesting, but also most dangerous, is

the Meijin spell. And in the Meijin spell, you literally blow yourself up. And exploding yourself will damage or kill every regular enemy, and it will deal a lot of damage to any bosses. But it is literally trading a life

for, you know, for progress. Oh, so if you've managed to rack up enough lives, you could choose some of the bosses that you're having a much trouble with. Exactly, and that's what it's going for. See, I didn't know that. That transforms my opinion of this game. That's really cool. It is, it counts to the death, since you normally have one

magic, that means you can cast it again and again again, as long as you have lives. If you do that, if you cast this magic and you have no lives, it's game over. Also, you... At least you went out with a bang. In casting it, you respond in the same place, so it's also

a kind of thing like, oh, geez, I've playing the stage for 10 minutes. I don't know where the exit is. I'm low on life. I could kill myself and just get a new, and get a fresh bar of life and keep going. That's strategy if you want to take it. That's so interesting. I honestly had no idea about this. That's so cool. That's, that really rebalances it. Like, hugely. Wow. It's, it's real time. Real time mind changes. It is a major strategic move, especially late in the game against some of the late bosses. You might really contemplate using this strategy because it's very powerful. Also, to go along with the new life, and the bigger over the bigger overall game.

levels can be pretty long. Some of them are, you don't always know the way forward. You might have to go up or down. You might have to look for the exit. The penultimate stage right before the last boss is a literal labyrinth with lots of doors, like dozens of doors. It's really hard. That is tough. Really, really rough, yeah. I mean, I've, I have played this game legit, but I remember playing it the first time through on the PSP. I mean, the first time properly on the PSP, I've played it before on a Mega Drive, but because that has safe states, I would use them to sort of progress through this maze without losing

my time. And even doing that, it was hard. Like, you really need to know where you're going in that stage, because the enemies come back and the enemies are tough. Like, that is not an easy level. That is a, that is like the climax of the game, I would say, in terms of the sheer level of difficulty it's throwing

at you. But even that, I wouldn't call overtly unfair or anything. It also is a unique, a unique background tune, which is like total chaos. It's really nerve-wracking music, so... Yep, but generally the last two two walls are really, really tough. Until then, it's

doable after what you really have to know what you're doing. Yeah, you have the tools to deal with it. We haven't yet mentioned the double jump and then throw out like a fan of shurikans, like in Contra 3 when you hold the shoulder buttons and jump and fire, you

and you shoot both your guns and order it's a bit like that. It's like a last ditch. I'm going to throw what, like 10, shiricans, maybe slightly fewer than that. Oh, it's eight, sorry. You've written it down on the notes, so I'm not paying attention. But, yeah, eight shiricans, like, it's a lot of shiricans. Like, that's, at any

different time, that's almost, like, 10% of what you're carrying, and it's going to go down if you keep spamming it, so you really need to get good, but now that I know about this self-destrunk magic, that has a whole new layer to the difficulty, because it's that choice of, like, well, I'm near the end of the stage, maybe I don't want to lose my progress, so I'll

spend a life and continue here. I think that's great. day, right? Yeah, absolutely. Mines have been self-destructed. So, let's talk about bosses, because I feel like a lot of the boss battles in this game are very creative, and some of them are just really just out there. I mean, my personal favorite is the brain in the jar, in the airplane.

You fight a brain in a jar? Yeah. That's a good one, yeah. Yeah, Neo-Zeed are on some crazy shit this time, I'll tell you. I mean, the elephant in the room, obviously, is the enormous amount of copyright infringement in this game. Yeah, yeah For some bosses, yeah

It's not just bosses But there are several bosses That look a lot like Popular characters And Oba Oba kind of points the finger Partly at himself He says that he drew sketches

And he wanted them to be like Ideas for the art department But apparently they took his Like his ideas literally So You know There's a stage 7 is basically Godzilla It looks a lot like Godzilla

You know Oba has an explanation pointing out how it's not Godzilla but if you look at it, it looks a lot like Godzilla. It's just without the spikes on the back. Otherwise, it's a white Godzilla, basically, yeah. It looks like Godzilla, but due to international copyright levels, it's not. It's not.

Sorry, I had to reference the funniest movie of all time Austin Powers Goldman. I know what the scene you're talking about. I know what it is. That's a pre-heroes Masioka, by the way, the guy who wasn't heroes before they did heroes. There's a boss who just looks exactly like the Terminator. He even blows up and he's a robot. inside, there's a rather confusing boss sequence where you fight an obvious clone of Spider-Man, complete with webs, who then leaves, and then Batman appears.

It's Armagham Comics years, years early. Yeah, and this actually depends on the version of the game, because the original version of the game, like at launch, I guess, just had all this copyrighted characters with no notes whatsoever, and then depending on the revision of the game, They either edited out the characters or at some point, in the case of Spider-Man, this is interesting, because Sega was working on Spider-Man games at the time, I think in the, like, the base version, he's there unauthorized. In the second version, he gets a credit, so you know it's Spider-Man. And in the modern games, when you play today, it's not Spider-Man, so they change his colors. But he still acts on Spider-Man.

Yeah, Spider-Man just, like, I'm going to, I think these New Zee guys are on the level. I'm going to join up with them. It's very odd, no matter what. You know, it's really, really odd. There's something utterly charming about the complete lack of giving a shit for copyright, though. I love it. Just like, this boss is Rambo. This boss is just Batman.

I love Batman. Let's put him in it. I think there's something absolutely charming about that. Yeah, the Batman's interesting because it was, he was paired with the Spider-Man. So in the very original version, Spider-Man transforms in a Batman. but then they change it and made Spider-Man leave so the Batman appears

and if you play today it doesn't look like Batman at all it's more of a man-bat it's more monstrous so... Man Bat's also a character from Batman I'm just saying it looks

it's a monster that looks like a bat instead of a you know what I mean it's yeah yeah I thought of Devil Man when I saw him in the new port

Oh wow yeah Godzilla's a skeleton now so it didn't look like Godzilla anymore there's even And they are they shaved Rambo Yeah yeah Yeah, the shaved around his head.

Even the title screen. If you play this game, it's got an incredible title screen where it's got a very large image of a ninja who blocks some throwing stars with a sword. So cool. The title screen is very clearly based on a old Sunny Chiba. I think it was a TV show where he played a ninja. And if you play a modern version, they've actually removed that image. And I've read somewhere that it might be the eyes of an M2 employee because they handled

the port, but... It is, yeah. It's unfortunate because his eyes are very instinctive, and I don't know why they would remove that. I don't think Sunni Cheap is going to sue anybody over his eyes, especially now that he's dead. But, yeah, unfortunately, the new versions

don't have that anymore. The estate of Sonny Chiba will probably step in. Yeah, but on the other hand, now it's Tzu Shuiy Matsuoka, who is staring at the player. You know who it is, okay. Yeah, he was a guy who did much of the virtual console stuff for M2 back then. Yeah, but

He's not as intent as Sonya Chiba was, I'm afraid. No, no, he doesn't have the, he does not have the intensity. The ninja, the ninja looks like he's very tired. Not the eyebrows. I mean, he would be, wouldn't you? But it's the start of the game. It's the title screen. We need more energy.

He lacks the Sony Chiba angry eyebrows. Yeah. More like the relax of Shemabia. Yeah. Well, what's not relaxing, the incredible soundtrack by Yuzokoshiro. We have to mention his name. We have to mention his name. He is credited on the title screen, which was very rare.

Apparently, that idea came from his mom. His mom said, you should get your credit on the title screen. So he fought for that. Yeah, you know, the thing is, if I may, but in quickly because that is after he left Falcon and they were a bit of shenanigans about soundtrack and copyrights and name rights and stuff like that. Yeah, this is his first work for Sega, I believe, so... Just coming in for Sega, like, making the track Terrible Beat, which is misnamed, because

it's actually an incredibly good beat, um, I think that Terrible Beat is one of the iconic Megadrive tunes. Like, I could listen to that any time. Absolutely. It's just fantastic. It's like fucking Judas Priest or something. It's so good. Whenever my phone has a ringtone, it is terrible beat.

I put it on there. Excellent. My choice. And any time anyone phones you, everyone around you is like, that's the one hell of a call. My dream, my dream is to one day interview Yuzokoshiro because I will set it up in advance and I will have someone call me so that his music interrupts her interview. I'll call you, Donovan. I'm going to make that happen someday.

We have to try if you can arrange something next year in a September. when me and John are in Japan again. I came close because Yuzokoschiro works a lot with 8-4, and he's also working on that new Mega Drive game, Earthion, I think is the name. Yep. So he's still active. I came really close to meeting him, I think, at TGS a couple years ago, but he was talking to someone else.

I missed it. But I'm going to meet him. I'm going to arrange them. I'm going to make it happen. We will get that done. You know, John and I were at his place in 2023 to talk about Earthier and other stuff. I mean, he'll be, he's already a hero to me for things like this and, you know, Act Razor. But Ready or Bingo Cards, Retronauts, listeners.

But he also did music for Unigami Cornice. So what can I say, you know? He did. Oh, my. Indeed. We have some good quotes here from Oba. Oba said, all I asked him to do was not make music sound like traditional Japanese game. Mission accomplished.

Yeah. Yep, certainly. And Oba loved his work so much. He got, he asked him to come back the next year when he made. Streets of Rage. So the music in this game absolutely led Koshiro to make the music for Streets of Rage. And I feel like if any game has a better reputation than this, it is probably Streets of Rage. So if you love Streets of Rage, you can thank Revenge of Shinobi, because that's what happened. Yeah. And if you listen to the music from Shinobi nowadays, you can really see how

it's already going in that direction we have later with Streets of Rage 1 and 2. So he is already going for the club sound, for the electrical stuff in some stages. Not all of them, but some of them are really clear predecessors to his suit of age music. All right. Anything else on Revenge of Shinobi? One very important thing, yeah. We should maybe talk about the ending of the game and the final boss battle.

Oh, God, I almost forgot. Yes, yes. They went so far to give this game two different ending scenes, depending on how you beat the boss. Yes, the last boss is actually quite challenging. Yep. If I may explain quickly, so the final boss is after that long labyrinth, which is really tough, really tiring.

You get to this room with this, I would say he's kabuki-looking, right? with the hair and everything? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would you agree to that? Yeah, officially he's the ninja master, but yes, he's got the giant wig that Kabuki performers sometimes wear and he swings it around.

And as long as he's swinging the hair around, you can't hit him. He can hurt you, but you can't hit him. So you have to wait for a window to hit him. His pattern is pretty simple, I would say. He's not too hard as a boss. But on the other hand, in the background, you see your girlfriend, Naoko, in the background,

and this huge-ass rock is coming slowly down to crush her. So you have to beat the guy before your girlfriend is crushed. So if you manage that, you get the good ending. If she is crushed while you fight the boss, you get the bad ending. Interestingly enough, they, of course, had a thing going on with Spider-Man at this point. And the Megadry Spider-Man game actually has a very similar finale, where Mary Jane is being lowered into some kind of horrible acid pit or something. So you have to keep webbing the chain that she's hanging from. So it won't go down while you're fighting King. pin. That's not that different from this.

It isn't. Because, you know, I found this out when I did read it for this podcast. I had no idea this was possible. You can let the rock move up a bit again. If you hit the walls on the left and the right side, I think. There's a small hole. That's something I did not know before that. There's a hole in the wall, exactly. There's a hole in the wall that you can shoot a shootikin into, and if you throw it in there, it makes a sound and it basically, I believe it stops the wall for like a second or two. So while you're fighting... It's something at least.

While you're fighting, unless you have a very good strategy and you don't need to worry about it, you basically want to hop up there sometimes and throw some throwing stars into the hole to try and slow down the descent. It has to be throwing stars. If you're not throwing stars, then you're in big trouble. She's in big trouble

more like. But you're in trouble then anyway. But, okay, at least Sega was playing nice in this case, because if you know what you're doing, you can I wouldn't say she's the boss, but you get some, the upper hand because right before the door to the final boss, you can find a power up. And then when you go in, you use the Ikazushi magic, and then you get this, the shield that lets you keep the power up when the boss hits you. So you can get a few really nice hits in before you lose the shield. Oh, very nice.

Yeah. So that is normally the best way to beat the boss. So, but if you're killed by the boss, can you, does it respawn you in the previous room? No, no, no, no. No, then you're fucked. Okay, okay, right, fair enough. Well, she's fucked as well as you, but yeah. She's going to get Joe Mishquashid. There's one more difference.

I also learned about it rather late. When I finished the game for the first time, I was relieved, but also disappointed because you get a short ending scene with Joe and with or without his girlfriend standing on a cliff, and then that's it. No, credit's nothing. I recently found out you get the credits

if you play it on Japanese settings. So if you play it on a Japanese console, then they have the full credit role. And again, even weirder, I think, I hope I get this right, when you get the good ending, you get an English credit roll. If you get the bad ending, you get the Japanese kanji and Hiragana credit role. What are you trying to say with that? That's an interesting choice.

Yeah, it's absolutely weird. Curious. So they just cut the credit out for the Western version of the game. No, not true. It's on all cards. It just isn't played when you played on the Western console. How odd? So just put in your European, your American card.

in a Japanese system and you can see the whole system or get yourself a mod or something like that and you get all of that So after Revenge of Shinobi, after Shadowdance, we've had these 16-bit games. However, there were a few 8-bit Shinobi games and 8-bit Shinobie spinoffs that came out after those games. So they sort of exist in this weird sort of in-between land. And indeed, many of these games were not released in Japan or the U.S. for that matter, but they're out there. And they have the name of Shinobi, so we don't want to not talk about them. But they do exist in a strange way in that we don't.

don't even know for sure when they came out. We're pretty sure one of them came out in 1990. The other one might have been 90, might have been 91. We really don't know. Online sources are not clear. So what I can tell you, I have a box of one of them in my hand, of the Cyber Shinobi, and that says clearly copyright 1990. Okay.

But also, if I may say so, it's really bad. Really. I played it again for this podcast, and no, I'm sorry, it's not fun. Not really. You know what it calls to mind for me, Thomas, honestly, and I think you'll get where I'm coming from with this, is Strider 2, Strider Returns. Because this game, you play it,

and the only thing that you can think is what the hell has happened. Because what it feels like to me is a micro-computer game that was ported to the master system, yet the micro version doesn't exist. I wonder if it ever did. It's like playing an Atari ST game or something on your master system, and it has choppy scrolling, it has no music. think?

There's some music There is just... There is... Okay, well, Trump is scrolling, bad animation, bad level design,

ugly, squishy, like, squashy, ugly graphics, and... They have a huge S-A-I

in the... U-I in the screen, yeah, all the time. Yeah, which makes it feel even more like a micro game, you know?

So I don't know what the hell happened here, but a lot of the level design is just you'll move forward and then there'll just be enemies on the screen

you have to kill to progress. And I'm like, this isn't Shinobi. The way you jump feels the way you even adhere to the ground feels word, the way that everything feels

weird and wrong. It's like a yeah, an Atari game or like an early DOS game or something. It's really bad. You know, if I were to describe this game now, I would say it's more of a brawler, but on a 2D played with a bit of jumping mixed in. Yeah, with no moves. Like, it's just shit.

I mean, you have a few moves, but I mean, the big difference, of course, is all the enemies take a couple of hits normally and you only can progress if you kill all the enemies in a certain section. So, that's very brawlery. Yeah. And another thing about it that bums me out is it could have been really good. It's a cool idea.

I like the way that some of the levels progress. There is some, I mean, I'm going to put credit where it's due. It's got some nice big obstacles, some nice chunky looking game. But the port of Shadowdance for the master system is similarly quite choppy, yet it does something a bit like this, but it makes it work. And Slebe Shnobie to me, as I've said, I compare it to Strider Part 2, because, Because for me, it's Shinobi your name only. It's like, it's the only Shinobi game that I think is just crap. Yeah, I think they tried too hard to make it look like a 16-bit game

instead of doing what the Master's team is actually good at. Yeah, it's a real huge, it's a real wide miss this one. I really wouldn't recommend it. Yeah. Some smaller sprites, some are not as choppy. It could have been a good game. I mean, they did a couple of great 8-bit games later on, as we'll see very soon, but that's not one of them, I'm afraid.

rate. And the last boss is... I call it carry on up the Kaiba Shanoby, but it's not very funny. Go on. The last boss is literally a brain in a jar, which I thought was funny in Revenge of Shinobi, but now it's like,

it's a really big brain in a jar, and the ending calls it mother brain? Like, come on. Isn't that actionable? That can't be right. Yeah, you can't do that. I suppose if Spider-Man isn't... You know, I mean, we all like brains and jars.

Am I correct? Oh, I love brains and jars. Right? We all can agree on that. But it's just... Yeah, who know what I mean. Any time you fight a big brain, they're like Gradius or something. I'm into it, you know.

I mean, we get some great brains in the next showy episode, but not in this one. But around the same time, we also see Alex Kidd in Shinobi World. But I say us. Yes. I say us, again, not in Japan, only overseas. I guess America got this one too in Europe, but not Japan. Yep, came to America. And, Stuart, I was glad you talked about Alex Kidd for, say, 10 minutes.

Go ahead. I mean I love this game I think not only is it a really good spin-off It's also I would say The best Alex Kid game In terms of

Gameplay I mean I like Miracle World best But there are a lot of problems With that game As we've discussed in previous episodes This is just a Rollerking little action game Little Action platform

And with a bunch of cool moves Like you can do cool wall jumps You can climb things And swing around them And turn into a fireball It's got an absolutely bomb-ass remix of the Shinobi theme as well

and it is essentially a parodius but for Shinobi so Shinobius I don't know because you're fighting you are fighting parodies of the enemies and bosses from from the original Shinobi but although here it would be of course the master system

Shinobi that it's taking off but beautifully clean cartoon graphics I mean it's very good looking it could all if you squint it's 16 bit like color quality at least I would say, run smoothly as you like, the exact opposite of Cyber Shinobi. Cool moves like deflecting enemy shurikins with your own sword when you've got one and then fly off into the air. It's pretty short, it's pretty easy, but it's super fun.

And the fact that it's a Yoshio Yoshida game, Yoshio Wai, my boy, who made things like Casts of Lusion, which you'll know is one of my all-time favorite games. And I mean the master's version, not the Mega Drive one, that one can swivel. as good as it is. But no, this is really good. Up there with the best mass system games, I think, easily, one of the best platforms on the system and of the whole era, really. I do like the fact that the lobster boss

from the original Shinobi is in this game an actual lobster. Yeah, and when you kill him, you crack open his shell and the kind of the flesh comes out. Yeah. You eat him, I guess. The actual lobster dish, yeah. Waste not whatnot.

It's very cute. I think it's overall. Overall, it's a very cute-looking game, and, you know, I have been harsh on Alex Kidd on the record in past Retron's episodes. Oh, you were right to be. But, you're not going to be wrong. This is a cute one. This is a cute game. It amuses me.

It does. I wish we'd got on other things like Alex Kidd in Golden Axe world or Alex Kidd in Streets of Rage World or Alex Kallexin in Sonic World, God forbid. But instead, we got Alex Kidd in a used game shop because he's washed up in Sega Gaga. So. Well, Stu, since you're here here, and I know you are a game gear expert. I am. I know you are a game gear expert. I am. I am. I am a game. get expert. I feel like we should probably talk a little bit about

the Gigi Shinobees because there's two. Yep. The good game Shinobi, yes. That's what it sounds like. 1991 and 92. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to go on and on and on, but I think, and this is a quite hot take, I think there is a genuine

school of thought where you could say that this is the best Shinobi game, the first one, because it has nothing wrong with it. It is this perfectly formed little platform adventure that has a Shinobi vibe but everything has been tailored excellently to the small screen

it's a completely unique game it's not a port it's a new game where a Mega Man style you choose a stage to go into to rescue one of your ninja pals and each one of them has a different thing they can do which doesn't give it a Metroidvania sort of vibe it just means you've got options so any scenario

you get into you can think one of the ninjas I've rescued what can they do one of them's got a grappling hook one of them can walk on sort of ceilings and help you're platforming. So you've got to keep in mind all these different abilities you've got. But really, it's just a very clean little game. It reminds me of stuff like again, Cast of Illusion, because yes, it's very brief. You can beat this game very quickly if you know what you're doing. But it's just so well designed that it's always a treat

to play through. It's always fair and fun. And the challenge is there, but it's not overbearing and it's not unreasonable. I think it's fantastic, and it's got, again, Yuzer Koshiro on the music on 8Bit, which is not super common with Sega, but it's... I know I've said it about the Master System one,

but I mean, this is one of the best game game games for me. I'm pretty sure I got four marks when I reviewed it. I've played it lots of times, and I think it's an essential. It's brilliant, brilliant game. I would even say it might be for me the best one of the game gear. I mean, it is for me. I think it's better than the second one.

Yes. Although that is good too. The issue for me is the Gigi Shinobi is a very focused get to the end, beat the boss. And yes, you can choose the order, but that's your goal, is to finish it. And Gigi Shinobi, too, as good as it is, it adds in an element of collecter thanish. Like, you have to find the crystal in each level, which requires you to get powers from elsewhere in the game from the other ninjas, return to levels you've already done. And some people love that, and I don't. I do not like replaying levels because I have to.

I'd like to choose to replay them if I want to. It's one of the reasons why, with apologies, I like Mario World, less than Mario 3, as good as it is, and it's fucking good. Okay? Don't get mad at me again. But, Gigi Shinobi. I mean, you have an element like this in the first one already, because every stage has a health power up as well, where you can permanently extend the health bar if you know where to look and if you have the right Shinobi with you. But it's mandatory in the first one. You can, you don't have to do it.

Yeah, that to me makes all the difference. But what I'm saying here is Gigi Shnabitu, for my personal taste, we're talking four out of five versus five out of five for the first one. We are talking a very, very good game. Yes, very good game versus perfect game. That's my personal take on it. I think if you have a game gear and you haven't got Juji Shnobi, then what the hell are you doing?

I mean, that was the game. really wanted to have a game gear far back in the day. I didn't get one because I had a game boy, and you know, right, when you're young, you don't get any console you like. But a friend of mine had one, and whenever I saw the guy, I had to play Shinobi on the game gear. Yeah, and ignore him completely. Because it was just so good. And there is a lot of cool stuff like the stage, I think it's in the first game. There's a stage where you're sort of roaring along on the back of vehicles in traffic at high speed. Yes, yes. That's first game. Absolutely. With parallax scrolling as well. Yeah, it's incredible. And the fact that the

graphics have been scaled down so small and yet are still perfectly readable and fair. But the Gigi Shinobi 2, again, great game, but I think that the locations just aren't quite as cool and interesting, and this is a bit unreasonable, but it feels like an aspect game because I'm pretty sure it is. And aspect games, while they are good, they have a very interchangeable feel to me. And as soon as I picked this one up, I went, oh, aspect, hello again. my old friends, and it's just, yeah, it's like Sonic 2 on the Game Gear versus Sonic on the Game Gear. It's just not quite right, but it's still very fun. Yeah, this was a special one for me because this is the only game, I'm pretty sure this is the only game I actually

played on a Game Gear, because I didn't have one, but I remember visiting, we were on vacation and, like, visiting some, like, you know, one of my father's associates somewhere, and, like, their son had a game gear. He's like, oh yeah, check this out. And he let me play it. And he had this game. And I was like, oh, my God, this game is awesome. And I played it.

We were probably supposed to be, like, talk to people or hang out. Like, no, no, no, I just want to play this game. So years later, years later, when this came to the 3DS virtual console, I absolutely bought it. So I have this in my Japanese 3DS. Yeah, it's really cool that it got to be released. By the way, I quickly checked. It's not an aspect game. Oh, it's not? Wow.

It's not. It's not. It's not. It's Sega internal. I checked the creators of the game, and they stayed with Sega, made stuff like, for example, Virtual Racing Deluxe Metal Hat on 32X Ciotics. Oh, Jesus. Chaotics. Yep.

That's the planner, so the design of the game. Can't win them all. Oh, he also did Nightshade. Nice. Oh, that's a cool game. We'll get to that later. And Blue Dragon as well. Oh, interesting. Hmm. Unfortunately, that stink of Chaotics has done down their entire

gamography and rendered it meaningless to me. But yeah, I think the thing that most stands out is, again, the music by user Koshero, of course. Yeah. Yes. And in this case of the sequel, it's Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima, the two guys work together on

Streets of Rage 2 and then especially three. So, very good music. And I mean, that is one hell of a combo, these two guys. What I also love is in the first game that brought back some themes from the Mega Drive game, also sound amazing on the game gear. They brought back terrible beat

and they brought back the music from the Super Shinobi intro for one stage. Very, very cool. Also, of course, we should quickly mention at least that you get the different ninjas with different abilities, right? Yep, yeah. And switch them any time.

Because I think that's key to the game because you start with the normal ninja, which is probably Joe Musashi. I don't know if he actually is this time, but never mind. You know, just the usual red and white guy swinging a sword. No Turricon this time for him. And then in every stage you can rescue another guy

And they all have their different abilities For example The pink guy, which I usually get first, can stick to ceilings And throw bombs as a mid-range weapon He's quite cool The yellow guy has this You wrote on diamond in the notes That it's called Hadoken in Japanese

This energy ball attack That you can even charge And his deal is he can walk on water Which is great for the stage where you rescue I think the blue guy I'm not sure. The implication is that this is the second coming of Christ, obviously. Probably, yeah.

Yeah, then you have a guy who can throw a hurricane and can double jump. And finally, a guy with a grappling hook. So I think in terms of weapons, you are pretty much set in this game. Lots of fun stuff for everybody to play around with. It reminds me a little bit of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, sorry, hero turtles game on the NES, where you have to change turtles, use their different weapons for each sort of situation,

although it's not quite as strategic as that but switching characters is very quick and easy so you're very much encouraged to do so and once you do have all of them it does feel quite cool like you're a little ninja army storming the Zed you know it's Neo City the final stage

it's probably easy for a Shinobi game but that's kind of standard for the game gear so it didn't bother me yeah I mean the whole idea right five ninjas color-coded different weapons did we hear that before somewhere? I'm not sure.

Nothing springs to mind. Nothing, right? And I think that's going to do it for retronauts as far as Shinobi goes. We're called, again, we're calling the Shinobi Mission 1. We're going to wrap it up right here at the end of the 8-bit. So we'll be back in the future and talk about the next Shinobi, because there's still a lot more Shinobi. Not as much as you'd hope. Yep, I want to mention...

But there's more Shinobi to come. I'd like to mention one last thing, because one thing that came to mind when I looked at these games, all of these games you talk about now are really available nowadays none of them is in any way too rare or too unavailable or to not playable anywhere nowadays so even stuff like

Cyber Shinobi if you want to get the game I paid 14 bucks for my copy in box inbox so really that stuff is quite doable it helps with Cyber Shinobi of course that nobody wants it because it's such a piece of old shit so you can just walk in and get it pretty much anywhere even Super Shinobi right

you have it on collections, you have it on the mega games too. You have the standalone game. All of them are really, really affordable. I think the only one that isn't is if you want the Japanese version one of the game, which are the cool stuff in there. If you want to get that, you can pay a bit more, but even that is not prohibitively expensive, at least. So that's finally a series of classic games that can really be bought and played even today.

Yeah, it's good. It's nice. Not unreachable. You know what's not unreachable also? Retronauts. We are very reachable. Indeed, you're listening to this podcast. You can listen to this podcast for free, and we really appreciate it if you listen for free. However, if you go to patreon.com slash Retronauts, you can listen to this episode, every episode, a week early, in a higher quality bit rate, for just $3 a month.

And for $5 a month, which is just $2 more than the other number, you get bonus episodes every month, two or even three, depending how many Fridays we have. You get weekly columns for me, and I read you the column. You get a community podcast every month, often hosted by me. You get access to our Discord, where me and Stu and other people are hanging out all the time, chatting about games, movies, whatever. I'm really annoying on there, yeah. Stu, we're selling the Discord. Don't tell you me you're annoying. Only $5. That's a pathetic amount of money.

Anyone could afford that. But yes, thank you very much for listening to Retronauts. We will definitely continue this conversation at a future time because there's lots more ninjas to happen. Stuart, if the internet wants to find you, where should they find you? Are you in a ninja training school? I think... I think everyone knows already, so I thought for novelty value, I'd tell you again while eating some chicken, if that's okay.

Just a second. I'm fine. I'm rational. I'm blue sky. And you can buy my book. All games are good. This was a mistake. Please talk to Thomas.

I've made a terrible mistake. Well, okay. jump in here if until Stewart has hopefully not choked as chicken. I'm very hungry. I can emphasize. Nothing.

Is it a good chicken at least? No. No. What is it? It was a mistake in general just as a whole. I'd rather move on. It's a very traumatic time for me.

Okay, I see. Yeah. Let's skip the chicken then. Yeah. As well, you can find me on Blue Sky at Tapir Fortuna and read my articles in German M Games.

If you want to see the website, it's maniac. It's in German, though, so be warned. Be warned, German. Back to the chicken man. No, no. Everyone knows where to find me already. I'm unavoidable. I'm vast and omnipotent. And, I mean, the reason I mention the annoyance on the Discord is that, you know,

you can go on the Discord with your privileges having paid for the show, and you can say anything you want to me, and I'm not allowed to retaliate. But you can touch people in your mind. Yeah, yeah. And also, that $5, you know, that all goes into my chicken fund, which is great. ever growing. Please. Please. We're getting close to two hours, folks. My name is Diamond Fight. I've been the host of this somewhat

trained recognition podcast, but don't worry. You can find me on the internet. Look for Fight Club. My F-E-I-T, my last name, C-L-U-B, it's an English word you know. I have website, fightclub.me. It's a homemade website. It's a little bit low-tech. It's very low-tech, maybe too low-tech, but is it, maybe it's up to you. What if it's, what if it's like a ninja? What if it's actually a secret high-tech website hiding behind the low-tech website, like the work of CyberZeed, maybe? Yeah, yeah, it's not.

Good night. You know, and