Welcome to Modojo, 
The Golden Age of Ninjas
Written by Philip Jones on Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Modojo's resident ninja Philip Jones laments the death of his species and reminisces about the glory days...
You'll often find the words "video arcade", "youth" and "misspent" occurring in the same sentence. I'd like to think that my time spent down in the video arcade wasn't at all a waste of time or money. I say this, as one day, way back in 1987 I was introduced to something so awesome, it would go on to be one of the most popular things ever for quite some time. I'm talking about ninjas. It's hard to describe exactly how it felt at the time, but as a young, impressionable child, there just seemed to be something so exceptionally cool about ninjas and their general...stealthiness.
Over the late 80's to the early 90's, ninjas were everywhere - in the movies, in cartoons, and of course, in videogames. The handhelds of the early 90's were blessed with great adaptations of the popular ninja action games of the time, the Shinobi series on Game Gear and the Ninja Gaiden series, which made appearances on all the major handhelds of the time. The amount of ninja action games dried up during the mid to late 90's, only recently having a resurgence, albeit very differently, in 3D form. Here we're going to take a glance at the most popular ninja games, which you had better enjoy, or it's a quick and silent death for you!
So, masks on, shurikens at the ready...
Shinobi Game Gear - Sega
The Game Gear was visited twice by Sega's homegrown ninja squad in two separate GG Shinobi titles. They carried across the combo of ninja action and platform acrobatics found in the original arcade game, but with a twist in that you were limited in the weapons you carried. You start the game as good ol' Joe Musashi, the hero of the Shinobi series. Your mission is to rescue your (obviously inept) ninja friends from captivity, who after liberation become playable and turn out to have a selection of different weapons and skills. How very handy. Green Shinobi could double jump and throw shuriken, Blue could swing around on a grappling hook, Yellow could walk on water and attack with energy waves. Finally, Pink Shinobi could dangle from ceilings and lob bombs! He might be pink 'n' cuddly, but he's a madman packin' a satchel full o' bombs! The locations in the game were your typical kinds of ninja scenarios, which for some strange reason always seemed to include docks. Now, woodlands I can understand, but what is it with ninjas and ships? Maybe they have to pick up a consignment of shurikens or something.
The second GG Shinobi, titled The Silent Fury can essentially be seen as a continuation of the first, with the silly ninjas getting themselves imprisoned all over again. Only this time you have to rescue the ninjas as well as locate a crystal hidden within each level. Tiring work, this being a ninja. Tiring...and deadly.
That was the last we'd see of handheld Shinobi for a very long time, and if only it could've been the last, as there is one more game in the series. One dirty little game that spreads muck all over the name of Shinobi. You probably haven't heard of it, and believe me. You'll wish you hadn't.
We're all familiar with the legend that is the Genesis game Revenge of Shinobi. Well, in 2002 someone at Sega decided "wouldn't it be great to do an all new Shinobi game on this Game Boy Advance thing eh?" A great idea for sure! Shame things didn't go quite to plan. If you check out the screenshot, you'll be able to see that it just looks wrong. I guess that's what happens when you farm out one of your precious licenses to a developer who doesn't give a damn about giving you a decent game back.
posted April 26, 2007