As featured in Retrogaming Times Monthly issue #14, July 2005.

Everybody likes Ninja games especially those that begin life as a cult arcade classic and one of Sega's most cherished retogaming properties.  Well, everyone but me that is.  Just so I can get it out of the way I suppose I should make it known that Shinobi is a game I have always disliked.  Not to say it's a bad game or the worst of the Tengen ports (I still have to review the Tengen NES port of Toobin' after all) but simply I have never been able to enjoy Shinobi as much as I would have liked.  The game has a lot going for it:  nice graphics, good music and one of my all time favorite bonus stages however the difficulty ramps up way too quickly.  The game turns into an exercise in point A to point B enemy memorization instead of a quick reflexes beat-em-up.  I can't begin to imagine the amount of money I must have dropped into the Shinobi machine at the local bowling alley in frustration in my younger days.  Still, I'll put all that aside since this is supposed to be a comparison review between the arcade original and Tengen's NES home port.

Shinobi lets the player take the role of a ninja sent by the government to defeat a terrorist band called The Ring of Five.  The Ring of Five is headed by five extremely powerful ninja assassins and they have kidnapped the children of the world's leaders.  Armed only with an endless supply of shuriken (throwing stars) and skill, you set off to battle the Ring of Five's henchmen and defeat all five of their ninja leaders.  The game is composed of twenty levels, four stages of five missions.

Right off the bat there are some big game play differences between the arcade and NES versions.  The one that impacts game play most is the health bar.  In the arcade version of Shinobi one hit meant instant death which is one of the things that made the game insanely difficult at certain parts.  The NES version changes this by giving you a life bar that decreases each time you are hit.  Additionally aside from the point and weapon powerup bonuses you are given for rescuing hostages in the arcade version, on the NES you are also awarded with life replenishment.  Both games feature weapons upgrades that are obtained from hostages and the attack mechanics are the same between the original and NES port.  It's still one button to attack and another to jump, holding up or down while jumping will allow you to either jump or down one level.  In the NES version you don't have ninja magic (special attack) by default, you have to earn it by completing the bonus stage.  To use ninja magic on the NES you must hold down the B button, then press the A button - which attack you use is selected by the Select button.  It's not better or worse, it's just different.

Graphically one would assume that Shinobi would be an easy game to make a decent conversion of, I mean of course there are going to be compromises but at the very least the graphics should be pretty close to the original.  Sadly that is not the case and the NES port of Shinobi comes across with backgrounds reminiscent of some Atari 2600 titles and undetailed sprites.  The hostages look like sheep in the NES version!  While most Tengen NES ports sport high production value Shinobi come across looking like a pirate of a Korean bootleg Famicom ninja game that never had a US release.  Even the bonus stage gives the impression that the graphic designer just got lazy.  In the audio department things are a mixed bag, while much of the music from the arcade original is ported over, some of the key tunes such as the music in the bonus stage didn't make the transfer to the NES.

At the end of the day if you loved Shinobi in the arcade and picked up the NES port chances were that you'd be back in the arcade the next day.  Lackluster graphics, poor choices when it comes to audio, and over all weak presentation make this one of the dimmer examples of Tengen's work on the NES.  It would be a bit longer until a suitable home version of Shinobi became available and Sega continues to use the Shinobi franchise for games to this day.  I'd have to say the NES port of Shinobi is for Tengen collectors only.
 

"InsaneDavid" also runs a slowly growing gaming site at http://www.classicplastic.net/dvgi

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