The Revenge of Shinobi

"My other tagline sucked, too."

Second game, third best.

Joe Musashi grew up. Thank god for that—his banana yellow armpads and shin guards weren’t fooling anyone when Shinobi was first released in arcades. If his “high-visibility” style of ninjitsu wasn’t enough, he also lacked a ninja mask and used a small bazooka when the going got tough. If you can find me a lamer sounding ninja, please E-mail me about it. The fact is that Joe, despite the quality of the first arcade title he appeared in, was very, very unimpressive.

Joe returned with some new tricks and a better outfit in the aptly titled “Revenge of Shinobi;” his first Genesis escapade is largely a successful side-scrolling action game. It’s just terribly unfortunate that this game has the Shinobi nametag on it: for me, I really dug the first Shinobi’s simplicity and lightning-fast arcade gameplay. It rewarded one for repeated play and gave a feeling of success when beaten on one quarter, which was more possible than you’d think after first starting out. Shinobi III was brilliant, and I’d be hard pressed to find a game that offered more control over one’s character in the realm of 16-bit games.

Revenge of Shinobi seems to sit between the two for me, hinting at characteristics that made the game before and after it so successful without fully tapping these elements’ potential. Revenge of Shinobi, had you played all three games back to back and out of sequence, would seem to be a dodgy attempt at merging the two play styles of the other Shinobi games into one cartridge. Sequentially, it would seem that Shinobi changed from its roots into a more standard 16-bit action game, and then evolved from there.

Specifics...

The staples of the Shinobi lineage are still quite intact. Joe jumps around on various platforms hurling kunai (ninja knives, for all you gaijin) and taking down all manner of grunts before coming to a large and daunting end boss. This time around, Joe is no one-hit-wonder: he’s got a lifebar; it’s easier to make mistakes now that they’re not fatal, as they were in the first.

Revenge of Shinobi adds to the formula by letting you pick a spell from a pool of four types of ninja magic. You can choose to protect yourself with a barrier, blowtorch everything on the screen with fire, jump over tall buildings, or even detonate yourself to reform at full health—a good improvement over the first game’s single all-purpose attack spell. The basics remain largely the same when it comes to magic usage though; with only one spell per life, you should save them until you need it. The other major difference that Joe has gained is the ability to double-jump, which can be used either to gain additional altitude for the numerous platform elements or to unleash a wave of kunai on your hapless foes: imagine Contra’s spread gun formed out of knives. It’s devastating, but it eats up your ammunition.

The problem is that Revenge of Shinobi is primarily a platform game, and one that moves away from Shinobi’s straightforwardness in terms of level design. Even more of a problem is that Joe doesn’t have Shinobi III’s tools for platform jumping, such as the wall jumps and dive kicks; these moves made III a much more successful integration of an action and a platform game.

For example, Revenge of Shinobi’s signature technique is Joe’s double-jump. Unfortunately, this has incredibly picky timing, for seemingly no reason, and most jumps require that extra boost. Miss the brief window to input a second jump, and it will be too late to go back, sending you careening into a pit about as lamely as is humanly possible. Other faults mar the segments as well, like the inability to look up or down to see what you need to jump to, as well as the irritating stages where double-jumping will cause you to jump from the foreground to the background often unintentionally, and usually into a grenade or two.

The combat is a mixed bag. Most enemies go down in one hit and attack in patterns, but if they begin to get onscreen and shoot more than two at a time there’s no way to avoid it. The solution in trouble spots is to prod along slowly, every now and again throwing kunai at enemies that haven’t yet showed up onscreen yet but can still be killed. The glitch is as tiresome as it is necessary, however, because Joe’s defense is laughable. If a projectile is coming at you, you can only jump, and by then another is headed right for you.

Most of the time, it isn’t that much of a problem as you leap from dangerous item to dangerous item, throwing kunai at whatever pops up before it has a chance to react. For the majority of the game, Revenge of Shinobi can be just as fun as any of the Shinobi titles—it’s just that when there’s a lapse, it’s a lapse in a big way.

But I do like it.

This is mainly because there are some great improvements over the first when you consider graphics and sound: most notably, Yuzo Koshiro provides the soundtrack, known for his work on Streets of Rage, Actraiser and other titles. Here, the music effortlessly blends pop-sounding game tunes with classic Japanese themes, creating a perfect companion to the game. The graphics are dated compared to Genesis games towards the end of the system’s life, but can still hold up today as somewhat of a curiosity. Animation is plentiful and backgrounds are fairly lush, even when held up to the test of time. The sensory experience of Revenge of Shinobi is one of the main selling points in my book, especially when you see the waves that highlight Stage 6’s docks or the rush of freeway traffic in level 5 that you must avoid: it’s definitely a psycho extreme of the “east-meets-west” concept.

And these sights will hold up, assuming that you aren’t bothered by the lack of ingenuity that Sega invested in the character design, because most enemies are pretty bland or ripped off from pop culture. The problem comes mainly with style in regards to the game, as certain bosses made me groan: Spiderman? Batman? Godzilla? Arnold Schwarzeneggar as The Terminator? For as fresh as Revenge of Shinobi is, I was expecting them to grow a little originality in this department, because the bosses they created themselves were much cooler than the ones that tiptoed around copyright infringement.

RoS has many faults, and they’re glaringly obvious—even more so if you’re new to the game and lacking affinity for the controls. Stick with Revenge of Shinobi, even after you’re entirely certain that its sole purpose is to repulse you (with more undeserved deaths than Ninja Gaiden’s stage 6-2, I might add) and you’ll start noticing all that it does right. There are few games that can deliver the highlights of Revenge of Shinobi, but the problem for me is that when something goes wrong in Revenge of Shinobi I think of those games immediately: Shinobis I and III.

7 / 10
Frustrating, but also frustratingly Enjoyable.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/28/03, Updated 01/28/03