3 Ninjas Kick Back

"Just another horrible game based on a movie..."

Ugh... you know, I expected this game to be kind of cool. I mean, I don’t hate the 3 Ninjas, I think the movies were pretty cool... for an old movie like that. But there was that one rule that I always forget about, and it always seems so true: Games based on movies always suck. For some reason, this seems to never ever be false. Every single game I’ve played that was based on a movie or television show is at least somewhat below the average mark for a game. And of course I forgot about this and I made the mistake of thinking 3 Ninjas Kick Back would be cool. This horrid Malibu game is frustrating, way too hard, gameplay is extremely repetitive, and it makes me want to slam my head right through a cement block just from that annoying music.

Graphics
Okay, so the graphics really weren’t that bad at all. Most of the environment that you play in looks clear and sharp, with some nice looking shadowing here and there. The environments also had a good amount of detail, with no real bad things to point out except for some very cheap looking obstacles such as those huge boulders that roll in your way. The character sprites have a nice size to them, not too big or too small, and they packed pretty good detail. Now, as good as this may all sound, I found the graphics to be kind of... UGLY. I just simply don’t like the way that they are presented, they don’t look good to my eyes, and… you get the picture. Ugh...

Audio
Good lord... this game has some of the most annoying music ever. I can easily and safely say that it rivals a few games for having the worst music, and a big reason behind this is the lack of different tracks. I’m not sure if they change, but I got the exact same music for every single level that I played! But, I have to admit that I first thought that music sounded cool. It was cool little tune that was played at the title screen, but then it continued on through EVERY SINGLE level in the friggin’ game! Talk about annoying! It’s one of those songs that just makes you want to stand up and ram your head right into and through a wall, and believe me, I didn’t enjoy it one bit, so I just muted the stupid game, and I suggest you mute it as well. The only other two songs that I can recall are at the character select screen and the level intro screen. At the character select screen, there is a cool little beat which you don’t really get sick of on account that you don’t hear it too often. There is also music heard when you see the name of the level just before starting it, but you may not even consider it music since it’s just an extremely short little guitar tune. <Ben Stein> Wow. </Ben Stein>

Story
Well, the three Ninjas are competing in some kind of really stupid tournament kind of thing, so that they could receive the honor of receiving a special dagger from their grandfather. From here, there’s no real story, since it doesn’t expand on that too much, and it’s a very lame back story because it doesn’t make sense for some people who haven’t seen the movie. It doesn’t explain why they want to get that dagger, or anything, and they could’ve easily provided a much better story had they not put so little effort into the game.

Gameplay
3 Ninjas Kick Back is a platformer, and we all know that there are way too many platformers and we hate a lot of them. First off, you can choose from three characters: Rocky, Colt, and Tum-Tum. They differ in the fact that they have different weapons: Rocky uses a wooden staff, Colt uses a sword, and Tum-Tum uses those little trident dagger things... you know, like the one that Raphael from the Ninja Turtles has. These weapons each have their own advantages and disadvantages, and you’d have to choose carefully considering that all the levels are the same for all three characters. This really sucks, because if you’ve got different characters with different abilities, you should really have different levels, or at least make the levels slightly different with different goals. However, Malibu put very little effort into the damn game, and this crappy gameplay got off to a bad start. Anyway, you have a certain amount of little red blocks in the corner, and this indicates the amount of life you have left. What is very unfair about this is that every time you get hit it almost always takes more than one block away. For instance, getting hit by a boulder takes about 4 or 5! This adds a lot of challenge to the game, which is a very, very bad thing because the game is already extremely hard to beat.

Once you get through a couple of normal levels, the goal of them changes slightly. For instance, some levels will ask you to destroy a few piñata-like things that are in the shape of a man. This is a very hard and stupid concept. First off, you have WAY too many things in your way. Some kind of old man ninja always seems to jump in front of you in every corner, and you are constantly being hit by blow darts from statues and fling pins from those geezer ninjas. Not only that, but many of the targets to destroy are in very hard to reach places, and it’s doubly hard to reach them if you’ve got 104-year-old ninjas punching you right off of a 50 foot cliff. And when you’re done with these levels, you go back to boring old normal platformer levels that you see in every single platform game ever created, and that’s another reason that this game sucks so bad. The gameplay is extremely repetitive.

Fun? FUN? What are you talking about? This is easily one of the most not fun games I have ever played in my whole life. It started out kind of cool, but it’s way too hard and repetitive for anyone’s liking.

Final Word
This game sucks, don’t play it. If you have it, use it as your new doorstep. Throw it from your 10 story high apartment. Throw it into your campfire. Just don’t like it, because it’s a horrible game, since it’s horrible like every other game that is based on a movie or television show. Stay away from it at all costs.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 08/02/01, Updated 08/02/01