The Ninja Game That Ex-Zeeds Expectations
My most successful writing endeavour to date was a script I put together for the TripleJump YouTube channel about the ten most disturbing 16-bit video game bosses. I had the idea for the list myself and it ended up performing incredibly well. At the time, most TripleJump videos would get 20k to 30k views in the first week or so, and this one rocketed up to the hundreds of thousands. The algorithm must have really liked it, I guess. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever written, and to my eternal shame I forgot to put the Vortex Queen from Ecco the Dolphin at number one, but I’m still very proud of it.
The whole idea was spawned by a boss from Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master on the Mega Drive. The game’s third stage, ominously named “Body Weapon”, is set in a laboratory complex where the bad guys are brewing up disgusting minions in bio-vats. Slime-covered humanoids emerge from biological waste beneath the floor and brain monsters with insectoid wings lurk on the ceilings, ready to pounce on unsuspecting infiltrating covert operatives.
Towards the end of the stage Joe Musashi, the titular Shinobi, will find himself up to his shins in organic matter in the sewers beneath the laboratory complex, and a gigantic and grotesque figure emerges from the waste in the background, spewing energy projectiles at our beleaguered hero. This creature is known as Hydra, and at the end of the stage Joe will come face to hideous face with it. Hydra’s pixelated horror is a perfect representation of how developers from the 16-bit era managed to expertly create uncanny abominations using the limited resources at their disposal. Limitation breeds creativity, as they say.
When Joe isn’t desperately battling gigantic, malformed, pulsating, atomic beam-belching monstrosities in infested sewer systems, he can be found traversing various cool action movie-style locations while taking on the rest of Neo Zeed’s minions. The game starts out in a forest teeming with enemy ninja that leads to a series of watery caverns, but soon enough Joe will be fighting on horseback under a stormy sky, traversing an industrial facility in a burning wood, crossing a bay on a cool, motorised surfboard thing, leaping from falling rocks in a moonlit ravine, and much more. Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master is full of awesome set-pieces that make it that bit more memorable that its predecessor, The Revenge of Shinobi.
Unlike that game, Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master didn’t benefit from the craft of 16-bit musical legend, Yuzo Koshiro, but the team of composers that were brought on board for the follow up still did a stellar job, providing a distinct soundtrack full of epic highlights. The strange yet bombastic tones of “My Dear D”, the music that accompanies the aforementioned Hydra battle, are a huge contributing factor to that section of the game’s ability to stay with me for all of these years, but the entire adventure is backed up by blood-pumping and thematically appropriate tunes.
The gameplay was tweaked since The Revenge of Shinobi, and progress is a bit easier overall. Joe can now dash, and is able to perform a super-stylish flying kick and an awesome-looking running slash that comes complete with a generous helping of invincibility frames. He can also leap from wall to wall, which results in some interesting level layouts that test Joe’s newfound agility. While still difficult at times, Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master goes for spectacle over challenge, and if you know me, you know I’ll take awesome moments and memorable set-pieces over controller-biting difficulty levels any day of the week.
Alas, if you’re a strictly physical-only gamer (which I totally respect) Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master is a little bit expensive to get hold of nowadays. I think it’s a better time than The Revenge of Shinobi (which I also adore, by the way), but is it £100 better? Probably not. Still, with Lizardcube’s Shinobi: Art of Vengeance a few months away at the time of writing, Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master is the best Shinobi game out there in my opinion, and provides a non-stop roller-coaster of awesome, ’90s ninja-based action. Watch out for that third boss, though. Hydra has a tendency to stick with you, even more so than the Vortex Queen, apparently.