Shinobi
Shinobi is a cross between a platform shooter and beat 'em up with a ninja theme developed and published by Sega for the arcade in 1987-11-16. It was built for the System 16 board and then ported to the majority of platforms of the day, though, strangely, not the Genesis.
In the game, you play the ninja Joe Musashi who must fight his way through various stages rescuing hostage children who have been kidnapped by a terrorist organization named Zeed.
Contents
Personal
My first memory of Shinobi was at the arcade room in Lakeland Arena in the late 1980s. Since my parents never game me quarters, I never played it myself, but I enjoyed watching other people play it. I thought the game looked pretty cool, but nobody who played it ever got very far into the game. Very rarely someone would beat the first boss, and only once did I ever see someone beat the bonus round. Years later, with the help of Sega arcade emulator, I was able to play the game through by giving myself tons of credits. I now see it as an important platformer, but unfairly difficult.
I do not own any port and I haven't beat any.
Review
4 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 4 |
Best Version: Arcade
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- The game is technically advanced for the day.
- The graphics and animation are well made.
- Yasuhiro Kawakami composed a good soundtrack for the game.
- Ninjas were really popular in the late 1980s, and this game delivered. There are ninja stars, swords, guns, and scary Japanese bosses, etc. The various ninja magic animations are especially cool.
- I like that merely touching an enemy doesn't kill you like so many other games at the time.
- The depth mechanic where you can jump from the background to the foreground is a cool trick and it makes the stages more interesting.
- One of the Marilyn Monroe posters has an oddly-placed mole as a joke.
Bad
- Only being able to take a single hit before dying isn't unusual for an 80s action game, but it's still pretty ridiculous.
Ugly
- Like most arcade games, Shinobi is meant to eat quarters. In the later stages, the game play becomes extremely unfair. There are all sorts of enemies that dart across the screen faster than most players can react requiring dozens of failed play-throughs before you can memorize the game.
Media
Box Art
Documentation
Maps
Graphics
- spriters-resource.com/arcade/shinobi - Arcade.
- spriters-resource.com/nes/shinobi - NES
- spriters-resource.com/master_system/shinobi - Master System.
- spriters-resource.com/amstrad_cpc/shinobi - Amstrad CPC.
Videos
Representation
Strong female character? | Fail | There are no women. |
---|---|---|
Bechdel test? | Fail | There are no women. |
Strong person of color character? | Pass | Everyone is Japanese including the hero, Joe Musashi. |
Queer character? | Fail | There are no queer characters. |
Titles
Language | Native | Transliteration | Translation |
---|---|---|---|
English | Shadowgate | ||
Japanese | 忍 | Shinobu | Ninja |
Links
- Video Game Rating - 4
- Video Game Graphics Rating - 7
- Video Game Sound Rating - 6
- Video games without a strong female character
- Video games that fail the Bechdel test
- Video games with a strong person of color character
- Video games without a queer character
- Games
- Video Games
- 1987 Video Games
- Video Game Prime Order - Action, Adventure, Strategy
- Video Game Genre - Action
- Video Game Genre - Platformer
- Video Game Genre - Platform Shooter
- Media Theme - Martial Arts
- Media Theme - Ninjas
- Amiga Games
- Amstrad CPC Games
- Arcade Games
- Atari ST Games
- Commodore 64 Games
- DOS Games
- MSX Games
- NES Games
- Master System Games
- TurboGrafx-16 Games
- ZX Spectrum Games
- Game mechanic - Playable person of color
- 4-bit Color Graphics
- Video Games I Haven't Beaten