Ninja Warriors (1994)

It tries to be a beat em up but in that department is lacking.

The graphics are good for the era nice sprites very few slowdown.

The difficulty is high as espected, is a nightmare to defeat the final boss as the female ninja because of how her throw works.

The ending is eerie...

Good side scroller mediocre beat em up.

It's really incredibly unfortunate when I play a game that unarguably is the best of a genre or one of the best of a genre that inadvertently tells me that the genre in general is not for me. That's my experience with this game in a nutshell, if you're a fan of beat em ups at all you owe it to yourself to play this because for you it'd be amazing. If I cut each part of the game into individual pieces I could gush over the enemy design, how they formulate encounters together, how the boss fights make the most out of the mechanics, how high/low attacking in general is used, how grabs work. All of that is excellently designed and fantastically done.

But overall I just found it very middling a lot of the time, so this is really a quick review that's more set on a recommendation for those who actually enjoy this genre or are willing to give the genre a shot. Because for me, I found it great at best and I know this is where it peaks. (8/10)

This 16-bit era beat em up is average but has some merits:
-it has nice looking backgrounds and sprites
-it has decent music and sound
-it's not terribly difficult to complete (or long)
-it has multiple character with different playstyle
-it has learnable moves, combos, etc that can help (but are not mandatory to master)

some of it's pitfalls i found are:
-its really short (an hour to 1.15)
-bosses are a toss up (and some are cheeseballs)
-there isnt that much music in the game
-the story is complete crap

In conclusion this was a good way to kill an hour and get another game PLAYED. It reminded me a bit of a progression from bad dudes to double dragon II to this. Doesn't really feel like final fight. I liked the sci fi aesthetic (between this and Hagane there is not enough!)

I played the jap version for the blood and babes. :D

The Ninja Warriors, for SNES

Rating: 8.0/10

This game is a 2D sidescrolling beat em up, where you play as one of 3 androids. The characters look good and each has different stats and moves, giving a different play style. I only have a couple of conceptual problems: First, the female is the balanced one while the scythe guy is the high speed low power one. This makes little sense, given that the female’s weight is listed as being the lightest. Secondly, why does the female have hair, breasts and skin? Sure she is hot, but it makes little sense given as how the plot tells you that the androids needed more development time and were not yet tested. I guess she was meant to be used more for infiltration? Or maybe they never got around to giving the males skin?

The controls are decent, but could have been much better. The worst part is there is no control or move list in the game (if it is in the manual that does not count). Block uses the same button as attack (hold it). Unfortunately, it means you always perform an attack before blocking. There are plenty of unused buttons, so this game fails to make proper use of the SNES controller. I do not like how you must perform so many weak normal attacks before getting a power attack. For example, the Ninja does 2 dumbass punches and then swings around his nunchuk for multiple hits, the female does some small dagger hits before an awesome sword attack, and the scythe guy does some weak attacks before a cheap long ranged chain type attack. Now, I of course would prefer to spam the cheapest and most effective attacks and not waste time on inferior attacks. I would have preferred a combat system with 1 button for light attacks, and another for heavy attacks, with a trade off between which to use when. It is a refreshing change how touching an enemy grapples them instead of causing you to take damage, and there is a good trade off between saving energy for your ultimate attack, using some for moderate attacks and losing it all if you take too much damage.

The environments look good, though I think the scene transition where the protagonist does a massive jump to a new area is overused. The story is well done (for this type of game), with text and cinematics. Enemies and bosses are fairly well done with a good variety, though they have predictable behaviours. Lack of multiplayer is a flaw.

Overall, the game is definitely worth playing at least once, maybe up to 3 times to try each character.