86. Shinobi

(Arcade/Various home, Sega, 1987)
So we're fifteen places into this project and already we have two games featuring ninjas (the list indicates others to come) Ninjas have inspired or featured heavily in many videogames, movies and cartoons. To a lot of kids, ninjas are the epitome of cool, what with their deadly martial arts, ability to vanish into the shadows and their bad-ass, eye-gouging weapons. Not having the access to nunchuka or shurikens as children, we just jumped out of trees and chucked rocks in each others faces, They were like nature's throwing stars.

Shinobi is a classic side scroller from Sega, playing similar to Namco's later Rolling Thunder. A young ninja, Joe Musashi, scrolls through a two level plain, rescuing ninja kids (not those crappy "3 ninja kids") from the evil ZEED group. ZEED are an organisation of questionable leadership, considering they consider child kidnap vital to their plans and arm their soldiers with boomerangs, Oh, and a helicopter can rise to a position of power.
Armed with unlimited shuriken, various close combat moves and some screen clearing ninja magic, Joe must find the kids on each round before confronting a Lieutenant of ZEED, ranging from a large, fireball throwing samurai to err...a big metal head in a wall. After five levels, Joe comes up against the feared boss of ZEED: The Masked Ninja. En route our hero can obtain pickups such as a Katana for those up close and personal encounters and a distinctly more Western weapon: a gun. The gun bothers me, its as if Sega felt their hero HAD to carry a gun or people wouldn't accept him. Richard Harrison doesn't need a gun, just a sword, a kid's camouflage tent for clothing and the most integral ninja item:
Shinobi was an arcade distributed widely, most everyone who played arcades in the late 80s/early 90s remembers it well. Still playable today, it remains a fast, reflex testing challenge with great music and a cool first-person bonus round.
I also find it damn hard, as the variety of enemies and their attacks really picks up by mission 3. This difficulty would be revisited in great pseudo-sequels Shadow Dancer and Revenge of Shinobi.
The legend of Joe Musashi will live forever, he was a true ninja warrior back before ninjas became synonymous with flipping out and wailing on guitars.
Shinobi is a absolute classic and stands proudly in the Sega arcade hall of fame alongside Outrun, Afterburner and many other games from a time when no company was more deserving of your 10p pieces.