The Revenge of Shinobi Longplay (Mega Drive/Genesis) [60 FPS]

Developed and published by Sega in 1989.

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The Revenge of Shinobi was the first game that I ever played on the Mega Drive and the first thing that struck me was how smooth the scrolling was. Previously, I'd been playing games on my Amiga 500, itself no slouch in the gaming department, but there's no denying that the quality of many of Sega's first-party titles was second-to-none.

The game is a sequel to the arcade smash-hit, Shinobi, and was developed specifically for the home console. Taking control of Ninja master, Joe Musashi, the objective of the game is to bring down the terrorist organisation, Neo Zeed and to rescue Musashi's fiancée from the clutches of Zeed's forces.

The game combines platforming and shooting action across multiple levels. Each stage typically features multiple platforms to navigate, as well as separate play-fields in the foreground and background. The player can switch between the two fields at will, but only enemies on the same play-field can be killed. The airport stage uses the dual play-field to great effect, where it becomes confusing with the myriad of enemies, bombs and bullets flying in the player's general direction.

Musashi is able to dispatch foes via shuriken, but is also able to pummel opponents in close range. Power-ups can be found inside many of the wooden crates located throughout each level, although many contain booby-traps as well. Once powered up, Musashi can deflect incoming projectiles, gains an increase to shuriken power and can use a sword in close quarters instead of relying on fisticuffs.

If things start to get tricky, the player can call on several different forms of Ninja magic. These can grant the player a shield (temporary invulnerability), or can be used to smite foes with might columns of fire. The magic is limited, so should be used sparingly.

The game plays extremely well, although can be quite tricky in later levels. Being able to reliably perform the double-jump is often a necessity and it's not uncommon to die through mistiming your jumps. This aside, the game is generally flawless in operation and is good fun to play.

Yuzo Koshiro wrote the music for the game and, as expected, it is fantastic; perhaps not as great as his Streets of Rage score, but it is still fine work.

There aren't many games that I can say have a boss that attempts to murder you with his hair!

Another fine game from Sega.
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