Shadow of the Ninja (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Natsume's 1990 action game for the NES, Shadow of the Ninja.

In 2029, the evil demon Garuda takes over New York City, and two ninja have appeared to put a stop to his nefarious ways. So begins Shadow of the Ninja (renamed Blue Shadow for PAL territories), a Natsume-developed action-platformer that was released in late 1990.

Unlike Ninja Gaiden (   • Ninja Gaiden (NES) Playthrough  ) and Wrath of the Black Manta (   • Wrath of the Black Manta (NES) Playth...  ), Shadow of the Ninja doesn't have any cinematic aspirations. The plot doesn't make one lick of sense - why is Vishnu's horse-bird attacking, and why are ninja the last line of defense for a major American city? - but that hardly matters when you're talking about an 8-bit action game, and especially one of this caliber.

Shadow of the Ninja's five stages balance hack-and-slash combat with platforming challenges. Hayate and Kaede can arm themselves with upgradable katana and kusarigama (a weighted chain sickle), shuriken, and grenades, and to facilitate smooth movement through each area, they can freely flip between platforms, hang from ledges, and move hand-over-hand across ceilings. They also have a special power move that calls down a bolt of lightning to hit everything on screen, but since it consumes half your life gauge, it has to be used sparingly.

The flow of the stage layouts and the enemy behavior patterns keep the action moving at a good pace. It's not a particularly difficult game - it doesn't embrace the obnoxious knock-back traps that Ninja Gaiden is famous for - but it will test your reflexes and your knowledge of the game mechanics, and some of the boss encounters can be pretty tricky.

The game is also a total blast to play in its novel simultaneous 2P co-op mode. (I wonder if the people who made Run Saber took inspiration from Shadow of the Ninja... they have a fair amount in common.)

The soundtrack is pretty killer, too.

Shadow of the Ninja is an excellent NES action game, and it's a good show of the quality that Natsume would become known for in the years that followed.

Who else is looking forward to the remake?
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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