Super Ninja Boy (SNES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Culture Brain's 1993 action-RPG for the Super NES, Super Ninja Boy.

Super Ninja Boy, or Super Chinese World in Japan, is the sequel to Little Ninja Brothers (   • Little Ninja Brothers (NES) Playthrough   ), a NES title released back in 1990 that was in turn a follow-up to Kung Fu Heroes (   • Kung Fu Heroes (NES) Playthrough - Nintend...   ).

Jack and Ryu's journey through Chinaland is played through a variety of modes. Exploration of the overworld and town areas is pulled straight out of Dragon Quest, random encounters play like 2.5D beat 'em up-like stages, important passageways between areas are done in the style of 2D platformers, and major bosses take the form of turn-based battles from old-school RPGs. The design might seem a bit schizophrenic at first, but it's so simple and straightforward that you won't need but a few minutes to get acclimated.

The story is pretty forgettable and fragmented, consisting mostly of a series of fetch quests that rarely attempt to advance the plot in any meaningful way. The bad guy is never mentioned again after his introduction, either, so the super contrived "surprise reveal" of the finale is more likely to leave you scratching your head than anything else.

The game is hilarious, though, and much of the humor is a direct result of the game's English translation. Culture Brain's localization efforts were often a bit lacking, and Super Ninja Boy demonstrates this better than most. The text is generally clear enough to not undermine playability (so, not Castlevania II), but there are some real whoppers in this script. For instance, one of the brothers yells, "What's this!? Oh my banana! It has the shape of a human being," when he sees a Gundam-like robot taking off. I don't remember the last time I laughed so hard at a translation. I dread to think what might've been going through their heads with that line.

But the game's campy character is its strength, Engrish text and all. It's not an attractive game by any means, though. It often looks like a very colorful NES game, or maybe a very early PC Engine game. The tiny sprites, simple and repetitive tile sets, the lack of animation frames, and the piss poor framerate in the action stages don't make a good impression. The portraits are amusingly overdone and cutesy and some of the enemy art is pretty good and occasionally funny, so at least it has that going for it. The game has a lot of charm and the difficulty level is reasonable so long as you keep your levels up.

Most of the game's flaws can be overlooked to some degree if you can attune yourself to the Super Ninja Boy vibe, but the ridiculous random encounter rate all but ruins it. There are times where you'll finish a fight just to glimpse the overhead screen before the game immediately initiates another encounter. It's infuriating and the only real relief from this comes from a few late-game abilities.

This endless sense of repetition, the screwy hit detection, the game's lack of a battery-backed save system, and the sheer number of long-distance fetch quests make for a game that I think it really is too clunky and unfriendly for most people to bother seeing through to the end in spite of its novelty.

What's sad about all this is that it feels like many of its problems stem from Culture Brain's cheapskate attitude towards production. This was a 4 megabit cart despite the game costing $70 in 1993!

I did enjoy some of my time with it. There are some cool cutscenes and music, and I loved the Scherezade cameo, but the long stretches of tedium between the good bits is a lot to expect someone to slog through. Overall, it's a firm step down from its NES precursor.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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