The Revenge of Shinobi - No Death Clear

The Revenge of Shinobi left a big impression on me when I was a kid, but I never spent much time with it as I got older. With Art of Vengeance out so soon, I wanted to revisit this before it dropped.

If you're not familiar with the older Shinobi games, they probably play differently from what you'd expect. You'd think a Ninja would be fast and nimble, and use a sword as his primary attack, right? Shinobi is practically the complete opposite. You walk through the stage more like RoboCop than a Ninja, and you mainly use your kunai to attack enemies from long distance, though you do have close range melee attacks too, of course. You are still fairly nimble, though. You can easily adjust your jumps in mid air, and you can jump incredibly high (but not incredibly far). You also have a double jump, but it's only usable once you reach a certain height, so you have to time it right every time. It's not hard once you get used to it, but there are a few points where missing the double jump will kill you.
Some of this may sound like complaints, but it's not. Shinobi's play style just helps set it apart from other ninja action games, and everything works together perfectly to create a game that's great from start to finish.
It's not too difficult either, as there are plenty of health items throughout the stages (several are hidden), and you have ninpo that can shield you, or sacrifice one of your lives for a full health refill (does that count as a death?). The main thing you need to be wary of in a deathless run are the instant kill traps. You can't see too far ahead of you, and there are quite a few areas that you'll have to blindly jump to, only to have an enemy waiting to hit you as soon as you land, knock you into a pit, and end your run. Just memorize the most dangerous areas, and be generous with the spread kunai jump attack in the later levels (or when you're not sure what's ahead) and you should be good.

This is the original version of the game. Sega apparently had no idea how copyrights worked, since they straight up put Spider-Man, Godzilla, and The Terminator in the game as bosses. Which is both funny and awesome. They released some revisions that replaced those characters with more generic alternatives after they got in trouble, but this game just isn't the same if you're not killing Spider-Man and Godzilla.

Sega sent over an Art of Vengeance key for review, so I'll start grinding that as soon as I get home from work. I still need to spend way more time with the rest of the series, but I've been looking forward to the new one.

0:00 Intro
1:24 Round 1
5:07 Round 2
8:19 Round 3
12:36 Round 4
16:18 Round 5
21:12 Round 6
26:53 Round 7
31:56 Round 8
36:33 Ending

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