SEGA Master System One Life Challenge - Shinobi (Beat It)

PAL 50Hz With FM Audio

Another one of GenerationPixel's SMS one life challenges from August 2025. I originally missed this one as it was even before I knew the challenges were a thing. Like in all these videos, the goal is to see how far you can get in the game without losing a try, once you lose a try, you're out and the video stops.

I haven't played this game in a few years but I have been playing it since I was about 8 or 9 years old and it's a game I return to every few years and it seems my little boy skills have followed me into adult hood as they're still alive for all to see. Anyway the result is that I beat the challenge yet again.

NOTES:

This is how you can tell I played it on a Mega Drive and not an actual Master system. At (26:20) an odd thing occurs when fighting the final boss where the background keeps changing colours rather than staying purple. This only happens on a Mega Drive, on a Master System model 1 or 2, the background stays purple.

I completed 6 out of 9 bonus stages.

I always keep that floating ninja magic with the cloud icon for round 4-2 as that very last jump across requires a pixel perfect jump.

Mandara and the Masked Ninja are the two hardest bosses in this game. Mandara is frustrating because the moving tiles keep sliding forward eventually pushing you into the electricity bar and the Mandara tiles take about 4 hits each to make them disappear. The trick is to stand somewhere in the middle, not too close but not too far apart. If you're standing too far away, you lose too much time waiting for the shots to hit the tiles, if too close, you lose time constantly moving back and having to shoot.

The Masked Ninja is easy in all his states except in his last state where he rushes at you and punches you, I usually defeat him by bashing him off screen, but this time I had to settle for a ''tit for tat'' approach where each time he punched me, I was allowed a free hit towards him. You really do need a full life bar for this approach to work though.

In the Lobster District - Round 4-3 Joe Musashi jumps slightly higher but only in this stage.

I made sure I turned off the in-game menu of the EverDrive for this recording in case anybody was to think that I was cheating.

This was a one sitting playthrough. I did NOT use any tool-assisted gimmicks as that would be cheating and unfair towards the other participants.

Played it with the superior FM YM2413 sound module turned on.

TIME STAMPS:

1. Ken Oh District (00:23)
2. Black Turtle District (03:46)
3. Mandara District (10:24)
4. Lobster District (16:44)
5. Masked Ninja District (22:02)

Check out these other participants and their tries:
GenerationPixel's video:    • Master System One Life Challenge Shinobi  
8BitBoyUK's video:    • Master System 1 Life Challenge - SHINOBI   

played and recorded from my PAL SEGA Mega Drive November 1991 VA4 model 1 console using my new Mega EverDrive Core from Krikzz.

Enjoy!