The Revenge of Shinobi

1989 was a turning point for Sega – the Mega Drive needed titles that would show off what the new hardware could do, and The Revenge of Shinobi became one of its main showpieces. It continues the arcade hit Shinobi and expands its concept into a larger, more elaborate form. The ninja Joe Musashi once again sets out on a path of revenge against the criminal organization Zeed and its commander Neo Zeed, who murdered his teacher.

The game builds on fast-paced action platforming, where the player combines a samurai sword, thrown shuriken, and ninja magic (ninjutsu), which draws on a limited supply of mana. The levels are full of hidden platforms, traps, and enemies, among whom appeared characters strongly resembling Spider-Man or Batman – an oddity that brought the game licensing complications and had to be redesigned graphically in later releases. The difficulty is uncompromising, requiring precise jump timing and thorough memorization of each level.

Despite minor controversies surrounding its borrowed iconography and an occasionally uneven pace, the game remains one of the defining experiences of the early Mega Drive. The atmosphere is rounded out by Yuzo Koshiro's pulsing music and a raw sense of combat that inspired a whole wave of later ninja action games on both eight- and sixteen-bit consoles. The level design also places heavy emphasis on memorization – the player has to learn the placement of enemies and traps by heart, since a first playthrough almost never goes by without losing a life, which was, after all, typical for action titles of the late eighties.

Why play it: Because it's one of the foundational titles of the genre on the Mega Drive, one that showed what fast, atmospheric ninja action should look like.