Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master

seanstar on Friday, 27 May 2011. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

For some reason, all the ways I can think of starting to describe Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master involve Essence of Ninja packed tightly into a 16-bit cartridge by ninja highly trained in the art of packing Essence of Ninja into 16-bit cartridges.

Shinobi III was released by Sega for the Genesis in 1993. While the Shinobi series is broader and more complex than even I was aware of prior to researching this article, RotNM has one very key distinction over its predecessors and even some successors. Previous Master System and Genesis titles were about walking around slowly and throwing shuriken at things. Previous Game Gear titles featured flips, ceiling-walks, and slashing stuff, but never as the same character. They were also about rescuing Power Rangers and recovering magical rainbow crystals. The most recent PS2 game is about some magic demon wizard stuff and getting killed by your own sword.

Shinobi III, by contrast, is about flipping out and killing people. More specifically, it's about flipping out and killing explosive zombie-soldiers armed with automatic weapons, slicing up giant bioengineered meat-golems, horse-stomping ninja super-soldiers, jetboard-flying-kicking heavily armed marine tank robots, destroying robo-godzilla, scaling cliffs by jumping between falling boulders, navigating entire areas using only wall-jumps, katana-ing heavily armed airships out of the sky, and I think something about an evil super-ninja trying to take over the world, but that's only the plot, and if you know what the plot is, you obviously aren't very familiar with the concept of Ninja-ing.

Editor's Note: This entertaining account of Shinobi III's ridiculousness should be enough to convince anyone to check out the game. Fans of the series take note that Sega just announced that a new instalment is headed to the Nintendo 3DS in September this year. -mossy_11


titleFor some reason, all the ways I can think of starting to describe Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master involve Essence of Ninja packed tightly into a 16-bit cartridge by ninja highly trained in the art of packing Essence of Ninja into 16-bit cartridges.

Shinobi III was released by Sega for the Genesis in 1993. While the Shinobi series is broader and more complex than even I was aware of prior to researching this article, RotNM has one very key distinction over its predecessors and even some successors. Previous Master System and Genesis titles were about walking around slowly and throwing shuriken at things. Previous Game Gear titles featured flips, ceiling-walks, and slashing stuff, but never as the same character. They were also about rescuing Power Rangers and recovering magical rainbow crystals. The most recent PS2 game is about some magic demon wizard stuff and getting killed by your own sword.

Shinobi III, by contrast, is about flipping out and killing people. More specifically, it's about flipping out and killing explosive zombie-soldiers armed with automatic weapons, slicing up giant bioengineered meat-golems, horse-stomping ninja super-soldiers, jetboard-flying-kicking heavily armed marine tank robots, destroying robo-godzilla, scaling cliffs by jumping between falling boulders, navigating entire areas using only wall-jumps, katana-ing heavily armed airships out of the sky, and I think something about an evil super-ninja trying to take over the world, but that's only the plot, and if you know what the plot is, you obviously aren't very familiar with the concept of Ninja-ing.

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From a ninja-ing perspective, the game has all its bases covered. You can walk, run, jump, air-jump, triangle-jump, air-jump your triangle jump (eliminating the need for a second wall), hang from ceilings, swing along ceilings, throw shuriken, throw more shuriken, slash, sweep-kick, and flying-kick. You can run, jump, air-jump, throw a whole barrage of shrunken, and then flying-kick whatever you just threw the shuriken at on the way down -- assuming you didn't instead triangle-jump onto the ceiling. And that's even without using any crazy-ninja-magic. Your crazy-ninja-magic Ninjitsu options account for pretty much every other aspect of ninja-ing. You have the Ninjitsu of "even when you hit me you didn't actually hit me," the Ninjitsu of "I move so fast you can't see me," the Ninjitsu of "gratuitous pyrotechnic display," and the ever-popular Ninjitsu of "in my honorable death, I assure your ultimate destruction." And yes, you can even do that thing where you run at the enemy, slash your sword, pass right through them without a scratch, and have them explode behind you a split-second later. With all that to do, it took me years to realize you can also stand still and block most intuitively blockable things.

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From a design perspective, the game also has all its bases covered. Action is smooth, and controls are generally responsive if you have your ninja timing down. Level design is a world above your generic run'n'slash platforming, with each level requiring a different subset of ninja skills. By the end of the first level, you're into rope-work. In the second, you're sniping from horseback. By the third, you're scaling skyscrapers. By the endgame, a piece of wall or ceiling that doesn't hurt you is a luxury, and solid ground doesn't really exist unless necessary. Yet the game is also highly approachable, with even novice players like 3rd-grade-me able to progress far enough to enjoy the game, while leaving the final stages obviously reserved for those dedicated players who have put time into mastering the controls and execution.

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Strong aesthetics round out the title. Graphics are smooth and vibrant, making full use of the Genesis palette without revealing its limitations in the least. The new-age traditional Japanese soundtrack is arguably one of the better lineups ever to grace the system, and certainly one of the best I've heard on a game built around skill-action-reflex killing. Sound effects are audibly FM-synth, but make as strong an effort as they can to be realistic. In some cases, they even integrate with the music, such as the galloping hoofbeats woven into the start of the horseback stage.

If you can find the cartridge and have a Genesis-compatible console, Shinobi III is well worth the $12 my local vintage shop was charging. If it's out on the official console emulation stores, throw Sega a bone and pick it up legitimately. Otherwise...downloading ROMs is illegal and wrong and I absolutely do not condone your illicitly verifying my claim that this is one of the ninja-est ninja games of back-in-the-day, which even rivals most newer offerings I've seen.

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