Released in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Shadow of the Ninja is a side-scrolling action platform game developed and published by Natsume. The game originally released in Japan as Yami no Shigotonin Kage, and later had a release in Europe as Blue Shadow.
In the year 2029, the largest city in America is run under the iron grip of the evil Emperor Garuda. He and his followers have created an impenetrable fortress, and no one has been able to break through to threaten his plans to continue his conquest. This all changes when two mysterious figures manage to break past the outer defenses of the city. Enter Hayate and his senpai Lady Kaede, two ninjas of the Iga clan, sent to infiltrate Garuda's fortress and bring an end to his empire.
Players take control of Hayate or Kaede and platform and fight their way through five different stages throughout Garuda's city. The game can be played in either single-player mode, or a two-player simultaneous cooperative mode. Both characters use katanas as their primary weapon, but these can be swapped out for other weapons by collecting the right power ups.
A version of the game was in development for the Game Boy, but the rights to this version were picked up by Tecmo, and rebranded into a spinoff of the Ninja Gaiden series titled Ninja Gaiden Shadow. While Shadow does have some similarities to the original game, including some shared music and a near-identical intro cutscene featuring the same villain, it is largely its own game, with a handful of unique mechanics and different stages. In 2023, a remake of the original NES game, titled Shadow of the Ninja Reborn, was announced to be in development, planned to be released on ninth-generation systems in 2024.
Shadow of the Ninja contains examples of:
- After Boss Recovery: You regain health after defeating a stage boss, though only enough to fill half a health bar. If you have less than half health, the recovery will not be enough to fill your health completely.
- Attack Its Weak Point:
- The Eyestalker mini-boss in stage 2 can only be damaged by attacking the eyes on the ends of its body.
- The Killer Tank boss only takes damage when the cannon on top is hit. The laser cannon on the underside can also be damaged and destroyed, but doing so has no effect on the main health bar.
- Art Evolution: Reborn gives a modern makeover to both Hayate and Kaede that they look very different than their original selves.
- Battle Boomerang: The Boomerang Masters are enemies that attack by throwing a boomerang that subsequently returns to them, being able to damage you on both the initial throw and the rebound. You can stop the boomerang effect by attacking it, but they have an unlimited supply, so this only stops it briefly.
- Battle in the Rain: The first stages on the outside of the boat take place during a rainstorm. rain droplets can be seen being blown by the wind in the background.
- Big Applesauce: Garuda's empire seems to be situated in what was formerly New York City, as the opening shows a skyline shot of the city with both the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center visible.
- Bottomless Pits: Each stage has pits your character can fall into. Falling down one does not instantly kill you, but it does cost you a large amount of health before respawning you.
- Breakable Power-Up: The katana and kusarigama can both be upgraded by collecting multiple power ups of the same type without collecting the other, but taking too much damage will cause your weapon to downgrade back to its weaker form.
- Cast from Hit Points: The ninjas can perform an attack where they call upon bolts of lightning to kill every enemy on screen and do large amounts of damage to bosses, but this attack costs half of your life bar to pull off, and can't be done at all if you don't have at least half health.
- Color-Coded Multiplayer: Hayate's health bar and sprite are purple, while Kaede's are orange.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: Two players can play the game simultaneously, with one player as Hayate, and the other as Kaede. Both players fight alongside each other to clear each stage.
- Degraded Boss: Stage 1 contains a mini-boss against Palooka, a soldier that has a very fast slide attack. This mini-boss appears as a regular enemy in stage 2, with three appearing shortly before the stage's main boss.
- Down the Drain: Stage 2 takes place in the Underground Sewers. A pit of grimy water takes up the entire bottom portion of the screen at first, and ninjas will jump out of it to attack you.
- Dual Boss: Initially, the boss of stage 4 is a fight against Captain Hawk and his hawk companion. The Captain fights you at ground level with jump kicks while the bird occasionally swoops down at you from the air where you can't reach it. This only lasts for the first part of the fight, however.
- Excuse Plot: The game's story involves an evil bad guy who controls the city, and a pair of ninjas who are out to stop him. This is as far as the plot ever goes.
- Fanservice Pack: In Reborn Kaede goes from a typical female kunoichi into a long, green haired attractive kunoichi with skin-tight outfit that bares her legs as well as pronounced boobs.
- Fusion Dance: After dealing enough damage to Captain Hawk, he and his pet bird will fuse together into one being, creating a humanoid bird-man that flies out of your range and very quickly slams down into wherever you're standing on.
- Mutually Exclusive Power Ups: You can only have either a katana or a kusarigama as your primary weapon at any given time. Collecting a power up for the weapon you're not using will result in it being replaced with the other.
- Rise to the Challenge: The final stage has a segment where the screen automatically scrolls upward, forcing the players to keep up with it as everything that moves past the bottom of the screen becomes a bottomless pit.
- Rocket Punch: Power Fist is an enemy that appears in the final stage and fires their hand in a straight line, which then returns to them, hesitating in mid-shot at a specific position.
- Ship Level: The first stage takes place on a series of boat in the Sea Port. You start off on the boat's deck, climbing around on the masts, before eventually disembarking from the boats and heading into the port.
- Smart Bomb: You can hold down the attack button to charge up a lightning attack that kills every enemy onscreen. Doing so costs half a meter's worth of health, however.
- Spider Tank: The final stage introduces the Arakna, a series of large, multi-legged robots that leap high in the air to move around, and attack with a large spread of bullets that move in a variety of directions.
- Tank Goodness: Stage 2's boss is the Killer Tank, which rolls forward and backward. It's fitted with all sorts of weapons, including a laser cannon that fires across the entire floor, a spread gun that appears and fires every time you hit the weak point, and mortar cannons that fire missiles into the sky that aim for wherever you are standing.
- Tornado Move: The Wind Ninja enemies turn into a tornado that spins across the platform they stand on at high speed after you damage them.
