Mastery. Might. And Magic.
"ENJOY FRANTIC oriental action in this Ninja beat-em-up. Search for kidnapped children and dispose of marauding thugs with feet, fists and shuriken stars. Classic SEGA coin-op thrills!"
— Description from the back of several European cases for ports.
The Shinobi game that started it all.
This game provides examples of:
- Adaptation Dye-Job: When the game was ported to the Wii and Xbox 360, one of the basic enemies had its colors changed from red and blue to green and yellow to eliminate its resemblance to Spider-Man.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: The first part of the Mandara boss is a wall of statues slowly trying to push you into an electrical beam.
- Attack Its Weak Point: All bosses have a soft spot you must usually jump to hit. Some of the regular enemies have them too as they can block shurikens with swords and such.
- Bonus Stage: After clearing the first three levels and every fourth level thereafter, you partake in one by throwing shuriken at ninjas without letting any of them get near you to get an extra life.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory/Point of No Continues: You can use as many continues as needed in the arcade version (as long as you have the coins); but once you reach the final four levels, blowing all your chances will cause your game to be over for real. Quite devastating consequences, really.
- Comic-Book Adaptation: In Sonic the Comic. Shinobi was the first Sega game outside the Sonic the Hedgehog series to get a comic adaptation, and it was both faithful to the games' stories and suitably serious in tone.
- Continuing is Painful: In the Master System version of the original game, dying resets the length of your life bar down to its default, and brings you back down to the slow-shuriken weapon. The former can be particularly frustrating in levels 4-2 and 4-3, which feature bottomless pits.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Originally, Joe was not the most traditional ninja around. He didn't wear his headress-mask and he was a One-Hit-Point Wonder. The guy also went the high tech route when it came to his weapon power-up. When he powered-up, he exchanged his regular shurikens for a gun that shot rocket-propelled explosive shells. The flaming shurikens that he uses now are no less powerful but a lot less stylish and he's taken to covering his face.
- Gotta Rescue Them All / Simple Rescue Mechanic - each level requires that you rescue several tied up children by simply touching them, even if they are surrounded by baddies
- Nebulous Evil Organisation: Zeed.
-
Nintendo Hard: The original arcade game makes you a One-Hit-Point Wonder and inevitably get hectic from all angles. - One-Hit-Point Wonder: The player dies in one hit in the original arcade versions of Shinobi. This can be quite jarring to players more accustomed to the console versions, since even the Master System version of Shinobi gave the player a life gauge. The only console game in the series to retain the one hit rule was the Genesis version of Shadow Dancer.
- Shout-Out: An organization named "Zeed"? An enemy named "Ken-oh"? Someone must have been watching too much Hokuto no Ken when they made the game.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Mandara (in the arcade at least) is seemingly impossible to defeat with a single life. You must destroy a wall of 16 statues before they push you into a deadly electrical beam. However, on the first attempt there simply isn't enough time to destroy them all before you are killed. On subsequent lives, the statues are weakened making completion possible. But it means you are always forced to lose a life on this boss.
- There is an exploit / glitch however.
- There is an exploit /
- A Winner Is You: The ending in the arcade Shinobi wasn't anything special to begin with, but it sure beats the Master System port, which awards the player with a blank Game Over screen (the same one you can get for losing the game).
