Club Retro 2020: November - Ninjas (and Samurai)
Nov 2, 2020 19:11:48 GMT -5
Post by toei on Nov 2, 2020 19:11:48 GMT -5
Ex Both RT and Shinobi are very methodical, though the Master System port is a little slower. And the jump is mad weird.
Well, I beat Shinobi 3. With this, I have beaten every classic 2D Shinobi: Shinobi, Shadow Dancer Arcade, Shadow Dancer Genesis, Revenge of Shinobi, Shinobi 3, Shinobi Legions, The GG Shinobi, The GG Shinobi 2, Cyber Shinobi and Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, if it counts.
Out of all the mainline entries, Shinobi 3 turned out to be the weakest link.
Let me tell you a little story. In the early '90s, SEGA was the most prolific video game publisher in the world. Not only were they a leader in the arcade market, but they also to supply their 3 consoles without counting on much support from 3rd parties; their main one, the Genesis; their handheld, the Game Gear; and, in Europe and Brazil, their previous console, the Master System, which had caught on and still had a market. In order to do so, they began working with various smaller outfits that would code ports, contribute some programming or art here and there, and sometimes develop entire games under the supervision of some Sega producer. One company they used in this way was called Whiteboard, and later Santos; its president had apparently founded and led 3 other game companies prior to its founding in the '80s. Why couldn't any of them seem to stick around? I'm not sure, but it may have had to do with the mediocre quality of most of their games. Either way, Sega needed to expand, and so around the same time that they set up SIMS with another frequent subcontractor, Sanritsu, they bought Santos or absorbed most of its employees through some business maneuver or another and formed another subsidiary named Megasoft, with a former Data East producer at the helm. Megasoft began to develop two Genesis games; one a sumo game based on some anime, and the other an entry in a series that had been popular in the West, Shinobi. Another former Data East employee, a game designer, co-directed. The game's one credited Planner went on to direct Knuckles Chaotix; most of the staff worked on the Genesis version of Toki prior to this. As they might have expected from a company with such a mediocre pedigree, Megasoft's two games were not up to par, and so after a nearly complete Shinobi 3 was sent to the press in 1992, Sega scraped the current build and re-made most of it, delaying the release until the following year. Megasoft was dissolved before ever releasing a game, and many of its employees absorbed into regular Sega divisions. Noriyoshi Oba, creator of Revenge of Shinobi, was credited as Supervisor on the final product, though I don't know whether he was involved from the start or not.
All this say that while they may have fixed the graphics and controls from whatever disaster Megasoft had cooked up, the changes they made to the levels weren't enough. The game handles well, and to be fair, it's still decent, but a lot of the levels are just lackluster. There's not enough action, not enough enemies, the settings are plain and unoriginal, there are too many gimmicky levels - two surf levels, one horse level where not much happens, that one level where you have to jump from rock to rock as they fall down a mountain for way too long... The later levels kind of stretch on, too, with lots of slow platforming involved. Some of the bosses look very impressive, and some make for decent fights, but most of them are as basic as it gets. Everything is far too easy, then things suddenly get hard when you get to the last two levels, which feel like they belong in a different game. The final boss is a joke, though; I beat him on my first try, without ever bothering to observe his patterns. I had the powered-up shuriken, which deal a ton of damage, so I just used the protection spell to spam them as much as I could in the beginning, then ran up to him and spammed the close range attack once I lost my protection. The end.
It's probably the best-looking game in the series, uninspired levels aside, it plays well, and it's fun in parts. But the lame bosses and so-so level design are letdowns. I did like the monsters-in-vats level, though it's very similar to that one level in E-SWAT Genesis.
I don't know what I'd rate it. It's like a weak 7 to me.
One last think I found curious. Several Data East programmers, who, unlike the producer and the co-director, don't seem to have left the company, are in the Special Thanks section of the credits. Did Data East itself do a bit of work on this game?
Well, I beat Shinobi 3. With this, I have beaten every classic 2D Shinobi: Shinobi, Shadow Dancer Arcade, Shadow Dancer Genesis, Revenge of Shinobi, Shinobi 3, Shinobi Legions, The GG Shinobi, The GG Shinobi 2, Cyber Shinobi and Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, if it counts.
Out of all the mainline entries, Shinobi 3 turned out to be the weakest link.
Let me tell you a little story. In the early '90s, SEGA was the most prolific video game publisher in the world. Not only were they a leader in the arcade market, but they also to supply their 3 consoles without counting on much support from 3rd parties; their main one, the Genesis; their handheld, the Game Gear; and, in Europe and Brazil, their previous console, the Master System, which had caught on and still had a market. In order to do so, they began working with various smaller outfits that would code ports, contribute some programming or art here and there, and sometimes develop entire games under the supervision of some Sega producer. One company they used in this way was called Whiteboard, and later Santos; its president had apparently founded and led 3 other game companies prior to its founding in the '80s. Why couldn't any of them seem to stick around? I'm not sure, but it may have had to do with the mediocre quality of most of their games. Either way, Sega needed to expand, and so around the same time that they set up SIMS with another frequent subcontractor, Sanritsu, they bought Santos or absorbed most of its employees through some business maneuver or another and formed another subsidiary named Megasoft, with a former Data East producer at the helm. Megasoft began to develop two Genesis games; one a sumo game based on some anime, and the other an entry in a series that had been popular in the West, Shinobi. Another former Data East employee, a game designer, co-directed. The game's one credited Planner went on to direct Knuckles Chaotix; most of the staff worked on the Genesis version of Toki prior to this. As they might have expected from a company with such a mediocre pedigree, Megasoft's two games were not up to par, and so after a nearly complete Shinobi 3 was sent to the press in 1992, Sega scraped the current build and re-made most of it, delaying the release until the following year. Megasoft was dissolved before ever releasing a game, and many of its employees absorbed into regular Sega divisions. Noriyoshi Oba, creator of Revenge of Shinobi, was credited as Supervisor on the final product, though I don't know whether he was involved from the start or not.
All this say that while they may have fixed the graphics and controls from whatever disaster Megasoft had cooked up, the changes they made to the levels weren't enough. The game handles well, and to be fair, it's still decent, but a lot of the levels are just lackluster. There's not enough action, not enough enemies, the settings are plain and unoriginal, there are too many gimmicky levels - two surf levels, one horse level where not much happens, that one level where you have to jump from rock to rock as they fall down a mountain for way too long... The later levels kind of stretch on, too, with lots of slow platforming involved. Some of the bosses look very impressive, and some make for decent fights, but most of them are as basic as it gets. Everything is far too easy, then things suddenly get hard when you get to the last two levels, which feel like they belong in a different game. The final boss is a joke, though; I beat him on my first try, without ever bothering to observe his patterns. I had the powered-up shuriken, which deal a ton of damage, so I just used the protection spell to spam them as much as I could in the beginning, then ran up to him and spammed the close range attack once I lost my protection. The end.
It's probably the best-looking game in the series, uninspired levels aside, it plays well, and it's fun in parts. But the lame bosses and so-so level design are letdowns. I did like the monsters-in-vats level, though it's very similar to that one level in E-SWAT Genesis.
I don't know what I'd rate it. It's like a weak 7 to me.
One last think I found curious. Several Data East programmers, who, unlike the producer and the co-director, don't seem to have left the company, are in the Special Thanks section of the credits. Did Data East itself do a bit of work on this game?