Dynamite Headdy — Issue 51

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A slight headache

Dyna­mite Head­dy is a jum­bled mess of hit or miss eclec­tic ideas

In the 16-bit era, the Gen­e­sis was the first shot fired in a decade’s war against Nin­ten­do for the atten­tion of teenage gamers and the cold hard cash of gamers’ par­ents. While Sega had Son­ic as a mas­cot to counter Nin­ten­do’s Mario, there were many unique char­ac­ters Sega had in their sta­ble ready to bat­tle with Nin­ten­do if Son­ic need­ed to take a break. One of those char­ac­ters was mem­o­rable for chang­ing the plat­form genre. His name was Head­dy, and his debut game Dyna­mite Head­dy was his big break.

Dyna­mite Head­dy tells the sto­ry of Head­dy, a star pup­pet in the Trea­sure The­atre Show. Head­dy’s loved by every­one except his rival, Trou­ble Bru­in, who believes he should get top billing. In addi­tion to reduc­ing Head­dy’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, Trou­ble is a hench bearcat for the evil Dark Demon whose goal is world dom­i­na­tion by con­vert­ing oth­er pup­pets to his grow­ing army of mind­less min­ions. With inno­cent pup­pets and the future of the the­atre in jeop­ardy, it’s up to Head­dy to stop Dark Demon and Trou­ble’s nefar­i­ous plans. 

I’ll admit the graph­ics are like a chil­dren’s pup­pet show but they are pre­sent­ed in a way that’s col­or­ful and engag­ing. Trea­sure did an excel­lent job with the pre­sen­ta­tion, keep­ing the sto­ry of the game sim­ple. I did, how­ev­er, dis­like how Trea­sure played with pro­mot­ing the game and placed ads for their oth­er prod­ucts front and cen­ter as I played through the first stage. It was super tacky and did­n’t real­ly help the game in any way.
The con­trols are slight­ly sim­ple thanks to the options screen allow­ing you to con­fig­ure a con­trol scheme. How­ev­er, the con­stant switch­ing heads and keep­ing up with what but­ton does what invoked anger with­in me many times. In the­o­ry it looks sim­ple, but the exe­cu­tion is off. It’s a lot to remem­ber once you get going and drags down the platforming.


The music in the game is OK, hav­ing its ener­getic and for­bear­ing doom moments but it’s gener­ic enough to get by. I did feel though, some­times with Dyna­mite Head­dy, that the com­posers were pres­sured to out­do Super Mario World to see which game could have the cutest game music instead of keep­ing focus on how the music could be paired prop­er­ly with each stage. 

One of the more non­sen­si­cal and cringe-wor­thy moments that stuck out to me was nam­ing each stage after well-known movies and pop cul­ture series. Toyz in the Hood, Stair Wars, Far Trek and Ter­mi­nate Her Too were named after the movies Boyz in the Hood, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Ter­mi­na­tor 2. Don’t get me wrong, I under­stood that Trea­sure was try­ing to seize the moment but should have found oth­er ways to accom­plish the task because it came off as goofy and grat­ing, not cute.

Dyna­mite Head­dy is an inter­est­ing and high­ly orig­i­nal game that takes chances and some­times suc­ceeds and some­times falls flat. The orig­i­nal­i­ty was obvi­ous­ly a sell­ing point because Dyna­mite Head­dy’s lega­cy endures on main con­soles and Steam. There are some neat con­cepts here, but some­times it needs to get out of its own head.

Ultra Street Fighter II — Issue 51

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The sixth time’s the charm

Ultra Street Fight­er II needs to be the final final challenge

As a Street Fight­er fan of a cer­tain age, I can remem­ber the many jokes back in the day about Cap­com nev­er learn­ing how to count to three. It was­n’t a lie, though. Cap­com could­n’t count to three because they con­tin­ued to make major revi­sions to Street Fight­er II while oth­er fight­ing game series were start­ing and mak­ing sequels. More than 30 years lat­er, even after Cap­com learned what trés meant in New Gen­er­a­tion, Giant Attack and 3rd Strike, we’re still return­ing to the SFII well and I don’t know if this return trip with the buck­ets was worth it.

By now, we all know the sto­ry of Street Fight­er II: A bunch of World War­riors get togeth­er and fight the mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal dictator/drug runner/supernatural enthu­si­ast M. Bison. Some­one among the based crew that is Ryu, Chun-Li and Guile got their revenge and faced him at the end of the sec­ond World War­rior Tour­na­ment until the ever-present Aku­ma showed up and prompt­ly took Bison out with a well-placed Rag­ing Demon. Except that giv­en the sto­ry events of Street Fight­er V: Cham­pi­onship Edi­tion, this no longer holds true exact­ly (see Bison’s res­ur­rec­tion in Street Fight­er 6’s DLC). Any­way, at the point of Ultra Street Fight­er II: The Final Chal­lengers, Bison is dead, on his way to hell with gaso­line under­gar­ments on for his var­i­ous mis­deeds. This has always been Street Fight­er II’s sto­ry­line in its basest form, and noth­ing notable has changed about it in Ultra. 

The con­trols also are the same old Street Fight­er II that’s been played and rehashed to death dur­ing the past 35 years. It’s the same shoryuken, hur­ri­cane kicks, and hado­kens you’re used to, and to Cap­com’s cred­it, that’s the best thing they could have ever done. Don’t fix what isn’t bro­ken and what gen­er­a­tions have learned to cut their teeth on. That said, if you can play Super Tur­bo, you can play this because that’s all this is in terms of how to play Street Fight­er II. And to mit­i­gate the poten­tial issues, buy­ing a Pro Con­troller is a smart idea, but you already knew that if you bought this port because there is no way you’re casu­al­ly play­ing a port of a 35-year-old fight­ing game with­out know­ing you need a decent controller.

Now, the one thing that has changed is the graph­ics. Graph­i­cal­ly, this is more in line with the weird Street Fight­er II HD Remix that fea­tured ani­me style graph­ics. It’s kind of gor­geous but also kind of not. It feels a lit­tle like a rehash of that port and not too many peo­ple were clam­or­ing for it out­side of the fact that it was one of the few ports of Super Tur­bo released in the U.S. Some of the stages look great and ben­e­fit from the art style change and some of them just look rather meh. Also, one of the few things that mer­ci­ful­ly stayed the same is the sound­track. SFII has always had an excel­lent sound­track and it, too, is untouched from the Super Tur­bo version.

The new addi­tions to this are what’s going to influ­ence your deci­sion to get this or pass. On the ros­ter side of things are new­com­ers Evil Ryu and Vio­lent Ken. Why, they aren’t new you say? Exact­ly. They aren’t new at all if you care about Cap­com fight­ing lore. Evil Ryu is a main­stay evil ver­sion of the beloved Ryu who’s been hang­ing around ever since Cap­com USA for­got to ask if he was real or not in the hey­day of Street Fight­er Alpha 2. Vio­lent Ken is a lit­tle deep­er but not by much. If you played the weird SNK vs. Cap­com Chaos — bet­ter known as SNK’s attempt in the Cap­com vs. SNK series — you’d rec­og­nize this ver­sion of Ken. He also kind of made a what-if appear­ance in Street Fight­er Alpha 3 in the arcade sto­ry mode. While I get that they’re a nov­el­ty and peo­ple love these char­ac­ters for what­ev­er rea­son, I’m not sure I under­stand why we need­ed anoth­er ver­sion of Street Fight­er II to include them. Because for the folks play­ing along at home, this makes the sixth ver­sion of the game to be released as an offi­cial port. By the time this was released, Cap­com was talk­ing seri­ous­ly and mak­ing a lot of noise about Street Fight­er V, so this is unnec­es­sary quite hon­est­ly. And throw­ing in the mori­bund and extra Way of the Hado mode does not jus­ti­fy the need for a whol­ly new ver­sion of this game.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Street Fight­er II. It was instru­men­tal and paved the way for my favorite genre of video games. I’ve played every ver­sion of SFII at this point and every spin­off of it, too. But when it comes to these high­ly unnec­es­sary retreads of the same game that Cap­com won’t let loose, I have a prob­lem. As much as I have come to love the fran­chise in my lat­er years, I can’t stand that Cap­com beats the SFII horse to death while ignor­ing their oth­er viable fight­ing game fran­chis­es such as Rival Schools/Project Jus­tice and Vampire/Darkstalkers. We get it, Street Fight­er II is extreme­ly pop­u­lar. But Cap­com has released enough ver­sions of it to last a life­time and this ver­sion is not need­ed. Cap­com real­ly needs to let this be the final chal­lenge for sure.

Metroid Dread — Issue 51

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Metroid Dread a return to form for vet­er­an series

That fore­bod­ing sense of … dread. The antic­i­pa­tion of walk­ing into an unknown room and pos­si­bly find­ing a secret. It’s the stuff many old-school gamers and Metroid fans like me cut our teeth on grow­ing up with Metroid­va­nia games. The orig­i­nal Metroid set the tone, but Super Metroid is the house of cards that every­thing in the genre rests on. And Metroid Dread, while an admirable attempt to recre­ate that nos­tal­gic feel­ing, is a few mis­siles short.

Don’t mis­un­der­stand me: I love Metroid Dread. It’s the return to form that we all expect of a Metroid game, and you can tell that with­in the first five min­utes. The open­ing cin­e­mat­ic picks the sto­ry up after Fusion where Samus Aran, the bad­dest boun­ty hunter in the known uni­verse, has simul­ta­ne­ous­ly solved the X Par­a­site threat and ush­ered in galac­tic peace once again. Despite that, the Galac­tic Fed­er­a­tion receives ver­i­fied proof that the X are not extinct and sends EMMI (Extra­plan­e­tary Mul­ti­form Mobile Iden­ti­fiers) to the plan­et ZDR to inves­ti­gate the mys­tery of why the X Par­a­site has reap­peared. Soon after the EMMI land, all con­tact is lost with them. Ms. Aran is sent in to inves­ti­gate their dis­ap­pear­ance, and short­ly after land­ing, finds her­self in com­bat with a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure that resem­bles a Chozo. Giv­en that the Chozo oth­er than her­self are also extinct, it’s an even deep­er mys­tery that Samus is deter­mined to solve.

The sto­ry is inter­est­ing, and I was gen­uine­ly invest­ed in learn­ing about the EMMI and what they found on the plan­et. I was even more intrigued about the Chozo war­rior because I’m well-versed in the lore of Metroid and any­thing that calls back to Super Metroid and Samus’ ori­gin sto­ry is going to have my atten­tion. It also ref­er­ences Metroid Fusion, obvi­ous­ly, and parts of Metroid II: Samus Returns — which is the excel­lent remake of Metroid II: The Return of Samus. Lean­ing on the old­er sto­ry is a smart move because you’re prob­a­bly going to go back and play the old­er games and the remake, and you’re going to buy into the sto­ry of the cur­rent game a lit­tle bit easier. 

What isn’t a lit­tle eas­i­er, even on the easy dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el, is the com­bat. Lis­ten, I’m a Super Metroid expert and I can even claim beat­ing the orig­i­nal Metroid, but the first hour of Dread is hard. I got stuck on the sec­ond EMMI chase sequence and had to go watch a detailed demon­stra­tion of what to do because I just was­n’t get­ting it. And, yes, I love this about Dread. Metroid, at its core, is about explo­ration, prob­lem-solv­ing and fig­ur­ing out things by tri­al and error. I’m doing that in Dread, though my old-man reflex­es and patience are get­ting in the way. But this is what I want out of my Metroid game to a point. The oth­er side of this, how­ev­er, is that I did­n’t care for the mad dash away from an all-pow­er­ful ene­my in Metroid Fusion in 2002, and I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly care for the mad dash away from an all-pow­er­ful ene­my in Metroid Dread now. That fran­tic feel­ing of not know­ing what to do in a sequence that means instant death con­stant­ly is not a good one, and I had hoped that it would­n’t return 20 years lat­er, but here we are. I’ll fig­ure it out and learn to live with it, I guess, but it’s not one of my favorite parts of the game.

One of the oth­er things I do love about Dread is the atmos­phere. The music hits the sweet spot of nos­tal­gia and new with leit­mo­tifs of Super and the orig­i­nal game mixed in, and the graph­ics are gor­geous. I’ve long been a fan of the music of Metroid, and this is just anoth­er mas­ter­piece in the long his­to­ry of the series. Also, Samus has nev­er looked bet­ter. She’s more fleshed out with mod­ern graph­ics, but my favorite hero­ine is sim­ply stun­ning even in the stripped Pow­er Suit. And while ZDR is no Zebes, it’s a deli­cious­ly dark envi­ron­ment that invokes the best part of brood­ing moody dark plan­et that fits right in Metroid lore.

While I love a lot of Dread, there are some things that I don’t quite love. First, as a vet­er­an Metroid lover, I can’t help but won­der why it took so long to get a side-scrolling ver­sion of Metroid again and why it fol­lowed Fusion after so many years. Dread is fan­tas­tic, but Fusion was not exact­ly Super, and Dread tries a lit­tle too hard to make Fusion work. I’d rather Dread had its own iden­ti­ty aside from the cleanup of Fusion’s mess. 

And while we’re at it, Dread tries a lit­tle too hard to lean into Super’s lega­cy. It’s well-known that Super is our favorite game of all time. That is not a secret. How­ev­er, unless you’re going to give me a full mod­ern remake of Super, don’t tease me with some­thing almost there. 

Dread is a tease, a “what if we were to remake the great­est game of all time with mod­ern con­trols” exper­i­ment. To quote the awful Ronin in Avengers: Endgame, don’t give me hope. Don’t give it to me halfway and then be like, naw, you know what? Let’s just call it Metroid 5 and we’ll revis­it that Super remake lat­er. This tech­ni­cal­ly isn’t Dread­’s fault, because it’s an excel­lent game and it’s giv­ing me, the Metroid fan who did­n’t want a first-per­son shoot­er Metroid, exact­ly what I’ve been ask­ing for since Fusion. I’m not ding­ing Dread per se; I’m ding­ing Nin­ten­do for being a tease and a ter­ri­ble one at that.

Metroid Dread does almost every­thing right: The atmos­phere is Metroid, the graph­ics are Metroid, the sto­ry is Metroid and the secre­cy is Metroid. It’s a must-play if you’re into the series and even if you aren’t, you still need to expe­ri­ence it just to see how the grand dame of Metroid­va­nia does her thing and cre­ates per­fec­tion. It’s just that if you’re walk­ing into this think­ing you’re going to get Super Metroid lev­els of per­fec­tion, you’re going to be dis­ap­point­ed. It’s not Oth­er M lev­el of dis­ap­point­ment, but the lay­ers of Super haunt the out­come. Then again, let’s face it: Noth­ing is going to touch Super’s lev­el of nuance. And Dread is still fine for it. Dread near­ly hits on every lev­el, and it’s the side-scrolling Metroid adven­ture we non-first-per­son shoot­er fans have been wait­ing for. It’s just that you must be will­ing to look past the dread­ed com­par­isons to Super Metroid to see its true finesse.

Chakan: The Forever Man — Issue 51

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A for­ev­er mediocre mess

Mix of RPG and mag­ic can’t save Chakan from ter­ri­ble fate

As Sega and Nin­ten­do fought for more ter­ri­to­ry in the final arc of the 16-bit era, Sega tried to stick with new orig­i­nal prop­er­ties in unre­al­ized gen­res. I recent­ly was rein­tro­duced to Chakan: The For­ev­er Man, a game with a cool orig­i­nal theme that did­n’t grow to the poten­tial that devel­op­er Extend­ed Play Pro­duc­tions envi­sioned. I would even dare say that with its dark theme, it could have been the Gen­e­sis’ answer to Castl­e­va­nia, which lat­er appeared on Gen­e­sis. How­ev­er, dark and spooky does­n’t equal great.

Based on Robert Kraus’ com­ic book series, Chakan is what hap­pens when the super­nat­ur­al meets a leg­endary swords­man. You take on the role of Chakan, a leg­endary swords­man with blade and spell skills who boasts he can defeat Death with­out any prob­lems. As a result, Death chal­lenges Chakan to a duel to the death stat­ing if Chakan wins, death will grant him eter­nal life. The bat­tle end­ed with Chakan vic­to­ri­ous and Death, keep­ing his promise with a sin­is­ter twist: While Chakan won eter­nal life, he is now tasked with elim­i­nat­ing all evils of the under­world. With the heavy bur­den of ever­last­ing life upon him, Chakan must embark on a right­eous requiem to earn eter­nal rest. 


The graph­ics in Chakan are the usu­al fan­fare for 16-bit sys­tems. The theme of super­nat­ur­al bat­tle would be a mean­ing­ful change for a Gen­e­sis game that could have been expand­ed on, but the graph­ics placed the game at an unfair dis­ad­van­tage because they are so bland and bor­ing. Despite the hand­i­cap placed on the graph­ics, the music sticks to the game’s theme of fight­ing demons and per­fect­ly pairs the music to each stage.

Con­trol­ling Chakan is easy but can be cus­tomized. Chakan has a spe­cial spin attack like Son­ic the Hedge­hog and can use fire and oth­er ele­men­tal attacks using alche­my potions. My prob­lem with the con­trols is obvi­ous­ly imme­di­ate­ly: the Gen­e­sis con­troller has too many func­tions. Every­thing from move­ment to weapons and alche­my is time-con­sum­ing and a test of my patience.

While it’s a neat con­cept game, Chakan isn’t great at all. The many prob­lems real­ly start with the lack of hind­sight to hire Kraus to con­sult on game devel­op­ment. This would have allowed more insight into the char­ac­ter. It’s also frus­trat­ing that Chakan’s time lim­it pre­vent­ed me from locat­ing his spe­cial weapons. Also, the var­i­ous sym­bols rep­re­sent­ing alche­my were con­fus­ing. Try­ing to deter­mine which sym­bol matched the ele­ment Chakan would need to fight mul­ti­ple ene­mies was a chore. 

Chakan: The For­ev­er Man is sad­ly a game with a great con­cept that was decades ahead of its time. While I give Extend­ed Play Pro­duc­tions cred­it for try­ing to intro­duce a dif­fer­ent con­cept, the pres­sure to help Sega defeat their com­peti­tor blind­ed Chakan’s poten­tial. More time should have been used toward the game’s devel­op­ment and intro­duc­tion of Chakan as an anti-hero. Kraus will con­tin­ue Chakan’s quest for a peace­ful death but, for now, he deserves a well-earned rest.

The Death and Return of Superman — Issue 51

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Mid­dling return spells dooms­day for Man of Steel

Death and Return of Super­man arc dropped in 1994

Super­man has nev­er been among my favorite super­heroes. First, I’m a Mar­vel girl at heart and I gen­er­al­ly don’t care for most DC char­ac­ters. Sec­ond, if there was a DC super­hero that I love, it’s going to be Bat­man. No prep time and by him­self. So, it stands to rea­son that I don’t care for most DC games out­side of Bat­man prop­er­ties. And so, it con­tin­ues with The Death and Return of Superman.


Death and Return of Super­man fol­lows the plot of the comics well. Super­man fights his ulti­mate neme­sis in Dooms­day, and he dies in the bat­tle. Short­ly after, four oth­er Super­men (Super­boy, Cyborg Super­man, Erad­i­ca­tor and Steel) show up to claim their right­ful place as the Man of Steel. The prob­lem is, how­ev­er, these guys are not Super­man, and it shows. Coast City is anni­hi­lat­ed, and it turns out that Cyborg Super­man is respon­si­ble for the car­nage. The oth­er Super­men, includ­ing the real Super­man him­self, return to stop the cyborg men­ace. If you’re famil­iar with the comics arc, this is basi­cal­ly what hap­pened there. It’s noth­ing super com­pli­cat­ed and there are no addi­tions or changes for the game. I appre­ci­at­ed it as some­one who does­n’t fol­low Super­man that close­ly because it allowed me to learn some­thing new about a well-known super­hero and encour­aged me to learn about the comics’ ver­sion of the sto­ry simultaneously.

Ram­pag­ing through the streets of Metrop­o­lis to stop crime and Cyborg Super­man is a no-frills affair as well. There is absolute­ly noth­ing note­wor­thy or spe­cial about the envi­ron­ments and the pre­sen­ta­tion. Noth­ing stands out, though the char­ac­ter mod­els and designs look nice. The sprites are nice­ly drawn and rather large, so they will catch your eye. How­ev­er, noth­ing else will. The back­grounds are just there, sta­t­ic and unchang­ing, and noth­ing looks par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing. The music is the same. The intro theme is kind of a toe-tap­per but noth­ing about this is going to make you search it out online to add to the collection.

The con­trols aren’t any­thing spe­cial, either. They’re just stan­dard beat-’em-up con­trols. There are your stan­dard attacks, a throw, a fire­ball some­times, and an ulti­mate screen-clear­ing attack that requires ener­gy. While the pay­off is the same for all the Super­men, the attack ani­ma­tion is dif­fer­ent. It’s kind of cool to see what each char­ac­ter is capa­ble of but it’s by no means any­thing excit­ing. And, as is the prob­lem with most beat-’em-ups like this one, you’re going to run into quar­ter-munch­er syn­drome. The hits are always unfair, espe­cial­ly with mul­ti­ple ene­mies on the screen, and health isn’t exact­ly plen­ti­ful. The boss­es par­tic­u­lar­ly are bad about this, and it’s infu­ri­at­ing to no end that you can’t get clean hits against them with­out tak­ing a bru­tal beating.

At the end of the day, Death and Return of Super­man goes about as well as you’d expect: You fight Dooms­day, you play as pre­tenders to the throne, and you res­ur­rect to stop a greater threat. It’s not ter­ri­ble but it isn’t great, either. Giv­en that we know how this end­ed in the comics, is there real­ly a need to play through a mid­dling game that does­n’t do any­thing spe­cial with the Super­man name? No. Let this death cycle play out and remain in its grave, respectfully.

Legend of the Mystical Ninja — Issue 50

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Leg­end has it Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja ori­gin is great

The quirky nin­ja series had a rous­ing start on the Super NES

Every­one must start some­where, even video games. Even the most suc­cess­ful video game series have hum­ble begin­nings, where new ideas are brought to the table to estab­lish a hope­ful­ly suc­cess­ful series. So, it goes with one of my favorite series, Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja. While it’s not super pop­u­lar here in the West, Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja opened the doors for the series to make an impres­sion on me in the late 1990s. It’s debat­able, though, if it cleared up the mys­tery sur­round­ing the appeal of the series for me.

Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja is weird and anachro­nis­tic in every­thing that it does. Set in an alter­nate feu­dal Japan, Goe­mon and Ebisumaru (Dr. Yang and Kid Ying renamed in game) real­ize there are some strange hap­pen­ings going on in Oedo. After some inves­ti­ga­tion, they dis­cov­er that Princess Yuki has been kid­napped and they set out to res­cue her. Along the way, they meet up with an ally in fel­low nin­ja Yae, fight future ally Sasuke and trav­el to dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate loca­tions in Japan. This should sound famil­iar because it’s basi­cal­ly the plot of the excel­lent GI favorite Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. Swap some ele­ments and char­ac­ter names and you’ve got the basics of that game. 

But what sets it apart from some of the lat­er entries is the pre­sen­ta­tion. Leg­end, unlike Star­ring Goe­mon, is a side-scrolling affair. The health meter and the pur­chase of dam­age-negat­ing items are the same, but instead of being an over-the-shoul­der 3D romp, this plays more like The Leg­end of Zel­da: A Link to the Past. And that works well in its favor. The game looks nice and has charm. It’s bright and col­or­ful with big sprites and inter­est­ing ani­ma­tions. For an ear­ly Super Nin­ten­do title, you can’t go wrong with look­ing like a nice hop ‘n’ bop. The sound­track is suit­ably nice as well. It’s no Star­ring Goe­mon but it has a few decent tracks that will remind you of the sound the lat­er games are known for.


Because it’s like Link to the Past in looks, it’s a lot like that game in playstyle as well. The con­trols work well with the SNES lay­out, and it’s easy to get things going when you want to move around the play­field. My only gripe is that it’s a lit­tle hard to remem­ber which but­ton con­trols spe­cial moves. Oth­er­wise, it’s a stan­dard action plat­former for the SNES, which means it’s going to play clean­ly and make no fuss about its mechanics.
Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja is a decent West­ern begin­ning for the Goe­mon fran­chise. It has a lot of charm, it looks good, plays well and does­n’t for­get its roots. As the intro­duc­tion to the series in North Amer­i­ca, it made a good first impres­sion with its quirky sen­si­bil­i­ties and gave birth to a legend. 

Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master — Issue 50

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Shi­no­bi III a fine sendoff

I recent­ly delved into a game star­ring one of the GOATS in video game his­to­ry, Joe Musashi, with Shad­ow Dancer: The Secret of Shi­no­bi. Sega’s own mas­ter nin­ja is one of video game’s great­est pro­tag­o­nists who has earned his bones fight­ing crime and the low-lev­el hench­men belong to his great­est ene­my, the Neo Zeed orga­ni­za­tion. I will give Neo Zeed cred­it: Every time Joe beats the liv­ing day­lights out of them, they always come back want­i­ng all the nin­ja smoke and hands that they can eat, repeat­ing defeat after defeat. The noto­ri­ous crime syn­di­cate has returned with a strong sec­ond wind and a sin­is­ter plan to obtain their great revenge in Shi­no­bi III: Return of the Nin­ja Master.

After his lat­est bat­tle against the nefar­i­ous cult known as Union Lizard, Musashi aka “the Shad­ow Mas­ter” returned to Japan to recov­er and sharp­en his supe­ri­or tech­niques. While our hero trains in the moun­tains to acquire new skills, Neo Zeed has near­ly recov­ered near its pre­vi­ous lev­el. They’ve obtained more nefar­i­ous war­riors who are moti­vat­ed by penal­ty of death via the most bru­tal lead­ers of the group or rich­es and pow­er beyond com­pre­hen­sion via vic­to­ry over Musashi. With the world in per­il once more, our hero­ic nin­ja heads out to fight Neo Zeed hop­ing that this lat­est encounter will be the last with this crim­i­nal can­cer that threat­ens the world’s peace.


The graph­ics in Shi­no­bi III fol­low the pre­vi­ous design of oth­er games in the series. They have a bal­ance of nat­ur­al, rugged ter­rain with ele­ments of cur­rent indus­tri­al set­tings and futur­is­tic con­cepts in some stages. Bat­tles hap­pen in var­i­ous forests and caves through­out Japan in fight­ing with var­i­ous nin­jas and mer­ce­nar­ies to reach the lev­el boss. These stage range from dim-light­ed caves to open fields, a secret weapon fac­to­ry, a secret bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry, a lab devel­op­ing Gun­dam-type mecha with a trap-laden canyon lead­ing to a mas­sive air fortress (a first for a Shi­no­bi game). My only prob­lem is that while Sega was going for a fresh take on stage design, they used the same tem­plate with the excep­tion to the biol­o­gy lab and passed it off as arcade quality. 

The con­trols are sim­ple to use, but you will need to take time to mas­ter Joe’s new skills such as the Death Kick and Nin­ja Death Strike, which allows you to strike an ene­my out of range and deliv­er a fin­ish­ing blow with a sword. Though Joe has a myr­i­ad of oth­er attacks, they are all easy to use in the heat of bat­tle. Shi­no­bi, as a series, shows seri­ous growth in the con­trols as an action-adven­ture title. 

As much as I love the game, I have some dis­likes as well. Sega went with new­com­er com­posers Hiro­fu­mi Murasa­ki, Mori­hiko Akiya­ma and Masayu­ki Nagao to han­dle the game’s music. While accept­able, Yuzo Koshi­ro should have been used since he has the most expe­ri­ence devel­op­ing music that’s wor­thy of the Shi­no­bi name. The music was chop­py in some areas but still suit­able for the game. Anoth­er prob­lem I have is the sup­ply of shuriken that you must con­serve. By pay­ing so much atten­tion to main­tain­ing your sup­ply, you might miss oth­er cru­cial ele­ments and expose your­self to ene­mies unnec­es­sar­i­ly. Joe should have end­less shuriken to fight evil.

Shi­no­bi III: Return of the Nin­ja Mas­ter is a 16-bit swan song for nin­ja leg­end Joe Musashi. Although Sega has con­tin­ued the har­row­ing adven­tures of Joe and his descen­dants through games on numer­ous next-gen­er­a­tion con­soles, the Nin­ja Mas­ter is expect­ed to return some­time this year in var­i­ous projects. Though he’s not around promi­nent­ly right now, do not count on him stay­ing van­ished for long.

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge — Issue 50

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Nin­ja Gaiden 3 fin­ish­es comeback

Mod­ern­ized tril­o­gy finale falls short of masterpiece

I would be fool­ish to not acknowl­edge one of the most leg­endary nin­jas in video game his­to­ry. Ever since the appear­ance of the “Tec­mo Presents 1989” screen herald­ing the Nin­ja Gaiden series, Ryu Hayabusa has tak­en up his fam­i­ly’s leg­endary Drag­on Sword against many demon­ic foes and their lack­eys who desire Earth to fall under their rule. Through many 8- and 16-bit adven­tures, Ryu has con­quered many foes that were not just fuel that cre­ates night­mares but those who were sci-fi adja­cent with foes who were half-demon and half-tech. Ryu took a hia­tus and even­tu­al­ly returned to his role as a nin­ja guardian defend­ing his home vil­lage (and the world) through new adven­tures on next gen­er­a­tion con­soles. I was able to expe­ri­ence Mr. Hayabusa’s lat­est feat in Nin­ja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge.

In Razor’s Edge, Ryu, now the head leader of Hayabusa vil­lage, is called upon by the Japan­ese Self-Defense Forces to deal with a ter­ror­ist group known as the Legion of Alche­my whose leader has a deep grudge against the beloved drag­on nin­ja. When the LOA launch­es a bru­tal assault on the British prime min­is­ter’s home, Ryu responds and destroys the LOA’s foot sol­diers but arrives too late to save the prime min­is­ter and is attacked by the Regent of the Mask. The Regent of the Mask places a curse called the Grip of Mur­der on Ryu’s right arm, which absorbs the souls of Ryu’s ene­mies and takes the Drag­on Sword into his arm. To make things worse, the Regent makes a threat to world lead­ers to either sur­ren­der in sev­en days or be destroyed. With time of the utmost essence, Ryu along with long­time ally Ayane and JSDF agent Mizu­ki McCloud must stop the LOA to pre­vent fur­ther glob­al chaos.


Razor’s Edge’s graph­ics are like cur­rent hack-and-slash games on the mar­ket but also have sub­stance. Team Nin­ja devel­oped each stage with care and kept ele­ments that make Nin­ja Gaiden a fan favorite. Start­ing in Lon­don the roads are instant­ly rec­og­niz­able as are the back­drop of Big Ben and the Knight bus­es instead of a copy and paste insert­ed stage. The cut scenes, stage start, and recap areas are beau­ti­ful­ly done and add pol­ish to all char­ac­ters with­out going too far to explain who’s good and evil. A small gripe about the pre­sen­ta­tion and graph­ics is that the stage start/recap areas were too sim­i­lar to the Met­al Gear and Tom Clan­cy series where it’s a bit too dra­mat­ic in some areas and they don’t allow the awe­some graph­ics to set the tone. 

The con­trols to guide our hero are sim­ple but need prac­tice in some areas that require park­our-type jumps to get to oth­er parts of some stages. In some parts of the game where Ayane is called upon, she is a lit­tle more flex­i­ble than Ryu, but that does­n’t make the con­trols more dif­fi­cult. I did have a few issues with con­trols regard­ing bat­tles with boss­es that require more focus to strike var­i­ous spots. Also, when Ryu is required to use his kunai to climb, tim­ing to focus on climb­ing is need­ed while var­i­ous ene­mies fierce­ly attempt to elim­i­nate you. It taxed my patience and was kind of tedious. 

The music is paired per­fect­ly with each stage and has a bal­ance from slow-ris­ing to ener­getic when fac­ing off with var­i­ous ene­mies. The LOA muse­um is my favorite stage; while bat­tling through the stage, ene­mies, includ­ing attack dogs, pop out to attack you with fierce music. When defeat­ed, the music goes back to a light rock style. The game music is excel­lent all-around, and the voice act­ing is per­fect with Troy Bak­er as Ryu and Ali Hillis as Mizu­ki. The cast includes well-known voice actors such as Yuri Lowen­thal, Stephanie Sheh, Jan­ice Kawaye and Michael McConnohie. 

While I enjoyed Razor’s Edge, I do have a few dis­likes. First, its tar­get­ing sys­tem for Ryu when he uses his nin­po has hit and miss accu­ra­cy, tak­ing out some ene­mies while miss­ing oth­ers. My oth­er prob­lem is that while the game has var­i­ous dub and sub­ti­tles includ­ed, the Eng­lish sub­ti­tles were not timed well with its audio, which made the sto­ry dif­fi­cult to fol­low in some cut scenes. Notic­ing that, It was­n’t a deal­break­er, but it was disappointing.

Nin­ja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge breathes new life and new adven­tures into a leg­endary nin­ja in video games. Ryu Hayabusa is a prime exam­ple of being able to teach an old dog a few new tricks and they suc­ceed. The third game in the remake series puts the Hayabusa name back at the edge of greatness.

Goemon’s Great Adventure — Issue 50

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Lat­est, great­est adventure

Goe­mon’s Great Adven­ture has always had the unfor­tu­nate posi­tion in gam­ing of com­ing after the excel­lent Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. It can’t help but fol­low in the shad­ow of the game as its direct sequel, and it’s nev­er going to stand up to make itself the pre­mier entry in the series. What it does have going for it though are two things: Rar­i­ty and some improve­ments in areas where the oth­er entries struggled.

Based on real-life fig­ure Goe­mon Ishikawa, the tit­u­lar hero stays sav­ing the day in an alter­nate Edo with his allies Ebisumaru, Yae and Sasuke. In this tale, the gang wit­ness­es an Ebisumaru looka­like steal the Old Wise Man’s new dead-res­ur­rect­ing device and wreak hav­oc on the land. It’s a cute set­up and it does­n’t take much to get into the sto­ry of the two zany nin­jas. Where this entry excels is the much-improved inter­face. Though it seems less per­son­al and plot­ted out like Super Mario World with a world map, it’s a wel­come relief from the some­times-con­fus­ing lay­out of Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. It’s nice to just choose a loca­tion on the map and go there with­out hav­ing to remem­ber how to get there.

Also improved are the mechan­ics. The biggest change in the game is arguably the switch from over-the-shoul­der view la Mario 64 back to a side-scroller in the vein of Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja. Despite how jar­ring it may have seemed at first, even­tu­al­ly I came to love the fact that it’s slight­ly eas­i­er to move around and get a feel for the char­ac­ters than it was in Star­ring Goe­mon. Move­ment seems more sub­stan­tial and there’s no more fight­ing with the wonky cam­era that won’t cooperate. 

The way it looks is bet­ter also in Great Adven­ture. Every­thing is cleaned up and less polyg­o­nal, though some char­ac­ters retain that blocky look no mat­ter what. How­ev­er, the glow up is most notice­able in the envi­ron­ment. Edo looks fan­tas­tic, with the beau­ti­ful recre­ation of feu­dal Japan­ese archi­tec­ture stand­ing out the most. I was always impressed with the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja series in what it tried to do graph­i­cal­ly, and this is a sol­id-look­ing entry.

Just as good as the graph­ics is the sound. Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja, as a series, is known for its sub­lime sound­track and Great Adven­ture does­n’t dis­ap­point. We’ve cov­ered this in our review of the game’s tracks (Edi­tor’s Note: See Issue 39) for Beat.Trip.Game, and it’s so good it’s worth men­tion­ing mul­ti­ple times. 

Though it’s an improve­ment in most areas, there are some spots where it could be pol­ished a lit­tle more. Some of the trans­la­tion is rough and there are fre­quent gram­mar errors in the text. For a game that relies on text to get the point across, that’s too jar­ring and takes me out of the expe­ri­ence. Anoth­er gripe is that, while most of the mechan­ics are improved, some of the new mechan­ics — such as the pole vault — need some work. It’s not hard to do — once you fig­ure it out. The prob­lem is that it takes much too long to fig­ure out. If I have to watch a playthrough video to get the con­cept, it’s doing too much.
Goe­mon’s Great Adven­ture is a tech­ni­cal­ly sound and com­pe­tent entry in a much-loved series. Despite my ini­tial annoy­ance with it 25 years ago, it’s grown on me with anoth­er replay. While it’s not as great as the stel­lar Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon, it’s defin­i­tive­ly a wel­come entry in the series. One thing we’re going to do is let Goe­mon be great, and he achieves it with this sol­id entry in the franchise.

Samurai Shodown — Issue 50

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Samu­rai Shodown has mag­nif­i­cent origin

The leg­endary fight­ing game series has impres­sive start with SNES adaptation

Fight­ing games were built a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly back in the day. They were expect­ed to be an exact copy of the arcade ver­sion they were borne from, they need­ed to play just as well as their arcade par­ents, and they need­ed to set up the next arcade ver­sion. The Samu­rai Shodown series was no stranger to these expec­ta­tions. And it could rea­son­ably meet them with the Neo Geo arcade sys­tem. But the debut 16-bit ver­sion of the beloved Sam Sho is a dif­fer­ent tale of the tape.

Samu­rai Shodown tells the sto­ry of revenge wrought by the res­ur­rect­ed Amakusa in 1787 and 1788 as he sought to avenge his exe­cu­tion by the Shogu­nate in 1638. Amakusa made a deal with the demon lord Ambrosia and drew oth­er fight­ers to him. Now-famil­iar faces dot the cast: Naoko­ru­ru and Haohmaru (from Cap­com vs. SNK fame), Gal­ford, Char­lotte, Earth­quake, and Jubei. It’s a fight­ing game with an inter­est­ing cast and sto­ry based on a few real fig­ures in his­to­ry, so it’s bound to draw interest. 

How­ev­er, what should real­ly send you is the pre­sen­ta­tion. Samu­rai Shodown — as not­ed in our review of the 2019 remake (Edi­tor’s note: See Issue 39 for the review) — is one of the most beau­ti­ful fight­ing game series ever cre­at­ed. And while we ini­tial­ly heaped that praise on the mod­ern ver­sion, it also extends to the retro ver­sion as well. Begin­ning with the intro­duc­to­ry screen, Samu­rai Shodown does not dis­ap­point in the visu­als. The lush, beau­ti­ful graph­ics go a long way in set­ting the scene of the vio­lence and beau­ty of the Edo peri­od of Japan­ese his­to­ry. Sim­i­lar­ly, the sound­track does­n’t dis­ap­point, either. Every­thing about the pre­sen­ta­tion is invit­ing if you’re into this sort of thing; spoil­er alert, I am, which should be obvi­ous by now with­in the con­text of Gam­ing Insur­rec­tion. It’s just that there is so much gor­geous to go around, and it should be praised because this is game graph­ics at its best, even in the 16-bit era.


Slight­ly less praise­wor­thy are the con­trols. Retro Samu­rai Shodown is noto­ri­ous­ly hard to nav­i­gate, and that’s on full dis­play here. Some­times I could get moves off clean­ly; some­times I strug­gled just to get a com­mon pro­jec­tile motion to work. It’s easy to pick up, but there is strug­gle, and it’s worth con­sid­er­ing if you can tol­er­ate that enough to con­tin­ue through the game. Also, real­ize now that in Arcade Mode, you’re going to fight every­one in the cast. There is no “let’s select six to eight oppo­nents from this very full cast;” no, you’re fight­ing every­one before you even sniff Amakusa so you will get lots of prac­tice with those hard movesets. How­ev­er, it is bro­ken up with pro­gres­sive­ly hard­er mini games, so this isn’t unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry. The Count­down Mode, a sort of ear­ly sur­vival mode, is a decent chal­lenge that also gets pro­gres­sive­ly hard­er. There is replay val­ue there, so that adds to the charm of an oth­er­wise bare­bones game.

If you can move past the so hard it’s a good hurt men­tal­i­ty of the orig­i­nal Samu­rai Shodown, there is a crown jew­el wait­ing to be played and dis­sect­ed. The death poem that is the dif­fi­cul­ty and con­trols in con­cert may be a detrac­tion but know that it remains beau­ti­ful lat­er down the fight­ing game road with improve­ments. It must start some­where, and this is a good start.