Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master — Issue 50

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.