Tag Archives: Shinobi

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.

Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi — Issue 48

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A secret leg­end in the making
Shi­no­bi sequel barks up the right tree with new canine companion

Before Son­ic the Hedge­hog and Yakuza, Sega had estab­lished game fran­chis­es and mas­cots for the arcade and home con­sole mar­ket. One of those mas­cots was very pop­u­lar and came out on the scene at a time when Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tles were blow­ing up across the coun­try. His name was Joe Musashi, and his adven­tures were detailed in the game series “Shi­no­bi.” Ever since its 1987 release, Joe fought a one-nin­ja war on crime against the evil Zeed orga­ni­za­tion, which plot­ted glob­al dom­i­nance with their style of nin­ja arts. Time after time, through var­i­ous Sega games, Joe defeat­ed Zeed and kept the world at peace. How­ev­er, in Shad­ow Dancer: The Secret of Shi­no­bi, Joe would once again take up his sword against evil.

Shad­ow Dancer takes place one year after Joe’s most recent bat­tle with Zeed. In 1997, New York City comes under attack by a cult orga­ni­za­tion called Union Lizard. NYC is laid to waste with sur­vivors cap­tured as UL hostages. One of Joe’s stu­dents, Kaito, hears about UL’s assaults on a neigh­bor­hood and sets out to free its res­i­dents. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Kaito falls in bat­tle. Enraged, Joe heads to NYC to bat­tle, accom­pa­nied by Yam­a­to, Kaito’s canine com­pan­ion. With a new ally, Joe enters this lat­est con­flict deter­mined to free NYC from UL clutch­es and avenge his stu­den­t’s death. 


Shad­ow Dancer’s con­trols are sim­ple. While I was impressed with the game-ready default set­up, I also appre­ci­at­ed that there are oth­er con­fig­u­ra­tions. You also have the option of using nor­mal or non-shuriken mode, which takes away the abil­i­ty to throw shuriken from a dis­tance. I also appre­ci­at­ed that Joe can also call upon three types of nin­jut­su in the forms of fire, tor­na­do, and mete­orites. The most vital weapon that Joe has in his lat­est bat­tle is Yam­a­to, who can be used to attack on-screen ene­mies with­out hes­i­ta­tion, tru­ly giv­ing cred­it to the phrase “take a bite out of crime.” Every time I unleashed Yam­a­to aka Kuma-pup­py TM, I loved see­ing the bad guys cry in pain as they thought that noth­ing could stop them. Jokes on them that a nin­ja dog brings them instant terror. 

The graph­ics were pret­ty decent as if Sega pulled the game from the actu­al arcade cab­i­net. The music is ’90s genre fit­ting for Sega games and will make you feel a spe­cial fond­ness for the nos­tal­gic days of arcades. I also like that with each stage the music blend­ed with the scenery, espe­cial­ly at the Stat­ue of Liberty. 

While I do love Shad­ow Dancer, I have a few gripes. The abil­i­ty to con­trol Yam­a­to is deter­mined by hav­ing no ene­mies on screen; if Yam­a­to or oth­er ene­mies are on dif­fer­ent lev­els of stages or when an ene­my can avoid him by jump­ing up or down out of his reach, it can get frus­trat­ing. I also don’t care for the imposed time lim­it that makes you rush to the end of the stage. My final griev­ance with Shad­ow Dancer is that at the end of each stage, there is a bonus stage where you must hit as many ene­my nin­jas as you can with shuriken. I threw a ton of shuriken at nin­ja but got low scores for my efforts. It’s a lot of work for lit­tle reward and seems like a waste of time, honestly.

Shad­ow Dancer: The Secret of Shi­no­bi is a game that helped cement Sega’s lega­cy in the video game indus­try. Sega is rein­tro­duc­ing clas­sic games in var­i­ous forms for a new gen­er­a­tion of gamers. Sega would be wise to rein­tro­duce Joe Musashi as the undis­put­ed mem­ber of video game roy­al­ty and leg­end in video game hero his­to­ry that he is.