No.23 - Ninja Kids (Arcade) :
In this crazy 1990 arcade game from Taito, an evil cult is attempting to resurrect "The Satan"....yes that one.....well, probably...I mean how many Satans are there? Ach, it doesn't matter, apparently thee Satan is the one that these cultists want to resurrect!
Obviously, this would be a Bad Thing, and so The Sensei decides to get the Ninja Kids on the case and put a stop to the cultists evil schemes! Now...I'm not quite sure if the Sensei is really big and the Ninja Kids are really small, or if it's just a perspective thing, but as you can see from the pic above, the moment he sends them off on their quest looks a bit odd! They do sort-of resemble puppets, but then so do all the baddies, so I don't know...and if Sensei is really big and the cultists are tiny like the Ninja Kids, surely he could just stomp on them all rather than send his puppety minions off to battle....maybe I'm just thinking about it too much and should just get on with telling you about the actual game...
It's a typical side-scrolling, hack-'n'-slashy, beat-em-up of the type that you'd find all over the arcades in the early nineties, but has enough charm and playability to stand out from the crowd. There's really not much else to say about it, apart from point out the general weirdness that gives it that aforementioned charm!
The first enemies you'll face are street punks, whose bodies unusually fall apart when you smack them, so I guess they must be zombie street punks..unless they are indeed puppets! Which would explain that particular weirdness away, but not the weirdness that means they're somehow alive and helping a puppety cult try to resurrect The Satan! Anyway, you'll eventually come to your first boss, which is actually a prisoner that a cultist turns into a werewolf that sends packs of puppy-werewolves after you as a special move!
Luckily, each of the four ninjas you can choose from has their own special powers they can use against these The Satanists! Blue Ninja Hanzo has water abilities, Yellow Ninja Sasuke has wind, Red Ninja Akame fire and Green Ninja Genta uses earth abilities. Each set of powers can be leveled up a few times for a different effect, kind of like they way magic works in Golden Axe...
After beating the first section, you'll play a bit where you have to climb up a wall avoiding stuff the cultists are throwing out of windows... It's all gone a bit Crazy Climber! There's also big fat dude baddies who burst when you kill them, giving even more credence to the puppet theory....
Prisoners will often be dotted around the screen, or can be heard calling from behind doors, and you can rescue them for bonus points. Sometimes the ones behind doors turn out to be enemies trying to trick you though, so watch out!
Sometimes the translation can be a bit wrong, like the above "Here is a graveyard of you!" but it just adds to the funniness and grooviness of the game. As do the animations like the zombies heads just dropping to the ground when you kill them, or the cartoony mishaps like when you get hit by fire....
There's another climbing section on a plane, more badly translated text and more supernatural-themed baddies in the later levels, and it all adds up to a very enjoyable, weird, funny game that's great to play for Halloween, hence its addition to the list! It's on the Taito Legends Compiliation too, so if you have a PS2, Xbox or PC you can find it there, rather than trying to find a non-existent arcade...
All that remains once you've faced off against the big bad The Satan himself is to ponder whether he was ever really that much of a threat, given that if our heroes are indeed tiny puppets, he's only about as big as a human head... hmmmm....
I think I might still be a bit sleep deprived.....
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