Hello friends, did you hear that Sega is going back to their library of classic characters and publishing a new game for the 3DS featuring the super ninja Shinobi? Check out the trailer below!
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFvrzBQjj_I"]‪Shinobi 3DS: Debut Trailer‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]
I am a big fan of the character and game series. Shinobi was one of my favorite arcade titles while growing up. It made the jump to consoles with a few visual changes. The character went from wearing black to white and going from bare faced to wearing a mask. The core mechanics went relatively unchanged. The game was set on a 2D plane and the character could throw shiruken (ninja stars) perform close melee strikes and even use ninja magic to damage hordes of opponents. I think the best part of the series was the art direction. The game combined classic Eastern designs within the context of a modern world. Soldiers appeared alongside sword-wielding raiders, robots and demons seemed to coexist in a time where technology and magic ruled the underworld.
Any fan old enough to remember the game would also remember the Spider-Man rip-off character that appeared as a bad guy. Sega had done many more
unlicensed cameos in the home version, including characters that looked like Spider-Man, Batman, the Terminator and Godzilla. One by one they were replaced in different releases of the game as copyright lawyers contacted Sega. As a kid I was entranced by the character design and simple gameplay elements. I would try to draw levels and bosses from memory and try to invent my own ninja magic attacks in the pages of my sketchbook (or margins in my homework!). The simple side-scrolling mechanics were easy for me to grasp and helped develop a sense of range and timing, the awesome character designs kept me coming back. Perhaps this was why I was also a fan of other titles with a similar design aesthetic and control scheme including Namco's [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v559cYVKp34"]Rolling Thunder[/ame] (which came out a year before Shinobi) and Capcom's Strider (which came out two years after Shinobi).
The game and character saw several revisions on the home consoles. The Genesis seemed to be the system where the character made the biggest impact, had the most memorable levels and adventures, just like Sonic the Hedgehog! There was an attempt to reboot the franchise a few years ago < a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFAEWrzJt3o">on the Playstation 2 but the game and it's follow-up [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz3XduQix6I"]Kunoichi[/ame]. Unfortunately the remakes did not take off. The art and character designs were solid, the boss characters imaginative and the overall mix of classic martial arts archetypes and high technology were still there. However the mechanics of 3D gameplay did not work as well as audiences had expected. Many lamented that this game was not on par with the contemporary Ninja Gaiden series or as groundbreaking as God of War.
It looks like the developers of the new game have learned from the relaunches and had returned the mechanics back to 2D gameplay. The characters, models and bosses are a mix of classic and technological themes and the graphics are rendered in full 3D, but the gameplay preserves the 2D mechanics with a few 3D chase scenes thrown into the mix. The new Shinobi design looks like a nod to the classic Genesis character and more recent PS2 hero. Developer Griptonite has been doing their homework and has obviously been paying attention to the wave of nostalgia and remakes sweeping over gamers. Thanks to the price drop on the 3DS chances are I'll actually get a chance to check out this game and several more over the holiday season.
Unfortunately not every studio understands the classic formula. Take for example the recently announced [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPoD0VcVfK8"]Double Dragon II remake, aka Wander of the Dragons[/ame]. The characters and gameplay have moved to full 3D, expect many fans of the original game to pass over this ill conceived remake. Hopefully those same gamers will be willing to give Shinobi a chance. What do you think? Have any favorite arcade games that you would like to see remade?
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