The Ninja Warriors Again

Happy Video Game Nerd: Holy shit, robot ninjas!

The Ninja Warriors (also known as The Ninja Warriors Again in Japan, The Ninja Warriors: New Generation in Europe) is a side-scrolling Beat'Em Up developed by Natsume and released by Taito for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1994. It is loosely based on the 1987 Taito arcade game The Ninja Warriors, but with many changes to the play mechanics. It is set in a dystopian future where the population of an unspecified country has been oppressed by the military and Brainwashed. The leader of this nation is known as Banglar the Tyrant.

The only hope for this broken society is a small underground resistance with plans of assassinating Banglar using three androids. Development of the androids was a lengthy process and due to Banglar's forces beating them back literally to their very doorstep, The resistance had no choice but to dispatch the androids untested.

The player can pick from the strong Ninja, the balanced Kunoichi or the fast Kamaitachi. Each character has a combination of throws, ground attacks and jumping attacks. Each also has a gauge that fills up over time. Once the gauge is full, a portion of it can be used to add a stronger attack to the end of a character's ground combo or the entire gauge can be used to deal damage to every enemy on screen. If you get knocked down while the gauge is filling up, the entire gauge will be depleted.

The game features nine stages, with distinct bosses, a variety of Mooks who can go off the edges of the screen even though you can't, and really cool music.

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This game provides examples of:

• Action Bomb: Your characters blow up at the end to destroy the Big Bad's HQ in a massive explosion.
• Action Robot Girl: Kunoichi.
• AI Breaker: Despite being a Badass Normal with a pimp cane and ability to take a lot of damage, Silverman (the boss of Stage 4) doesn't know how to counter crouch attacks (unless it's from Ninja, who's too big to avoid his cane).
• Attack Drone: 3SVO II are small white robots that move on the floor and fire lasers. They are short, making them slightly difficult to hit (Hint: throw them for massive damage).
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Kamaitachi is armed with wickedly-curved blades built into his arms. he likes to whip them around.
• Breath Weapon: The Fire Ninjas (the Mooks in red gis with long blonde hair) are actually fire-breathers.
• Bowdlerize: The Kunoichi enemies were removed in the overseas versions due to Nintendo of America's stance against the depicting violence against women. However, instead of replacing them with sprite-swapped versions of the same enemy like Capcom did with the SNES versions of Final Fight games, they simply replaced all of their appearances with that of another enemy character (Saru).
• Combos: Your regular attacks do this automatically, so it's probably more an example of Button Mashing. Each character also has a second, more powerful combo finisher, but it requires a portion of your Blaster bar and the game never tells you how to do it.
• Competitive Balance: of the Color Coded for Your Convenience variety common in beat-'em-ups.
  • Ninja: Mighty Glacier
  • Kunoichi: Jack of All Stats
  • Kamaitachi: Fragile Speedster
• Chainsaw Good: Chainsaw Bull (the Stage 2 boss) is a giant of a man with a yellow coat and fireman's hat, gas mask, and a chainsaw that he uses to cut through a steel door just prior to engaging you.
• Charged Attack: Different from the standard variety, in that it charges automatically over time, but depletes completely if you get knocked down while it's recharging. Functionally, it's more of a Smart Bomb.
• Crate Expectations: Usually contain health items. Can be thrown at Mooks For Massive Damage. In fact, this is required to break them open.
• Critical Existence Failure: Character death animations involve the outer shell exploding off, revealing the robotic skeleton beneath.
• Determinator: The player-controlled androids are programmed for a single purpose: Kill Banglar.
• Dark Action Girl: The Kunoichi enemies.
• Degraded Boss: Gigant (the Stage 1 boss) reappears later as a Mini Boss. A pair of upgraded head-swapped models named Phobos and Deimos appear as the twin bosses of Stage 6.
• Difficulty by Region: The Japanese title has those skimpily-dressed Kunoichi enemies while the English versions replaces them with more short monkey dudes that sport Wolverine Claws. The monkey ninjas are shorter and can avoid more attacks, but the female ninjas dodge around a lot more.
• Divergent Character Evolution: The Ninja is given a unique character design and fighting style instead of just being a Head Swap of Kunoichi. The enemy versions of Kunoichi also have a different design as well.
• Downer Ending: The government you fight to create ends up being no better than the one you overthrew.
• Dual Boss: Phobos and Deimos from Stage 6. They also share the same lifebar.
• Elevator Action Sequence: You fight a bunch of enemies in an elevator just before the fight with Zelos, the seventh boss.
• Elite Mooks: Several types. Saru the tiger-claw wielding trained monkeys can be Demonic Spiders if you aren't careful. Later, you encounter weird color-changing synthetic humanoids called Golems which are also a pain, due to their extremely fast movement.
• Epic Flail: Ninja is armed with a big metal pair of nunchaku for maximum face-hurtage.
• Everything's Better with Monkeys: Subverted, the Saru mooks with Wolverine Claws are pretty annoying and can be potentially dangerous. They're short, fast, and can actually take a decent amount of damage!
• Expy: Kamaitachi seems to be loosely based on the Tsuchigumo enemies from the arcade version. Both are named after a Yōkai.
• Fat Bastard: Banglar.
• Flash Step: Jubei, the Stage 5 boss, is a white-haired, Power Tattooed, heavily-muscular Old Master who can do this, in addition to summoning columns of green flame and just punching the crap out of you.
• Flunky Boss: Every single boss (except Yamori and the android twins) fights alongside their underlings. In the case of the Final Boss, flunkies are actually a good thing, as the only way to damage him is to throw his men into him.
• Giant Mook: The Kenin warriors are larger then even Ninja.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Ninja can pick up regular Mooks just by walking into them, and then swing them to floor any nearby Mooks. Kunoichi and Kamaitachi can throw them for the same effect.
• Guide Dang It: The game never mentions how to block or activate your secondary combo.
• Hair of Gold: Kunoichi. It's fake, though.
• Head Swap: Snake to Panther (two Mook enemies), and Phobos & Deimos (the Dual Boss of Stage 6) to Gigant (the first boss).
• Heal Thyself: Energy tanks pop up here and there, often in crates.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: All three player characters, as well as some Mooks.
• History Repeats: It's revealed in the ending that the new government set up by La Résistance, supported by a new generation of androids, is not much better then Banglar's dictatorship. A bit of a Downer Ending.
• Immune to Bullets: Well, not immune, but bullets do only superficial damage to the player characters.
• In Case of Boss Fight Break Glass: You have to beat the Final Boss this way.
• Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: Pretty much the whole point of this game.
• Invisibility Cloak: Yamori (the Stage 3 boss), a genetic monstrosity with a skull for a face and clad in purple pinstripes, can cloak himself while he claws at you or drops grenades on you. You can just barely see him though, and he can still be hit while he's on the ground.
• Invulnerable Attack: Many of the three player characters' attack animations leave them immune to damage. Somebody has done a no damage run because of that.
• Jet Pack: Ninja, likely due to the fact that he weighs almost one full ton, has a booster built into his back. This enables him to hover briefly and deliver a crushing kick that hits multiple times. Very spammable.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Kunoichi's Weapon of Choice, and makes up the end part of her basic melee combo. The rest consists of Kunai stabs. The female ninjas you run into Dual Wield these.
• Killer Robot: The player characters, and a few Mecha-Mooks. Said Mooks sometimes have Eye Beams.
• Kill Sat: Silverman can call down a satellite laser beam, foretold by a highly visible Laser Sight. It's not that dangerous though, and more often hits the mooks he summons instead of you. In fact, he can do more damage to you by just whacking you with his cane.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: The Golems, which are tall bipedal robots with Eye Beams. They cannot be damaged from the front with regular attacks, however, the player can easily get around this by attacking their back, throwing them, or throwing somebody/something else into them.
• Let's Play: By none other than Deceased Crab, here.
• Made of Explodium: The Mecha-Mooks, as well as certain environmental objects, and a tanker truck in the opening level. Also, the player when you die.
• Made of Iron: The player characters are capable of withstanding knives, bullets, explosives, chainsaws, Ninja magic spells and a variety of other nastiness. Some of it can be forgiven due to them being literally made of iron metal.
  • Honorable mention goes to Silverman who, for being a more or less normal man, can take enough kunai-stabbing, scythe-blading, rocket-punching, arena-exploding punishment to drop the entirety of a neighborhood gang (and then some). While possibly beating up robots with a cane.
• Name's the Same: Sort-of. The female enemies exclusive to the Japanese version are simply identified as "Kunoichi", the same moniker given to the female player character. Note that while the arcade version had Kunoichi enemies, they were simply palette swaps of the Player 1 character, whereas their counterparts in this game have a unique design.
• Ninja: Duh. This game has Ninjas coming out of its ears. One character is even called Ninja, Kunoichi means female ninja and she looks and moves more the part, and Kamaitachi when written in a certain way means "sickle weasel", hence his wicked arm blades. His appearance is more Killer Robot, but he definitely moves like a Ninja. You fight a few of them too.
• The Napoleon: Banglar is pretty short.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The player characters make up the "Ninja" and "Robot" part of the equation.
• Rubber Man: Zelos is this.
• Shout-Out: These two palette swaps of Snake look suspiciously like fire flower Mario and Luigi.
• Skele-Bot 9000: Kamataichi.
• Spin Attack: Ninja can do this with his booster in the air, and with his Charged Attack. Kamaitachi does it as part of his regular combo.
• Stripperific: The female ninjas you meet (in the Japanese version) are rather... impractically dressed. Probably the reason why they were replaced with more Wolverine-esque ninjas in the English versions.
• Synchronization: Phobos and Deimos who share the same life bar. They take about twice the damage a regular boss can take, but hitting both at the same time would hurt them for double damage.
• Theme Naming: Some of the enemies.
  • Theme Twin Naming: Phobos and Deimos, the twin cyborg bosses, are named after twin Greek gods.
  • Animal Theme Naming: Some of the mooks. Namely Snake, Fox, Panther, Puma and Saru ("monkey").
• Throw a Barrel At It: In addition to Exploding Barrels, throwable items include the aforementioned Crate Expectations, potted plants, motorcycles and the enemies. This is even necessary to defeat the Final Boss, who is protected behind a reinforced barrier.
• Timed Mission: Evey mission is timed, with a counter at the bottom counting down.
• Too Dumb to Live: The regular mooks, who walk into hazardous stuff like spinning fans, explosions, helicopter support gunfire and Bangler's laser walls.
• Wolverine Claws: Used by the monkey-like ninjas.
• The Voiceless: Nobody really talks in this game beyond grunts of pain. The player robots may actually be The Speechless, but there's no way to tell for sure.
• Your Head Asplode: When Gigants, Phobos and Deimos are defeated, they get back up... and their head blows up.