Shinobi

About

Shinobi by Team Shinobi casts you as Joe Musashi, a ninja racing to rescue clan children kidnapped by a rogue syndicate. The game unfolds across five missions with three to four stages each. Each stage requires rescuing hostages before battling a boss, with bonus rounds after the first four missions offering extra lives if you clear waves of ninjas. Joe wields shurikens,拳头, and kicks, but picking up stage-specific power-ups swaps his throws for a gun and gives him a katana slash. A rare "ninja magic" move clears all enemies but can only be used once per stage. The game demands precision, one hit from a projectile or melee attack ends your life, though contact with enemies sometimes just pushes you back. Released in 1987, Shinobi ran on arcades and home systems from DOS to Spectrum, letting players tackle it solo or with a friend. Its challenge comes from memorizing enemy placements since most appear in predictable spots. Bonus points reward completing stages without using magic, bullets, or shurikens, plus every second left in the three-minute timer adds to your score. Hardcore fans note its difficulty spikes after mission four, where continues vanish, forcing you to finish with whatever lives remain. Over 30 years later, it’s a benchmark for early ninja-platformers with tight mechanics and punishing replay value.

Storyline

The player controls a ninja named Joe Musashi who has to stop a criminal organization called "Zeed" who are kidnapping the children of his ninja clan. Through five missions (consisting of three stages for the first mission and four stages each for the rest), Musashi must make his way to Zeed's headquarters and free all the hostages in the first two or three stages before confronting the boss at the final stage of each mission. At the start of each mission, the player is shown their objective, followed by a file containing a photograph of the enemy boss and a map display pinpointing the location of the next stage.