One of our board members called Ninja Five-O “the best Sega Genesis game of 2003”. After playing it for a few minutes, you’ll understand why. Ninja Five-O seems like it was pulled from another era: an action platformer that would have been an A-list title if it were released a decade ago. Even so, as a minor release from megapublisher Konami in the era of Grand Theft Auto and Halo, Ninja Five-O makes a lasting impression with its peerless, polished gameplay.

Borrowing conceptual nuggets from some of the best side scrollers ever made, Ninja Five-O plays like a Greatest Hits compilation of the 2D era. There’s hostage rescuing and ninja swordplay from Shinobi. The level designs look like they came straight out of the Rolling Thunder development manual. Your character has a grappling hook he can use to swing from platform to platform, just like in Bionic Commando and the little-known Super Famicom classic Umihara Kawase. Clearly, the development team at Hudson responsible for Ninja Five-O knows their games.

Ninja Five-O’s story is straightforward and has just the right dash of camp. You are a ninja police officer on the case of an international group of terrorists. Their agents have struck the airport, the warehouse, and the bank, and they’ve taken hostages. It’s your job to neutralize the terrorists, rescue the hostages, and discover the terrorists’ secret base. At your disposal are projectile weapons (shuriken plus two different types of ninja magic), your katana, and your “kawagiri wire”, a grappling hook that allows you to both navigate the well-designed levels and get the drop on your foes. You’ve also got ultra-powerful, screen-clearing “smart bomb” magic for when things get really bad.

Overcoming Ninja Five-O’s 20 levels requires careful mastery of all the weapons and tools listed above. You can’t get by just by wildly flailing shuriken. You’ll have to time your attacks so you don’t harm the hostages, and the katana, while difficult to use at first, is often the most effective way to beat your opponents. Ninja Five-O is yet another GBA game where you’ll wish all four buttons were on the face of the unit; the katana is keyed to the R button, which makes it somewhat awkward to use. The kawagiri wire is also quite difficult to get used to, particularly if you’ve never played Bionic Commando or Umihara Kawase.

Make no mistake, Ninja Five-O is hard. Much harder than the average GBA game. It’s a satisfying level of difficulty, but this is definitely not the sort of game you can breeze through during the course of a single bus ride. This means you’ll be replaying the stages over and over again till you master your katana and kawagiri skills. Fortunately, the game allows you to save after each level, so you’ll never have to backtrack. There’s plenty of replay value, for those who crave it; there’s a hard mode that opens up after completing the game, and a “time trial” mode for perfecting your skills on individual levels. For such a small game, Ninja Five-O packs a lot of challenge.

Like a ninja crawling through the night, Ninja Five-O sprang out of nowhere, catching gamers by surprise with its gameplay delights. The game reportedly received a small print run, so you’d best pick it up on sight. Ninja Five-O is highly recommended for anyone looking for a brand new old school challenge.

· · · sleeveboy