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Title: Super Ninja Boy
Author:Culture Brain USA Inc.
Rom Player: ZSNES
Reviewer: Dr. Boogie
Synopsis: Once again, ninjas have taken over the Super Nintendo. This time, you are a kid named Jack, a ninja. There is also the second player character named Ryu who, coincidentally, is also a ninja. The name of the game suggests that there is only one, so I guess Ryu just got screwed. As the story goes, the residents of Chinaland (What the hell?) were just sitting around, when all these spaceships appear. The leader, named Rub-A-Doc (I’m not touching this one.), says they have come to promote peace. The game makes it seem as though things were already pretty peaceful, but I guess you can never have enough peace. After a little while, he leaves and all his groupies and roadies are really sad. You come in on a totally unrelated note, investigating bandit problems at the city of Yukan. The game maintains this Chinese theme by placing a few people in the city who are dressed like they’re in the PLA. As if that weren’t enough, nearly every city has a certain oriental motif. Anyway, the game is set up like your basic top-down RPG, but with a few variations. As you walk around in the wilderness, you get into fight scenes in which you are presented with a group or two of enemies and the choice of either fighting or running. Running is handled similarly to regular RPG’s, as you may or may not be able to flee from the group, depending on their level and some random factor thrown in for fun. When running, you are heard saying, “Aieee! Run!” This can be confusing, as very few of the enemies look remotely threatening. Fighting, on the other hand, changes the style of game from RPG to side-scrolling fighting. The goal is to knock down a certain number of enemies in order to clear the scene. You can see the level of the group and how many you need to defeat if you buy this special item you find later in the game. The way these scenes are set up depends on where you encounter the enemy and what types they are. In some cases, a few really tough enemies will have special two-dimensional stages set up for the fight. The 3-D generally have a few pits of some sort that kill you and your hapless foes immediately, as well as lots of little “P”
blocks giving the game a Super Mario Brothers feel. After punching one of these blocks, it releases a floating question mark that you have to hit again to get something out of it. It gives magic points most of the time, but can also get additional points for pulling off ninja maneuvers and additional money. You get to pull off a combo and a flipping maneuver to waste your foes, as well as finding weapons like swords and nunchucks (note: I don’t know how to spell that word, and neither does my spellchecker). Plus, as mentioned before, you get weird ninja techniques like spinning kicks and flips that do extra damage. You also get various types of magic along the way. Perhaps even more unusual is that on very infrequent occasions; you will have to do an ACTUAL RPG battle, just like in the Final Fantasy games. This gets to be odd, as you are used to the side-scrolling method of fighting, and the game also brings in the second player character even if you’re playing it single player-style. The enemies, as I said, are truly strange to look at. You start out having to deal with wimpy ninjas and duck/men hybrids, but soon go on to fight with things like skeletons that attack you by flying on their guitars like surfboards. The way you can tell if you don’t have the level counting device is that the dumber they look, the deadlier they are. The sound effects are nondescript throughout the game. The music, on the other hand, maintains the oriental feel, and gives you a strange tune from the 50’s when you get into a fight. Despite all this, the game is entertaining. It would seem that once again, ninjas make a game that much more interesting.
Best Cheats: Nothing Entered
Game Play: 8
Graphics: 6
Music/Sound: 6
Originality: 7
Overall Rating: 7
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