The Legend of Kage

As the beautiful princess stood walking in her native woods... terror struck! An evil ninja flew down and captured the innocent princess, imprisoning her at the top of a great palace, but do not worry princess, for Kage is on his way!

And that's the idea of The Legend of Kage. You are Kage, ninja warrior on a quest to save the princess, several times I might add, and restore peace to the galaxy etc. etc.


Now I agree the story isn't original, or fantastic, or even that cool, but at least it's got ninjas. More importantly it's just funny, and I like the idea of the story being so completely random that its not even a part of the game. Sure you have to rescue the princess, sure that's the ''goal'' but not once was I ever concerned with that. I wanted to kill ninjas! And that's why the story is fun, and that’s why it gets a ten.

The graphics in the first level are excellent, but the quality low in the second and third, but good again in the fourth. Everything is rendered in bright, solid colors; it's pixelated and small, allowing the player to see a lot of the action.

Unfortuneatly, the sound is horrible, and I really mean that. Its the same song throughout the entire game, and its a really annoying one at that. To make things worse, every time the princess is captured, a little song plays that makes you want to have a seizure. I'm so serious, it's about the most annoying thing on the planet.

Hundreds of ninjas are flying at you from everywhere throwing shuriken, and then other times they aren't. A lot of the game is luck, and luckily I have a lot of that. I beat the game 4 times through all the seasons one night to do research for the Walkthrough/FAQ, nearly went crazy in the process... No continues, 3 lives, not very many extra lives...tough. The real fun is all in the jumping: Kage jumps so high it's incredible; he bounces off of trees nicely, and all in all it's a really fluid Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon-Feel.

There is plenty of fun waiting inside the forests of Legend of Kage. Finding a copy shouldn't be hard: I see one in every video game store. Don't expect too much out of it and take it for what it's worth, you'll easily see that it deserves the ten. This is one of my favorite games of all time; wonderfully simple and addictive.

The Ninja Warriors (TG-16)

Ninja Warriors surprised me this past week. I wanted to play Ninja Gaiden, but got tired of the terrible TG-16 version. I saw Ninja Warriors--I couldn't remember playing it. The simple game design, great music and cool artwork impressed me at first. After spending a few more hours, it was obvious this is game is a classic.

In 1988 Ninja Warriors hit the street as a triple-monitor arcade game. All the usual C64/Amigo/ZXSpectrum computers got their port, as well as, in 1989, the TurboGrafx-16. But only in Japan. Information on this import title has been extremely hard to come by. Hardcore Gaming 101 looks at the entire series, but doesn't mention much about our close friend, the TG16.

Ninja Warriors feels old. It's not as fancy as Streets of Rage or Final Fight... but it's more balanced. Those games were designed to eat quarters (as I assume the arcade version of Ninja Warriors does as well), but not this port. It's designed to offer challenge and replayability. Enemies spawn in predictable patterns, adding the possibility for slight memorization, which is nice in the small doses presented.

In standard beat-'em-up style, the developers manage to achieve diversity using palette and weapon swaps. The regular army dude will start doing jump kicks in the later levels, and surprises like this keep the game interesting.



The game has some cool effects: your hair is animated nicely. Cool blood. Your body can be exposed as a robot as you take damage (a la Terminator). You have 2 characters to choose from and can customize your color, difficulty, and time. You can jump, flip, throw shuriken (limited to around 30 per level) or slash with kunai (ninja knives).

I can't even find the manual, an FAQ, or even many reviews of this game. If anyone knows where I can find a .pdf of the manual, I can upload jpgs of it or something.

But like I said, Ninja Warriors feels old, and I like it. They just don't make games this difficult and clunky anymore, and it's a shame. To be honest, they only made games like this for a few years in history (Altered Beast comes to mind). I appreciate games like these because all the new beat-em-ups strive to be smooth and isometric--basically just a better version of Double Dragon. Ninja Warriors, even if it's unintentional, is different, and that's good.

Ninja Warriors proves that as long as a game is challenging and provides incentive to play (this is achieved through music and graphics), then gamers will want to play it. Don't bore me to death with your 12-minute cutscene and 2-hour newbie area: just release Ninja Warriors on the Virtual Console and give the rest of the world this classic!

Just check out the song in the video!