This Month: The Shed Loves NInjas.

To celebrate the punishing sadism of Ninja Gaiden Sigma and the game itself by extension, we thought we'd take a look at the greatest games to ever feature ninjas. As there aren't actually that many, we thought we'd tenuously include games where ninjas aren't even the star, then decided not to.

Revenge Of Shinobi (Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, 1989): The original Shinobi hit arcades in 1987 as a colourful side-scrolling slash 'em up starring series ninja poster boy Joe Musashi against the evil 'Zeed' clan. Next to the sequel, Revenge of Shinobi, the first game looks primitive by comparison. Revenge is where Musashi really hit his stride boasting far superior graphics, mental bosses that bizarrely included Batman, Spider-Man and an Arnie lookalike who had a Terminator endoskeleton. Hmmm. No wonder there were copyright issues in the original version. Some of these characters were later removed or modified, like the Godzilla boss who Sega transformed into a skeletal version of the same thing. Good work. Clearly, the 'Neo Zeed' clan will employ anyone to stop Musashi in his tracks.
Revenge Of Shinobi was a tough nut to crack although you could ease the burden with an infinite shuriken cheat. Even with the cheat enabled, the game was an unforgiving gauntlet of patience-shredding stages where a game over screen was never far away. The Shed is proud to have completed the game countless times, but not so proud to announce that only one of these times was without cheating. Cheat or no cheat, Revenge Of Shinobi still stands as a harsh but fair slice of 2D ninja action, firmly old school, incredibly cool and it's aged pretty well too. Well, sort of. Still hate that Labyrinth stage though.

Shadow Dancer: The Secret Of The Shinobi (Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, 1991): Joe Musashi returns once again in the Mega Drive port of the 1990 arcade classic that saw the famous ninja partnering up with a dog named Yamato to avenge his master's death. In the Japanese version you played as Musashi's son Hayate, which makes no difference really, just a bit of useless trivia. All in all it's another excuse for another 2D side-scrolling ninja throwdown, this time taking on the 80's-metal-band-sounding 'Union Lizard' clan. Riiiiight. With a colour pallette that tended to adhere to grey and um, more grey, Shadow Dancer still retained an effortless cool, reinforced by the ability to command a mutt to do some of your dirty work for you. However, the missing option of commanding Yamato to cock his leg and take a piss on a bad guy seems like a missed opportunity to us. Sadly, we never made it past stage 4 (there were only 5 stages, so that's not that bad!) but we remember elaborate bosses, rock-hard platform challenges including a section that took place in intermittent pitch darkness. The original arcade version was also nails...does anyone sense a pattern emerging here? Yes, ALL ninja games are fuckin' rock solid!

Tenchu: Wrath Of Heaven (PlayStation 2, 2003): Not the best of the Tenchu series you might argue and you'd be half-right. Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (1998) on the first PlayStation possessed a unique atmosphere and married two elements that had been screaming out to be combined forever. That is ninjas and stealth. All of the components were present and correct right from the start, ninja gadgets like grappling hooks, caltrops, smoke bombs et al. Animation was spot-on, protagonists Rikimaru and Ayame were cool as were their athletic abilities and tasty stealth execution moves. All the sequels could do is build on this established successful formula as it was already so well-formed in the first game. Tenchu 2: Birth of The Stealth Assassins (2000) added a decent level editor and new character Tatsumaru but was essentially more of the same. For us, the best Tenchu game was the third in the series making its debut on the PS2, featuring nice, smooth, if occasionally flaky graphics and get this...a really fuckin' steep difficulty curve. Fortunately, Wrath Of Heaven maintained the awesome atmospherics that initially made the series so unique, enhanced by beautiful acoustic strings and visual flourishes like rain and falling blossom. Packing in a bunch of bonuses like a new character who used needles to kill and a level set in the present day helped keep the third Tenchu fresh, even in the midst of taking on a frustrating level like the cemetery. It's games like Wrath Of Heaven that make us wish we were a ninja.

The Ninja (Sega Master System, 1986): Okay, not actually a good game but deserving of mention for being the single most hideously difficult game ever conceived. A top-down scrolling fighter, you played as a slow-moving, inept ninja with the singular goal of reaching the top of the level. Momentarily turning invisible didn't help matters as you quickly became plagued by superior enemies like bouncing boulders that would ensure a short-lived and thoroughly unpleasant gaming experience. A truly horrendous little game that has scarred our brain for life: the only truly hateful game to feature a ninja protagonist. Its only saving grace is its ability to induce fits of laughter at its inherent silliness. It's games like The Ninja that make us wish ninjas would go away.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PlayStation 3, 2007): Obviously. Ryu Hayabusa is the coolest ninja on any console, period. He's also the best character in the Dead Or Alive series, although he's not actaully cool enough to steer us away from playing as pneumatically breasted uber-babes. Sorry, Ryu. Check out the review below for more.

Too many ninjas: MK, SFII, Final Fight, Streets Of Rage, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Onimusha...