I come from afar to bring tidings of carpal tunnel syndrome, frustration and evil game design. I come to bring you Shinobi, Sega's classic cash-cow in the arcades of the 80s.

There is a lot of dying in this video. If my mic had been on, there would have been many disturbing pained noises and possibly some swearing going on too.

I used to play this game on an actual cabinet back in 2000/2001 (Probably a bootleg, since this is South Africa, and I'm pretty sure that Sega wasn't shipping units to this country). It ate money like crazy, and that's about all I remember.

I also used to dominate the scoreboard, but most people didn't play for long.

Anyway… time for a review of sorts. Because I'm that pissed off with this game.

Shinobi is basically Ninja Gaiden's spiritual predecessor. You play as Joe Musashi, a generic ninja off to stop terrorists who have kidnapped a bunch of children.

Can't fault the plot. Because really, who cares about the story in an arcade title? :P

Anyway, the first level throws you right into the action. You soon learn that this game hates you, hates your family, hates your guts and wants to destroy your sanity.

One hit kills are the first thing you'll run into, and this is where a lot of my old friends used to give up. Shinobi is all about memorizing enemy locations, patterns, etc.

And when you're paying for each set of three lives, you're not going to be feeling like doing much memorization.

Luckily for me, I'm using MAME. So the only thing this is costing me is time (I seriously spent all day getting a usable run out of this game).

Later on, you start noticing some really evil level design. At one point in Stage 3, you jump into a little 'well' between two pillars, and four blue Ninjas spawn on either side of you. These buggers leap up (And are invincible while jumping), and try to hit you on the way down (They track you). This part alone took me a ridiculous number of tries to get past. And I had the fortune of not having to pay for this.

Now, using the South African costs of the old machine (5 ZAR, around a Half Dollar), and considering the number of continues I went through in my first playthrough earlier today (Only up to Stage 4 on Normal difficulty), I would have spent around 800 ZAR ($80) on that single (And incomplete) playthrough.

Moving on…

As mentioned, my first playthrough saw me getting to Stage 4. I was playing on Normal difficulty (More enemies in nastier locations), and had 3 lives per play. Unlimited continues.

And then you hit Stage 5. Guess what Stage 5 does? It doesn't allow you to continue. Now imagine this. You're a kid, you've just heroically mashed your way through the first four stages, you put in an extra credit on Stage 5… and then the game tells basically tells you "Haha, start over from the beginning sucker!".

Because that's what it does. So yeah, holy shit. I was getting tired of starting from the beginning in the vain attempt to memorize the patterns of the enemies in Stage 5. So I enabled the "Free Play" switch. This is basically an infinite lives mode built into the game; and even then the game felt unfair. I nearly ragequit on the final boss.

In the video, I cut around 20 minutes of me flailing around trying to figure out the pattern required to defeat it.

Anyway, faults aside, Shinobi is a solid game. The controls are fluid enough that you can respond to many split-second situations (With some exceptions), and the graphics look great for the time.

The music was interesting… for all of two minutes. Then they kept reusing the same tracks over and over, and it got really boring.

All told… I'd recommend that anybody who hasn't tried Shinobi, try it. And learn; as game developers, we need to steer clear of bullying the player like this. I understand that it was a 'necessary' business tactic in the arcades, but let's keep this type of design well away from home systems. :P

Well, I might record some more games. Already thinking of doing Shinobi 3 (Mostly because the music in that game is great, the controls are better… generally speaking, the game is better). Other suggestions welcome (I can record mostly anything, besides Minecraft).

EDIT: Oh, and a friendly Damn You to Visor for convincing me to play this again :3