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The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors is not so much the 3rd game in a series as the third try at the same game. The outset go was in 1987 when Taito looked at its revolutionary Darius arcade cabinet – which used three monitors and ii mirrors to fake a triple-wide screen – and decided information technology needed some ninjas. It created The Ninja Warriors, a side-scrolling beat-em-upward with an '80s action-sci-fi vibe channelling The Terminator.

Round two came in 1994, when Natsume reinvented the game for the Super Famicom as The Ninja Warriors Once more. And at present, 25 years after, Natsume is dorsum with this iii.0, in Japan titled The Ninja Warriors Once Once again. Simply put, this is the all-time Ninja Warriors yet.

The story presents a crumbling dystopia in which an evil dictator has a grip on a "once nifty and opulent nation". Fortunately, a rebel leader, Mulk, has unleashed some image robot ninjas to chase him downwardly. The scenario is lifted direct from the arcade original, giving The Ninja Saviors a retro '80s atmosphere that would otherwise be hard to pull off with any degree of sincerity. It's set out in an intro that'south a shot-for-shot reproduction of Ninja Warriors on the SNES, only with artwork redrawn in cute detail. Suddenly, your chosen character smashes in from screen left, levelling a gang of soldiers: the game starts in style.

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The gameplay is superficially similar to other beat-em-ups of the xvi-scrap era merely soon shows its personality. The activeness, unlike Final Fight and Streets of Rage, happens on a single plane, so there'due south no moving in and out of the scene, just left and correct. This may audio like a limitation, but it opens the door for other distinguishing gameplay characteristics. For instance, the motility-set and control scheme resemble a lightweight Street Fighter more than a simple brawler, based around blocking, special moves and busting out combos. It's fairly detailed fighting for the genre, encouraging inventiveness and a very absurd flow as you demolish your opponents. And those opponents come in droves. The single airplane of play ways anybody's lined up for a smashing, with no manner around your ninja. The grunts will fall in a single hit, but doing so may be a waste of a handy projectile, as they can be thrown at stronger enemies for some easy impairment.

The graphics are gorgeous reworkings of the cheerily coloured xvi-fleck assets, from epic, deep, bombed-out beach-city backdrops to slick and graceful character animations with a hint of '80s camp-activity fun. The sounds thump and grunt in all the right places and bring out the rhythm of the play. The music, meanwhile, trusts the luminescence of the previous games' soundtracks and lets them practice their thing on your Switch, while adding new tracks to the mix. Nothing like cracking skulls to Daddy Mulk, the 1987 synthesised shamisen anthem past Taito house band Zuntata.

Apart from bringing the classic up to date, Natsume Atari has created two extra playable characters, taking the total up to a robust five. These two are accessed after beating the game on normal and hard difficulties. The new guys fit in naturally around the profiles of the original SNES trio, just each too has a novelty element that makes them feel similar a prize. They don't exactly redefine the game, merely that didn't need doing, so they're welcome.

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A more revolutionary change is the addition of a two-player co-op style. The ane-plane playspace does its thing again hither and lines everyone upward in a row. The upshot is that both players are working the same crowds, rather than the more than isolated fights that can happen in shell-em-ups that spread out on the z-axis. Two-actor is a riot and ices the block very nicely, but the one-player game is so strong that you lot won't experience alone with merely the one ninja.

At this signal, nosotros should pick some nits. In 1994, this game was a bit piece of cake. It even so is. It's very accessible, low-stress, boom-the-idiot-baddies fun, but it doesn't claiming. Hard manner is better – and the final dominate gets tricky – but it becomes apparent that if the game threw whatever more enemies at you lot or made them all tougher, it would shortly get repetitive and wearisome the high-action, super-robot sheen. The difficulty is balanced correct for this game; information technology but isn't very hard.

The other little sigh that echoes from 1994 is a wish that there were more than stages. There are only eight in total, and some are pretty short. A new phase – maybe an unlockable callback to the arcade game (with its superior ending!) – would have been brilliant. But being and then adept you want more than is non the worst trouble in a game.

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In our review of Wild Guns Reloaded last year, we said Natsume Atari had set a new benchmark for Super Nintendo remakes. They're working to the aforementioned standard here. This is the ultimate version of a game concept that has captivated since 1987: it's nostalgia polished to gleaming.

Conclusion

You lot tin can never really go back – the game is however there, but the magic of that time mixes the retentiveness up to something more intoxicating than information technology really was. Get back to the SNES Ninja Warriors now and it'southward however fun, but information technology's stuck in the foursquare box of a 4:3 screen, the blitheness doesn't stand out like it did and one-player-merely looks weak aslope the other Terminal Fight tribute acts of the day. But when you lot encounter The Ninja Saviors, it's somehow exactly what yous think: huge, lush backdrops, silky animation, and tight, mob-levelling ninja moves. Information technology'southward like being a kid again, and stands equally yet some other essential Switch release yous actually should own.

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