These days, I'm having trouble sleeping. With all the crime on the streets and on the TV news, I just can't sleep soundly. Whenever I wake up in a cold sweat, frantically trying to regain a sense of reality, I always come back to one unanswerable question:
Why are the ninjutsu skills of our police officers SO lacking?
I mean, this may shock you, but with the exception of the precinct that covers Little Tokyo, I would bet that not a single California police station from the Bay Area to San Diego has a SINGLE ninja on active duty.
Fortunately, the guys over at Konami and Hudson are doing their best to combat this situation the best way they know how: By glorifying the fine art of ninja detective work in their GBA game, Ninja Five-O. See, he's not just Five-O, he's Ninja Five-O...ain't NO WAY crime's getting a foothold up this muh, not with Ninja Five-O around.
Story
Ninja Five-O is a layered, complex tale that revolves around a ninja, Joe Osugi. (I'm assuming a play off of Sho Kosugi of "Ninja" fame.) Joe decides that he's learned all of the shadow arts he could possibly learn. Making a leap that his fellow ninja would consider madness, Joe becomes a detective, figuring that he could kill all the thugs in the world he wanted to in the name of justice. Plus, the hot pink Dan gi he ordered from Capcom had finally arrived, and he was really looking for somewhere to use it.
So with that Joe heads off to some city, and naturally just starts getting crime fighting assignments. There's no backup, of course...Because when you've got one Ninja Cop...One is all you need.
Gameplay
Joe's got a pretty decent supply of moves. You see, unbeknownst to the rest of the world the ninja have been honing their skills over the last century or so when their kind was cast aside by the Meiji Era. In addition to having an unlimited supply of fancy techno shuriken, Joe can upgrade them to a fire spread attack, and a crazy laaaaaaaser shuriken. When he's up close, Joe also has a katana to finish things. When the time is right, Joe can unleash a super attack that has him dashing all over the screen while the Japanese character for "Wind" (Kaze) is displayed in the foreground. Truly a formidable arsenal of moves. Think of the taxpayer savings, people.
Jumping around and scaling high places is accomplished by Joe's ninja claw. He can use it to grab ledges and walls, something like Bionic Commando. It's really aggravating to do the wall bounce with it, but it's kind of fun to do some of the other stuff...like grapple the bottom of a platform, and have Joe spin repeatedly over it.
At the heart of Ninja Five-O is what every good 16-bit game had at the heart of it: Fast paced gameplay with smooth animation and a seemingly endless supply of butt to kick. It's like you went into the city, got a job as an Ass-Kicking Machine, and the store that hired you wanted you to dish out free refills.
You'll have different colored doors that are locked by different color keys, which obviously, bad guys will drop. Bad guys also take hostages, and you have to wait until they move to attack you before popping them, otherwise you'll kill the hostage. Thankfully the hostages will tell you not to shoot when you shouldn't shoot, because people in this town are really helpful to ninja.
The game borrows a lot from old platform games like Impossible Mission, Ninja Gaiden, Shinobi, etc. So, if you never got into that era of games, this probably isn't going to be too much of your thing. I'd also say that this game probably is best played on a standard GBA, not a GBA SP.
Graphics
For a GBA game, the graphics aren't too bad. The animation is nice and fluid, with main character Joe never crossing his legs over each other, instead, just hunching down and scooting forward all over the place. The enemies also have interesting little death animations. Not too shabby.
Sound
Ok, this is definitely in the weaker group of games in terms of sound. You basically have one repetitive track and it isn't anything special. The effects aren't anything to write home about either. I remember being more impressed by 8-bit Mega Man music.
Gripes
I just wish you had a bit more weaponry and the wall-climbing sections weren't quite so clunky. Aside from that, the only real thing I can complain about would be the price...namely that it's not available anywhere. So either find someplace that rents it..or try to find a copy on Ebay.
Overall
This game managed to hit my nostalgia nerve, especially because I had a quick action itch, and this game was right there to scratch it. The game ends pretty quickly, and unless you really want to put yourself through the torture of playing through it again (The game is TOUGH...but with unlimited continues, you can progress through it within a day.) you'll have exhausted all the pleasure by then. A gaming one night stand, as it were. I can't give this game the 8 that would make it excellent...but if this were 5 years ago...you can bet it'd get it. We've been tough on the ninja games here...Shinobi, Ninja Assault, the Naruto platformer for the GBA...I think this is the highest score for a ninja game I've given so far. Definitely worth a playthrough once in your life.
