Shadow of the Ninja - TV Tropes (2025)

In order to defeat the Emperor Garuda

two shadows appear

"Ninja"

Released in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Shadow of the Ninja is a side-scrolling action platform game developed and published by Natsume. The game originally released in Japan as Yami no Shigotonin Kage (However, on the Famicom, the title screen simply shows the title as Kage), and later had a release in Europe as Blue Shadow.

In the year 2029, the largest city in America is run under the iron grip of the evil Emperor Garuda. He and his followers have created an impenetrable fortress, and no one has been able to break through to threaten his plans to continue his conquest. This all changes when two mysterious figures manage to break past the outer defenses of the city. Enter Hayate and Lady Kaede, two ninjas of the Iga clan, sent to infiltrate Garuda's fortress and bring an end to his empire.

Players take control of Hayate or Kaede and platform and fight their way through five different stages throughout Garuda's city. The game can be played in either single-player mode, or a two-player simultaneous cooperative mode. Both characters use katanas as their primary weapon, but these can be swapped out for other weapons by collecting the right power ups.

A version of the game was in development for the Game Boy, but the rights to this version were picked up by Tecmo, and rebranded into a spinoff of the Ninja Gaiden series titled Ninja Gaiden Shadow. While Shadow does have some similarities to the original game, including some shared music and a near-identical intro cutscene featuring the same villain, it is largely its own game, with a handful of unique mechanics and different stages. In 2023, a remake of the original NES game, titled Shadow of the Ninja Reborn, was announced to be in development and eventually released on ninth-generation systems in August 29th, 2024. The remake boasts a more anime-styled artwork, several new features and abilities such as carrying multiple weapons, allowing access of the katana and kusarigama, and several new tricks employed by the enemies and bosses, giving veteran players new challenges to face.

Shadow of the Ninja contains examples of:

• Adaptational Expansion: Reborn features a brand new stage not seen in the original NES version, becoming the new Stage 4. It also features a new boss: Miss Distress.
• Adaptational Skimpiness: In the original game, at least on the Japanese box, Kaede had sleeves on her attire. Reborn removes them to bare her arms.
• After Boss Recovery: You regain health after defeating a stage boss, though only enough to fill half a health bar. If you have less than half health, the recovery will not be enough to fill your health completely.
• Attack Its Weak Point:
  • The Eyestalker mini-boss in stage 2 can only be damaged by attacking the eyes on the ends of its body.
  • The Killer Tank boss only takes damage when the cannon on top is hit. The laser cannon on the underside can also be damaged and destroyed, but doing so has no effect on the main health bar.
• Art Evolution: Reborn gives a modern makeover to both Hayate and Kaede, making them look quite different from their original selves (well, not that they ever had much consistency in how they looked back then anyway). Less gritty, more cartoony (one could say Animesque), and complete with Adaptational Curves.
• Battle Boomerang: The Boomerang Masters are enemies that attack by throwing a boomerang that subsequently returns to them, being able to damage you on both the initial throw and the rebound. You can stop the boomerang effect by attacking it, but they have an unlimited supply, so this only stops it briefly.
• Battle in the Rain: The first stages on the outside of the boat take place during a rainstorm. rain droplets can be seen being blown by the wind in the background.
• Big Applesauce: Garuda's empire seems to be situated in what was formerly New York City, as the opening shows a skyline shot of the city with both the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center visible.
• Bottomless Pits: Each stage has pits your character can fall into. Falling down one does not instantly kill you, but it does cost you a large amount of health before respawning you.
• Breakable Power-Up: The katana and kusarigama can both be upgraded by collecting multiple power ups of the same type without collecting the other, but taking too much damage will cause your weapon to downgrade back to its weaker form.
• Cast from Hit Points: The ninjas can perform an attack where they call upon bolts of lightning to kill every enemy on screen and do large amounts of damage to bosses, but this attack costs half of your life bar to pull off, and can't be done at all if you don't have at least half health.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: In the remake, killing Garuda causes his soul to merge with Golden Samurai, Miss Distress, and Captain Hawk's, transforming into a huge, gold-and-silver dragon and fought in a precarious Platform Battle. However, the boss attacks in a rather predictable pattern and lacks any projectile attacks, making it an easier fight than any of its components.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: Hayate's health bar and sprite are purple, while Kaede's are orange.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: Two players can play the game simultaneously, with one player as Hayate, and the other as Kaede. Both players fight alongside each other to clear each stage.
• Degraded Boss: Stage 1 contains a mini-boss against Palooka, a soldier that has a very fast slide attack. This mini-boss appears as a regular enemy in stage 2, with three appearing shortly before the stage's main boss. In Reborn, this is downplayed: Palooka comes back alone as an actual mini-boss and fights the same way as his Stage 1 fight. However, the boss music no longer accompanies him.
• Down the Drain: Stage 2 takes place in the Underground Sewers. A pit of grimy water takes up the entire bottom portion of the screen at first, and ninjas will jump out of it to attack you.
• Dual Boss: Initially, the boss of stage 4 (5 in the remake) is a fight against Captain Hawk and his hawk companion. The Captain fights you at ground level with jump kicks while the bird occasionally swoops down at you from the air where you can't reach it. This only lasts for the first part of the fight, however.
• Excuse Plot: The game's story involves an evil bad guy who controls the city, and a pair of ninjas who are out to stop him. This is as far as the plot ever goes.
• Fanservice Pack: In Reborn Kaede goes from a typical female kunoichi into a long, green haired attractive kunoichi with skin-tight outfit that bares her legs as well as pronounced boobs.
• Fusion Dance:
  • After dealing enough damage to Captain Hawk, he and his pet bird will fuse together into one being, creating a humanoid bird-man that flies out of your range and very quickly slams down into wherever you're standing on.
  • In the Remake, Garuda's death causes his soul to exit his body... and merge with the souls of Golden Samurai, Miss Distress, and Captain Hawk's, transforming into a gold-and-silver dragon that acts as the boss' One-Winged Angel form.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: The game is about Ninjas after all. But aside from popping out from their own stealth in the background, they have no use of stealth and start slaughtering bad guys in the broad daylight while wearing outfits that make them stand out (even in the NES version). They mostly take after the 'fantastical' version of ninja that can use mystical magic and act more like superheroes than stealthy spies.
• Mutually Exclusive Power Ups: You can only have either a katana or a kusarigama as your primary weapon at any given time. Collecting a power up for the weapon you're not using will result in it being replaced with the other. Averted in the remake, where they can be carried simultaneously.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Stage 1 boss Missileman is a Killer Robot who doesn't have any attacks that fire missiles at all, only lobbed blue sparks for projectiles. The remake even gives it a sweeping laser as a new attack, but it still lacks missiles or rockets. Furthermore, it's not even a "man" in the original or Remake, as it's a non-humanoid Spider Tank.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Depending on the specific artwork or sprite, Kaede is depicted in various shades of pink, red or orange, while Hayate is blue or slightly purple-ish.
• Rise to the Challenge: The final stage has a segment where the screen automatically scrolls upward, forcing the players to keep up with it as everything that moves past the bottom of the screen becomes a bottomless pit.
• Rocket Punch: Power Fist is an enemy that appears in the final stage and fires their hand in a straight line, which then returns to them, hesitating in mid-shot at a specific position.
• Ship Level: The first stage takes place on a series of boat in the Sea Port. You start off on the boat's deck, climbing around on the masts, before eventually disembarking from the boats and heading into the port.
• Smart Bomb: You can hold down the attack button to charge up a lightning attack that kills every enemy onscreen. Doing so costs half a meter's worth of health, however.
• Spider Tank: The final stage introduces the Arakna, a series of large, multi-legged robots that leap high in the air to move around, and attack with a large spread of bullets that move in a variety of directions.
• Tank Goodness: Stage 2's boss is the Killer Tank, which rolls forward and backward. It's fitted with all sorts of weapons, including a laser cannon that fires across the entire floor, a spread gun that appears and fires every time you hit the weak point, and mortar cannons that fire missiles into the sky that aim for wherever you are standing.
• Tornado Move: The Wind Ninja enemies turn into a tornado that spins across the platform they stand on at high speed after you damage them.