#36: The Legend of the Mystical Ninja

Spooky font!

Legend of the Mystical Ninja fits a fairly unique niche for me. It's a game I didn't play as a kid, but had played before this little adventure. I don't remember much of the game but I know I played a Japanese rom at some point in University. I didn't understand what was going on. I didn't even make it out of the town and quit, but I did play it at some point! I was actually surprised to see an English version.

Juh?

One of the things I'm really noticing when playing these SNES games is how little effort goes into the plot for most of these games. Even though this game had a lot of text before I could start playing it didn't actually explain anything. There's a hot girl ghost who lives in a temple and is causing trouble or something. So I guess I need to go find a temple. I start in a town, right outside my house, and am immediately attacked by my fellow townsmen. Sometimes when you kill people they drop a fish, sometimes they drop a cat. Fish hurt you. Cats upgrade your weapon. What? Oh, and sometimes a townswoman would show up instead, but if you tried to hit her with your yo-yo you'd lose $100. I don't understand why the men in this town are trying to kill me but the women are dainty and fragile.

WHAT?!?

This may be the weirdest continue screen I've ever seen. Where do you want to continue?

I definitely see the ghost part...

The actual dungeon itself turned into a more traditional 2d platformer. With a gimmicky boss fight. It took me a full continue before I figured out how to hurt her, and by then I was too low in life and ended up dying anyway.

I feel like the platforming part was reasonable but unspectacular. I really didn't understand what was going on, though, and that makes me sad and detracted from my desire to start over when I ran out of continues. I probably could have gotten into this game back in the day if I'd rented it, but for now it is nothing special.

Rating: C