128. Ninja Cop Saizou (AI, Famicom, 1989)

Ninja Gaiden is one of the more popular platfomers on the NES/Famicom, so it's not surprise that there were imitators. Ninja Cop Saizou is one of these, released a year after the first Ninja Gaiden (or Ninja Ryukenden, as it was known in Japan). Like it's predecessor, Nina Cop Saizou has great presentation for 1989, including cutscenes that can even happen mid-level, though the graphical style is much simpler (and frankly, worse) than Ninja Gaiden.

Gameplay is where Ninja Cop Saizou does more of its own thing. You have the standard genre controls: a jump button and an attack button, which throws shurikens. If you've been reading much of this blog like I have, you know I really like when a game squeezes a lot of gameplay out of as few buttons as possible, and Ninja Cop Saizou does an admirable job of that. You can press up while jumping to leap extra high, and you can charge your attack button to unleash one of several different moves depending on which direction you are holding. You unlock a new one of these moves after every level, which keeps the already interesting combat fresh.

Levels are pretty long (and occasionally punctuated by fun vertical sections), though they are filled with many doors you can enter. Usually these lead to one room screens where you either have an item to collect, enemies to fight, a child to rescue, or a combination of these. Clearing a room of enemies actually gives you a bit of health, which is a nice incentive to investigate every room. Each level ends with a boss, and the couple I fought (a giant and a totem pole) were varied and kept with the pretty light difficulty of the rest of the game.

Really, Ninja Cop Saizou would be an amazing game if the enemy AI was a little more interesting. Unfortunately enemies either try to be on top of you (causing collision damage) or just stand in place and shoot at you, waiting to be taken out by a shuriken. A later level has you stuck on a roof until you can take out an enemy ninja flying on a kite, and steal his kite, at which point the game turns into a scrolling shooter briefly.

4/5, a diamond-in-the-rough of a game that has a lot of cool ideas