164. Kamen no Ninja Akakage (Shouei, Famicom, 1988)

Kamen no Ninja Akakage ("Masked Ninja Red Shadow") is a Famicom platformer based on an 80s anime series which was itself based on a 60s tokusatsu TV show. This game was developed by Shouei and published by Toei Animation, much like the lackluster games #122 Nagagutsu o Haita Neko and #150/151 the first two Hokuto no Ken Famicom games, so I mostly queued up Akakage because it was the other Famicom game about a masked ninja after I played game #163, Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru.

But as luck would have it, this is actually a fun, decently ambitious Famicom game with a ton of variety. Mechanically, it's a pretty standard action platformer. While you can jump basically to the top of the screen (which I love), there is also no acceleration to the jump (which I don't love). There is not a ton in the way of actual difficult platforming, thankfully, as the main focus is on dispatching enemies. But even then, you can just run to the right to avoid enemies in most levels, which is nice because they just keep spawning 2 at a time forever.

While you start out with just a sword and shurikens, you can enter hidden rooms (clearly marked with a heart icon) to pick up new permanent weapons (including a boomerang and a thrown bomb witn an interesting fied arc) or stocks of limited use abilities (including invincibility, screen-clearing bombs, and shadow duplication). The game also partially of fully refills your health bar after every boss fight, so it actually manages to feel almost modern with its lighter difficulty and host of options.

With short (almost skippable) levels and 1-3 bosses per level, it's basically a boss rush game. It almost feels like a proto-Alien Soldier, especially with the deep weapon arsenal. If only the movement felt a fraction as good as Alien Soldier. Thankfully, while some bosses are reused, most are original and pretty memorable, despite their limited movesets. There's a lady who can turn into cloth to avoid damage and a frog-looking dude who crawls around and throws frogs at you, and once you beat him you fight a giant actual frog who spits tiny frogs at you. Another big plus is that enemies and bosses (for the most part) do not hurt you by simply touching you, only when they are attacking.

At one point, after a dozen or so short linear levels, Kamen no Ninja Akakage suddenly opens up and you can freely roam between previous levels in order to collect 5 pieces of a scroll that you need to continue. This is definitely going on my list of cool interesting Famicom games. I don't know how Shouei was able to make such a good game after their previous failures, but I'm glad they managed to surprise me.

4/5, a boss rush platformer with a ton of weapon options and a gentle difficulty