The Ninja is a 1987 Sega Master System release, a reworked port of Sega’s 1985 arcade game Ninja Princess. Where the arcade original cast Princess Kurumi as the lead, this version swaps in a male ninja who sets out to rescue her from the tyrant who has seized her province. The result is a top-down, horizontally scrolling run-and-gun in the mold of Commando or Gun.Smoke, sending the player through roughly a dozen stages of forest, village, and castle grounds against colour-coded ninja enemies, each with their own attack pattern — some drop from rooftops, some disguise themselves as rocks, and some chase relentlessly like ghosts.
How to Play
Move with the D-pad and throw weapons to clear a path: Button 1 throws straight ahead in whichever direction you’re facing, while Button 2 lets you throw in any direction regardless of your facing, useful against enemies attacking from the side or behind. Pressing both together makes the ninja briefly vanish, dodging an attack that would otherwise land. Collecting scroll power-ups upgrades your basic throwing knives to wider, multi-enemy shuriken, and gathering enough scrolls across the stages is required to reach the final level and confront the boss. In the browser, movement maps to the arrow keys, Z and X stand in for Buttons 1 and 2, and Enter is Start/Pause.
Tips
- Use Button 2’s omnidirectional throw against enemies attacking from an angle rather than turning to face them first — turning costs time you often don’t have.
- Prioritize collecting scroll power-ups even if it means a detour; the upgraded shuriken clears crowds far faster than the starting knives.
- Save the dual-button dodge for genuinely tight spots — it’s brief, so don’t rely on it as a substitute for reading enemy patterns.
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