When Namco’s Rolling Thunder did well in the arcades, Sinclair User wrote in June 1988, “clones were only a matter of time. And Shinobi is probably the best of them.” Sega’s 1987 coin-op swapped Namco’s secret agent for a ninja, Joe Musashi, and gave him an unlimited supply of throwing stars, a two-level street to leap about on, and a single spell per stage that wiped every enemy off the screen. One hit from an enemy’s weapon still killed him. Retro Gamer called it “an improved variant of Namco’s excellent Rolling Thunder”, and judged that “while it was tough, it was never unfair”. The game made Musashi the hero of a series that Sega was still adding to in 2025.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Sega.
- Arcade: 1987, on Sega’s System 16 board.
- Hero: Joe Musashi, a ninja.
- Structure: five missions of three or four stages, each mission ending with a boss.
- Home versions: Master System, 1988; Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST and Amiga, 1989, published by Virgin Mastertronic; also PC Engine, NES and PC.
- Sequels: Shadow Dancer (arcade) and The Revenge of Shinobi (Mega Drive), both 1989; Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (1993); Shinobi: Art of Vengeance (2025).
The arcade game
A crime syndicate called Zeed has kidnapped children, and Retro Gamer puts Musashi’s task simply: “to rescue the kidnapped children of your clan”. He has to find and touch every hostage in a stage before he can leave it. Some hostages give him a power-up, which, as Sega Retro describes it, turns his throwing stars into a gun and his punches and kicks into a sword. The streets have an upper and a lower level, and both Musashi and some of his enemies can jump between them.
Sinclair User named the five missions by their bosses. The first ends with Ken Oh, who spits fireballs in circular patterns. The second, on the waterfront, ends with the Black Turtle, a helicopter whose “glowing front nosecone” is the target. Then come Mandara, “really odd”, and Lobster, “a bit more conventional, but harder”, and finally the Masked Ninja, which the magazine found harder still. Sega Retro gives the settings as slums, a harbour, a weapons factory, an outpost and the enemy base.
The ninja magic acted, in Retro Gamer’s description, “like a smart bomb”, and could be used once on each stage. It came in three forms: a burst of electricity, a hurricane, and “a strange spell where lots of clones sped around the screen taking out any foes in the vicinity”. Finishing a stage without it earned a bonus. Between missions came a bonus stage seen from Musashi’s own viewpoint, in which he threw shuriken at ninjas leaping towards him; hitting them all won an extra life.
Sinclair User thought its combat ideas conventional but its gameplay good enough to make it a winner, and gave it 9 for gameplay, 8 for sound and addictiveness, and 7 for graphics.
On the Master System
The Master System version was, for The Games Machine in January 1989, “another very close Sega conversion of its arcade big brother”. It changed more than that suggests. The villains became the Ring of Five, a terrorist group holding the children of world leaders hostage. Musashi now had an energy bar instead of dying in one hit, and rescuing children became optional, earning weapons and extra health instead. The magic was won in the bonus round, and took new forms: one froze every enemy on the screen, one made Musashi invincible, and “flying squirrel magic” let him fly for a short time. The Games Machine called it “one of those games that does nothing for innovation but is well presented”, and “almost worth buying a Sega console for”.
On home computers
In Britain, Virgin Mastertronic held the rights to convert Sega’s arcade games, and Binary Design programmed Shinobi for it in 1989. Computer and Video Games tried the versions together in August. “The best version of Shinobi is the C64,” it concluded, with “excellent graphics, fast action, good tunes and faithful arcade gameplay”. The Amstrad and Spectrum versions were “great fun”. The Atari ST’s graphics were “juddery”.
The computer versions had a story of their own. CRASH explained that Musashi is invited back to his old ninja school’s graduation ceremony as a guest, only for a renegade graduate called Bwah Foo to carry off the new graduates and hold them to ransom. On the Spectrum (£9.99 on cassette, £14.99 on disk) its reviewers disagreed. One gave it 85% and expected it to “keep the Bruce Lee fans among you happy”. Another, at 67%, thought it “basically Double Dragon with a few extra obstacles stuck on the ground to jump over”. The overall rating was 76%. Sinclair User gave it 75% and described the difficulty: “the easy start rapidly becomes a tough middle and a virtually impossible end.”
Other versions followed elsewhere. Asmik published one for NEC’s PC Engine in Japan in 1989, which Retro Gamer thought “decent but still sorely lacking”. Tengen published an NES version in America, and there was a PC version too.
Later history
Two sequels were developed together and released in 1989: Shadow Dancer for the arcades and The Revenge of Shinobi for the Mega Drive. Revenge replaced the one-hit deaths with an energy bar, let players choose between four kinds of magic, and added a double jump. Wireframe picked out Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (1993) as “perhaps” the series’ high point. Musashi’s grandson, also called Joe, starred in The Cyber Shinobi on the Master System in 1990, and the Game Gear had its own GG Shinobi, which Mean Machines gave 90%.
Shinobi came back on the Wii’s Virtual Console and on Xbox Live Arcade in 2009, and a version for SNK’s Neo Geo appeared in December 2024. In 2025 Sega published Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, made by Lizardcube, the studio behind Streets of Rage 4. Joe Musashi is its hero again, now “the head of the Oboro Clan”, fighting for revenge after his village is burned and his clan turned to stone.
Sources
- Retro Gamer issue 1 (Live Publishing, 2004), p. 253, Shinobi retrospective: 1987; Rolling Thunder; the kidnapped children; five missions with sub-levels and bosses; unlimited throwing stars, the gun and close-quarter attacks; the two levels; the three forms of ninja magic, once per stage; the bonus for not using it; the bonus stage and extra life; “tough, it was never unfair”; the PC Engine version.
- Sinclair User issue 75, June 1988, pp. 82–83: coin-op review (Rolling Thunder; the five bosses; the bonus levels; the ratings).
- Sega Retro, “Shinobi” (web, secondary): arcade and Master System release dates; Zeed; the power-up; the mission settings; the Master System’s health gauge, optional hostages and weapons; the NES (Tengen), PC Engine (Asmik) and PC versions; Shadow Dancer and The Revenge of Shinobi developed together; the 2009 Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade releases; the 2024 Neo Geo version. https://segaretro.org/Shinobi
- The Games Machine issue 14, January 1989, p. 58: Master System review (the Ring of Five; the magic; “almost worth buying a Sega console for”).
- Computer and Video Games issue 93, August 1989, pp. 16–17: Binary Design’s conversions; the C64, Amstrad, Spectrum and ST versions.
- CRASH issue 69, October 1989, p. 46: Spectrum review (Virgin Mastertronic/Binary Design; prices; Bwah Foo; 85%, 67% and 76% overall).
- Sinclair User issue 92, November 1989, p. 35: Spectrum review (75%).
- Retro Gamer issue 30 (2006), p. 66, The Revenge of Shinobi retrospective: Revenge as the follow-up to the 1987 coin-op; the energy bar, four types of magic and double jump.
- “Return of the ninja”, Wireframe issue 31, January 2020, p. 21: ninja timeline (Shinobi III, 1993).
- Sega Master System: A Visual Compendium (Bitmap Books), p. 180: The Cyber Shinobi (1990) and its hero, Musashi’s grandson.
- “Retroinspection: Game Gear”, Retro Gamer issue 41 (2007), p. 81: GG Shinobi and its 90% in Mean Machines.
- “(For Southeast Asia) SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance launches Friday, August 29!”, PlayStation Blog, August 2025 (web, secondary): release on 29 August 2025, Lizardcube, Joe Musashi as head of the Oboro Clan. https://blog.playstation.com/?p=409047