Little Ninja Brothers was one of my favorite games on the NES. The problem is almost no one has even heard of it. Culture Brain is one of those now defunct developers that never really hit it big. I was surprised to learn later in life that they released several sequels to this 8-bit title, and also several smaller games for the Game Boy. It’s surprising that they continued localizing their games when seemingly no one cared. Today we’re going to take a look at one of these Game Boy versions. Ninja Boy released in late 1990 for the platform. This title made some changes by simplifying the formula and ditching the RPG elements I loved so much on the NES. Is it still worth playing? Let’s take a look.
Culture Brain, and this series in particular, always injected a lot of humor in their stories. Unfortunately Ninja Boy has none of this. What I mean is that it has no real story. You go straight from the title screen right to gameplay. I’m not particularly disappointed with this (it was common for the era) but it gave the developers no chance to be hilarious as they often were. After a bit of digging I managed to find a synopsis that simply states you’re playing as the main character Jack who is out to rescue a princess. It’s basically a non-canonical spin-off. It’s fine because this is a Game Boy title, but still, I loved the introductory scenes in the original game.
Ninja Boy is a semi-overhead 2D action title. To simplify it the game plays kind of like a beat ‘em up, but it’s pretty limited in scope. There’s also no two-player mode which is kind of a bummer. As Jack you have to punch and jump your way through thirty some-odd stages full of enemies. When you defeat a certain number, or gain enough points, a doorway opens up and you move on to the next area. Pretty easy, right? The thing is this game is so cryptic I don’t really know if it’s points or number of enemies killed that lets you move on. It seemed like sometimes the doors open at random. All I know is that I fought enemies and collected points, and was able to unlock the way forward. That’s enough for me.
Gameplay is very simplistic. That’s not really a good thing in this case. You spend almost all of your time punching things here. Be it enemies or rocks Ninja Boy demands a fair amount of button mashing. The reason you’ll be hitting boulders is because these hold power-ups. There are those that simply give your more points, or others that increase Jack’s abilities. For example different shoes alter his movement and general characteristics. There’s a pair that allow him to walk faster, another that allows him to walk across water, as well as a third set that give him the ability to traverse spikes without taking damage. There are some offensive items as well. From these Jack can gain the power to throw shurikens, give him explosive punches thus increasing his attack power, and there’s even one that lets you use a sword. The variety of these is decent actually.
The stages are also adequate and throw enough new stuff at you to keep these mildly interesting. The first few are populated only by rocks and enemies. As you move on Ninja Boy throws more and more hazards at you. These include pits, water, and even moving platforms. Yeah it doesn’t sound that special but when you’ve just been contending with enemies and stones it’s actually a nice change. Each stage also has a hidden bonus level wherein you punch moving fruit (or at least that’s what I assume it is) to get extra points. There are also several warps to skip ahead. In these you can skip past an entire world, and sometimes two. The thing is these are super common. Ninja Boy isn’t a particularly long game and takes around a half hour to complete. This can be cut in half using the warps.
Ninja Boy was designed as a single screen experience. It’s clear the stages were intended to fill the screen (as per it’s predecessor) but due to the hardware size that wasn’t possible. Culture Brain opted to make everything bigger than ants so the viewpoint has to scroll in order to encompass each area. Some of the later stages are divided into multiple sections. Levels never get too complicated even with this mechanic, and they each take only a minute or two to complete. What’s kind of cool is the fact that they all have just one exit, and when the door is opened enemies move faster and are more aggressive as you make your way to it. This is one of the few genuinely interesting mechanics in Ninja Boy.
Even for being so simple gameplay has a few problems. For one thing the hit detection is all over the place. Because you can move both up/down and left/right lining up just right to damage an enemy is annoying. To make matters worse some enemies can only be dispatched via specific means. Early foes are beaten with simple punches. That’s fine, and how the rest of the game should have been. In later areas you’ll encounter enemies that are only defeated by being jumped on, and others where the sword is the only tool that puts them out of their misery. I didn’t like this. What’s the point of offering you multiple attacks if you’re stuck using one against certain enemies? I get the point of this mechanic but it just isn’t interesting here.
Ninja Boy isn’t particularly challenging, and it doesn’t have very much content. The thirty plus stages don’t take very long to complete and the enemies rarely put up a fight. Simply jumping around is all I had to do in order to stay out of their reach. Really the main challenge has to do with technical issues. Some enemies can take multiple hits before they perish, and the bad hit detection raises several problems with this. Due to the size of the icons and poor screen resolution it can also be difficult to tell which items are what. At least there’s nothing that can hurt you as far as these go, and so you’re free to just snatch up everything. Due to these issues the game just isn’t very fun to play. Ninja Boy is a chore, and offers very little in terms of variety or polish.
While the game itself doesn’t look terrible there are several technical issues holding the graphics back. I mentioned earlier that the sprites can be difficult to tell apart as far as items go. On top of this Ninja Boy suffers from the typical Game Boy flickering effect. When too many enemies are on-screen, or when the action gets heavy it can be a struggle to see anything. Aside from these problems Ninja Boy is an alright looking game. Some of the sprites are ripped straight out of the NES version but are blown up on the little screen. I just wish there was more visual variety. While the worlds each have their own themes they look too similar to one another. The soundtrack is also a little boring. There aren’t a lot of different tracks and they’re pretty limited. At least the music fits thematically.
