Ninja Five-O - Game beaten on every difficulty

What I did in the game: Game beaten on every difficulty.

The One Picture I have taken: Difficulty Select screen (Gold Star for each Difficulty you beat).

The GBA Holy Grail for many, thanks for it being so expensive to buy online. I think it created almost an urban legend about how amazing this game was because of said price. I just went and checked on eBay before writing this, and yeah, its still over CAN $1000 for a CIB copy, and CAN $400 for the cart alone. CRAZY! Thankfully, Limited Run Games and Konami re-released this on Switch, but the price was still kinda high for a stand-alone retro release, but it eventually got a big discount recently, which is when I finally bought it. It was also my first time playing it, so I was eager to know if it was really that good...and yeah, it was. Not $1000 good, not even the greatest GBA game of all time, but a 8/10 good!

Ninja Five-O is what you get when you mix Ninja Gaiden, Shinobi/Shadow Dancer and Bionic Commando togheter. You have infinite Shuriken, a Katana and a Grappling Hook. The first two are self-explained, but the grappling hook will be your main method of moving around quickly enough. It's really easy to use, and will allow you to wall-jump, spin around a platform, fly around in the air. The hook made what would have been a pretty standard ninja games more enjoyable. Other than that, you have five zone to beat, each with 4 Stages (including one boss Stage in each Zone), and many hostages to save à la Shinobi, but unlike Shinobi, you don't need to save them to reach the exit, they're only here for bonus points. Your goal is always to find the red key to open the red door and complete the stage. Graphic-wise, there's nothing extraordinary, and the same song is played way too often, to a point where it sometimes feel like an unfinished Konami project (which may explain why the high price tag because maybe of low unit production? I don't know). But the action is amazing, and worth a playthrough if you can get it on the cheap.

Comments