WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Revenge of the Ninja

Developer: Wolf Team Publisher: Renovation Release: 1993

I’m not sure if this is just a personal blind spot or if it has to do with the side of the globe I grew up on, but whenever I think about laserdisc games in the arcade my thoughts immediately go to Dragon’s Lair, it’s sequel and spin-off, and maybe a bit of American Laser Games. But the laserdisc game was alive and well with Japanese publishers as well. It makes sense when you figure that Sega is generally credited with introducing the technology to arcades in 1982 with the release of Astron Belt.

Japanese publishers Data East, Konami, Taito and Universal Entertainment soon followed suit, releasing a bevy of FMV games in the ensuing years, many of them featuring animation from established studios like Toei, Madhouse, and Tokyo Movie Shinsha.

And while I think almost every one of them made their way to North American arcades, I honestly knew almost nothing about them until some of them started popping up on my Sega CD via Wolf Team and Renovation Products.

Revenge of the Ninja is one such port, based on the Taito game Ninja Hayate from 1984. This is one of the four classic laserdisc games brought to the system by Wolf Team: Cobra Command, Road Avenger, and Time Gal being the other three.

The dark wizard Lougi has kidnapped Princess Terri. Hayate, his father having been mortally wounded while attempting to save her, sets off to face the challenges of the Castle of Evil in an attempt to destroy Lougi, save the Princess and protect his village.

I love the name Castle of Evil.

The gameplay here is very similar to Dragon’s Lair, in that each level features a relatively short sequence where the player has to interpret on-screen cues and press buttons at precisely the right instant in order to proceed. Press the wrong button or react too slowly and you get to watch Hayate die in one of a dozen different, usually comical ways.

Actually, I’d say the levels here are a bit shorter than those found in Dragon’s Lair. Both Revenge of the Ninja and Time Gal (the other Taito laserdisc game ported to the Sega CD) feature levels that can include as little as four or five button presses to complete. Another difference between Revenge of the Ninja and Dragon’s Lair is that the game will actually pop directional arrows and button icons when you need to take action, as opposed to deciphering the light flashes in the animation itself. Though, if you’re looking for that kind of challenge, the hardest difficulty level comes close. It still flashes icons on the screen when you have to perform an action, but doesn’t tell you exactly what you have to do. Back when the game first came out Renovation would send game completion certificates to anyone who sent them photographic proof that they had finished the game at the highest difficulty.

Because I’m covering these games in alphabetical order, this is only the second laserdisc port from Wolf Team we’ve seen in the WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL thus far. Revenge of the Ninja, however, is the final one of them to see release on the Sega CD, and the only one to be released in an oversized jewel case rather than a cardboard box. What’s more, this port was never released in Japan. Only the US and Brazil got to save Princess Terri on their 16-bit optical drives!

This is one of the aspects of the Sega CD that I love. While these Japanese laserdisc games did come to various systems in Japan, the ports rarely seemed to make it to North America.