Platform: Game Boy Advance
Ah, Ninja Five-0 (known as Ninja Cop in Europe), where have you been all my life? Hell, judging by the quizzical expressions and vocal inflections I get when I mention playing it, it’s been missing from everyone’s life. There’s a certain following this game has that’s really only brought up when trying to trump someone on playing something obscure. I don’t run in those circles much, but this is one I’ve never heard anyone say a bad thing about when it does come up. With it having turned 15 years old, I decided to finally take it for a spin and see what all the fuss was about.
I’ll make the easy comparison and say think Shinobi meets Bionic Commando and you’ve got Ninja Five-0. It’s a platfomer with just a touch of Metroid, although the Master System game Zillion might be a more apt comparison, but I’m trying to not have too many people needing to Google the references for this thing.
You play as the titular ninja cop, Joe Osugi (perhaps a subtle nod to Shinobi’s Joe Musashi?). Joe is armed with the typical sword and shurikens. Using the sword fills up your magic meter more quickly than using your shurikens, enabling you to use your ninja magic, letting you launch a screen clearing attack or go invulnerable for a brief period. Your shurikens can be upgraded to a spread shot of fireballs and then, as if to prove he’s no Luddite, to a forward-moving, powerful laser.
His attack options are cool, but the real star of this game is the grappling hook. I am an absolute sucker for a game with a good grappling hook, and Ninja Five-0 is up there among the best. You could nearly take out the combat and still have this be incredibly fun to play. It gives you the ability to latch onto platforms and swing from them and also adjust the length of it, all stuff that’ll be familiar to Bionic Commando fans. While you can’t climb up the platform once you reach the top of them like you can in Bionic Commando, you can swing beyond the height of the platform and swoop down to it, adding some real slick movement options to your arsenal. Toss in the ability to use the hook on vertical surfaces to jump up vertical shafts and Joe Osugi makes Rad Spencer seem a bit stiff in comparison.
The five missions you go through have a few levels each and none of them are a direct, linear path. Go through a door, find a color-coded key to unlock another door, backtrack to that door, save some hostages in between, and repeat until you finish the level. It’s a simple structure, but they’re short enough that backtracking through them never feels bothersome.
Reach the last level of each mission and you’ll fight a boss. While there’s a slower, more safe method to beat each one, there are enough options with grappling points in each level that you can really let loose. My favorite was the gigantic, fire-spewing frog with a ninja on his back. It’s easy enough to figure out their patterns to safely beat them, but start using those grapple points to your advantage and you’ve got a much more interesting fight on your hands. The boss fights do a great job of giving you a bit of variety in your attack options, but the frog one left enough subtle cues that it had me reloading it a few times just to try an idea out. In a testament to great design, if I could think of it, it would let me do it. It’s weird to think that I stumbled on one my favorite boss designs in a 15 year old GBA game, but here we are.
All this talk about the game barely does it justice, so I figured I’d upload someone playing this who’s way more skilled at it than I am. It’s a real treat to watch someone who knows the game well just tear it apart. Al82 shows off the movement quite well but doesn’t come across as someone who’s dedicated themselves solely to this game. It’s entirely possible to get on equal footing with him with just a couple of playthroughs. I started the game on Easy which I regretted at first as it only lets you play the first three missions. Once I started up another playthrough on Normal, I was finding myself more confident and doing the more advanced stuff with confidence.
I can appreciate a game that does something interesting, even if its execution falters a bit, but Ninja Five-0 nails what it’s going for so completely, I have a hard time not recommending it to just about anyone. It’s fun, easy to learn, tough to master, moves incredibly well, and the level design is just impeccable. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s so damn close. It really bums me out thinking how unknown this game is. The only thing I can really fault it for is being a bit short, but it’s better to leave them wanting more, which is exactly my feeling on it. Sadly, it didn’t sell very well, coming near the tail end of the GBA’s lifespan, so I doubt we’ll be seeing more of Joe Osugi again. It’s a shame really, a DS sequel that’s more like a Metroidvania with the full map on the bottom screen is something I would have loved to see, but I guess Joe Osugi was just too good for this world.
