Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi
Description
A.D. 1997, New York City
Having vanquished the evil crime empire, Neo Zeed, the ninja master Shinobi and his combat ninja skills were not heard from for some time. But a new threat arose, in a reptilian form that lived on vicious instinct alone. The colossal monster moved slowly and quietly, and its attack was relentless. The souls unfortunate enough to survive became hostages, and mass panic swept the streets.
It remained only for Shinobi to take action. His weapons were stealth and quickness of attack, his only allies facing overwhelming forces. Relying on Ninja weapons and magic, Shinobi fought on, assisted by his faithful dog.
Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi is similar to Shadow Dancer for home computers, and consists of five missions containing three stages each. However, there are a few differences between the two. For example, in this Sega Genesis/Mega Drive exclusive, the stages are different, and you rescue hostages rather than disarm bombs. Each mission ends up with you fighting a boss, and when you defeat each (except the final one), you also participate in a bonus stage where you must shoot all ninja flying towards you.
Some of the enemies are also quite different. Some of the lizards, which appear in later missions, leave a "lizard coin", which you can collect for bonus lives.
Spellings
- シャドー・ダンサー ザ・シークレット・オブ・シノビ - Japanese spelling
Groups +
Screenshots
Promos
Credits (Genesis version)
16 People (13 developers, 3 thanks)
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Reviews
Critics
Average score: 82% (based on 26 ratings)
Players
Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 40 ratings with 6 reviews)
The one time you thought you dodged a shuriken...
The Good
The game comes from the Shinobi series, starting from Shinobi in 1987. 5 stages, Easy controls & a good chance to get more retries makes the game looks easy and hard at the same time. With a dog that you can use, you can easily utilise him to disable one opponent while you kill others in a 4-on-1 fight situation. Power-ups helps to kill the ninjas, armored men & armored lizards in one hit. The bosses have life points that you must reduce in order to kill them. For easy mode, they have 6 points, and it increases depending on the difficulty. Try hard mode and you'll see colourful ninjas everywhere in the game.
The Bad
Some might complain on the game's one-hit-KO issue, and some might complain with the dog being a nuisance, but I'm seriously cool with it. The only issue here is that he does not have the double jumps, also remember the 1-time-use ninpo (the ninjutsu skill) restriction. Why would a ninja with an athletic build and great abilities have these restraints put on him?
The Bottom Line
A game worth playing to test your avoiding and technical skills. A must-go for this legendary game.
Genesis · by Ruz Kessler (1) · 2011
Decent game in the classic, 1987 Shinobi gameplay format
The Good
I'm pleased that this Shinobi game(actually different to the arcade Shadow Dancer, released a year prior) retained the background/foreground gameplay of the original Shinobi(an idea that may have originated in Namco's Rolling Thunder, Dec. 1986). It allows for defeating enemies with ninja-like stealth i.e jumping into the foreground/background behind your opponent and using your sword or an unarmed strike. Of course in this game, you can also command your dog to attack and immobilize an opponent, which takes some precision, as some opponents can defend against dog attacks, you have to wait till they're off-guard. Another nice addition is your mid-air strikes e.g if you time the button-push right, you'll flying-kick opponents who come near you while in mid-air.
So I think the game plays well, there are some decent bosses, the graphics and animation are good, the music is pretty good(Keisuke Tsukahara).
The Bad
It seems pretty short compared to other Shinobis, suddenly the game was telling me I was at the final boss. Arcade Shadow Dancer technically only had four stages, but it was probably longer with all the sub-stages. The final boss is really hard to beat, but even so he's not very impressive, mostly just sitting on his throne, sending ninjas at you. A better finish would've been a two stage, final boss battle, like arcade Shadow Dancer.
The Bottom Line
Better than Revenge of Shinobi(Super Shinobi) or Shinobi III (Super Shinobi II), truer to the original Shinobi and Shadow Dancer at the arcade. Ultimately disappointing, but worth playing right through once, at least.
Genesis · by Andrew Fisher (697) · 2018
Ninjas should have better armor....
The Good
Shadow Dancer had superb graphics and gameplay and the levels were very interesting. The programmers were smart enough to make it different than the arcade version by giving it more elaborate levels and different graphics.
Some complained about the graphics being different than the arcade version. However, I've played the arcade version and in my opinion the arcade version is all about eye candy and little to do with replay value. Arcade games tended not to have deep play mechanics. If it had been exactly like the arcade most players would have played it a few times and never come back to it.
Shadow Dancer on the Genesis actually takes some skill and strategy and has more imaginative graphics and levels than the arcade version. Its more fun.
The Bad
Its very annoying that your character drops dead upon being hit one time by any projectile, when the character in Revenge of Shinobi could take several hits before dying.
Revenge of Shinobi had great play mechanics, such as being able to double jump and shoot multiple shurikens. This ninja can't do that. He couldn't do it in the arcade either, but its strange that he would have lost such advantages in a sequel.
The Wolf who accompanies you in the game is completely worthless. It actually only served to distract me and get me killed when I played the game.
The American and UK version of the cover art is the single worst example of cover art for any video game I have ever seen. Many people avoided this game simply because of it. Sega of America did some weird things.
The Bottom Line
If Revenge of Shinobi hadn't been so wonderful this game would have been more popular. Its still an awesome game and should not be missed.
8 out 10
If you like this one you'll probably like Revenge of Shinobi and Shinobi III.
Genesis · by Majestic Lizard (670) · 2006
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Katakis | カタキス.
Wii added by Charly2.0. Windows, Macintosh, Linux added by Foxhack.
Additional contributors: j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】.
Game added November 2, 2003. Last modified April 11, 2024.