ZX SPECTRUM NINJA COVERS

You know what the 1980s had? The ZX Spectrum, Britain’s premier home computer for lovers of very rubbery keyboards. The 1980s also saw ninjas reaching the peak of their pop-culture influence. If only someone had thought to combine the two! Oh wait, they did. Many, many times. There are more ninjas on the ZX Spectrum than in Godfrey Ho’s filmography, and for your viewing pleasure I have assembled a collection of cover art from some of those games. Some of it may be amateurish by today’s standards, but you cannot deny that these are indeed games with ninjas in them. Apart from the ones where you look at them and think to yourself “that’s clearly not a ninja,” I mean. But hey, who are we to judge what a ninja looks like? Have you ever seen a ninja in real life? No, you haven't. That’s kind of the point.

Ninja

Let’s begins, as seems appropriate, with a game simply titled Ninja. I wonder if there was a meeting where the creators sat down to think of a name and were delighted to find that every other ninja game was called “ninja this” and “ninja that” but the name Ninja remained unclaimed. That’s serendipity, that it. As for the cover, it’s not bad at all. It’s got a guy who looks like a ninja on it, which is a good start, even if he did get a bit overambitious when designing his ninja claws. Having a two-for-one sale on spikes, were they? Those things must be forever getting tangled up with each other, and I can only imagine the carnage that would ensue if he stored them in the same pocket as his headphones. A closer look reveals a few other quirks: this one’s totally on me, but at first glance I thought the victims in the bottom left were wearing aprons, making me think that the ninja was terminating the staff of his local B&Q. Then there’s the fist at the bottom, positioned in a way that gives the impression that the ninja keeps it tucked in his trousers until the moment is right for it to strike, swiftly and without mercy, from out of his open fly.

Ninja Commando

Poor old Ninja Commando, his ninja face-mask doesn’t fit quite right and it must be very unpleasant to be running around doing your ninja business with the constant sensation that your mask’s about to slip over the end of your nose. I did try to decipher the writing on his headband, but I only got as far as tentatively identifying the first character as the number seven, so if you’ve got any better suggestions let me know otherwise I’m going to assume he’s been a ninja for seven years and his co-workers got him a special headband to celebrate. Maybe it’ll give him the confidence to defeat that much larger red ninja.

Ninja Massacre

Well, no cover art is ever going to live up to that title, is it? It’s relatively action-packed, I suppose, but I’m not sure I’d describe it as a massacre. A ruckus, possible. Ninja Fracas at the outside. The most interesting thing about it is the relaxed demeanour of the man in the background who’s being stabbed in the face. That’s the unbendable will that martial arts training gives you.

Ninja Master

In which Conan the Barbarian meets his most dangerous foe: an out-of-scale ninja who catches him in a deadly ambush. Makes sense to me, if you can take down Conan then you’ve truly earned the title of Ninja Master. He clearly knows what he’s doing, he’s using a flying kick to disarm his opponent while the barbarian’s distracted by Cinderella’s castle.

If that ninja looks familiar to you, it might be because you’ve seen the poster for the “classic” Golan-Globus movie Enter the Ninja. Conan does not appear in that movie, so sadly this cover is as close as we’re ever likely to get to seeing Conan vs. the Ninja Clan.

Bionic Ninja

Hey, I’d recognise that midriff anywhere: that’s RoboCop’s abdomen! Okay, RoboCop’s abdomen with a big scoop taken out of it, but still. I’m not sure how stealthy a mechanical ninja is going to be, but on the plus side he can manufacture his own clouds of disorienting smoke. Oh, and according to the back of the case his name is Ninjabot 1. Make sure you wear your plastic hood when you go out to slay your enemies, Ninjabot 1. It’s forecast rain.

BMX Ninja

I think I’ve mentioned this before somewhere else on the internet, but that is clearly a samurai and not a ninja. Samurai fight by a code of honour, and would never stoop to knocking a child off a skateboard, not even if that skateboard happens to be the ugliest thing ever crafted by human hands. The full-face helmet, combined with the samurai deelyboppers, (I assume that’s the technical term,) kinda make the BMX Ninja look like a Gundam, don’t you think? I know they put out a new Gundam series every two minutes – gotta keep those shelves stocked with toy robots – so here’s my pitch for the next iteration: Gundams on Bicycles. That’s it, everything else is the same but all the mechs ride around on appropriately-sized bicycles. It might make some of the fight sequences a little awkward, but any problems can be glossed over by having one of the characters pop a wheelie.

Ninja Scooter Simulator

Here’s one I’ve definitely written about before, in the article about the game itself, but I couldn’t not include it on this list because c’mon, it’s called Ninja Scooter Simulator. That’s the kind of thing that just makes you glad humanity bothered to evolve its way out of the primordial ooze. All the salient points about this one are covered in the earlier article, but I’m still bemused that the ninja appears to be wearing loafers and I still have no idea how that back wheel is supposed to be affixed to the scooter. Oh, and the ninja seems to be trying to cast a magical spell on his sword. Look, buddy, I’m sure you have just as many questions as the rest of us but I don’t think you’re going to find the answers in your sword. Did I mention that you don’t actually play as a ninja in this game? Incredible.

Oriental Hero

One of the problems with wearing the all-concealing black attire of the ninja is that you don’t get much sun. Even I’ve got more of a tan than this ninja, and I shun the daylight like a vampire with meningitis. He has a defiant stance, this ninja, in that he’s defying you not to look at his exposed nipple. That’s his plan, you get hypnotised by the nipple and then bam, he throws his pet snake in your face. The old Sneaky Snake Nip-Whip, the ultimate sure-killing technique.

Shinobi

Time for some not-terrible artwork with the Spectrum port of Sega’s classic Shinobi, and apart from the logo making me crave liquorice there’s nothing wrong with this one. All right, so Joe Musashi looks less like he’s framed by the setting sun and more like he’s about to be turned to paste by an oncoming train, but aside from that it’s good. It’ll give you a sympathetic knee ache if you look at it for too long, though.

Ninja Hamster

Admittedly I’m not a zoologist or anything but that isn’t a hamster. I don’t know what it is, but hamster is right out. A cracked-out Ewok, possibly. Whatever it is, it’s shaved its limbs and is taking a rare pleasure in slapping that mouse. I’m getting conflicting messages about how much the Ninja Hamster’s enemies really want him dead, too: the mouse is wearing boxing gloves, presumably because he thought this was all going to be a bit of harmless exercise, but the crocodile is carrying a  mace. Personally, I think the crocodile has the right idea. The Ninja Hamster needs to be dealt with as harshly as possible. Just look at his face, he’s way too into the violence. Sure, he’s knocking people out with unarmed combat now, but give it a few months and he’ll be having all the woodland critters lined up and shot.

International Ninja Rabbits

Having played the Commodore 64 version of Ninja Rabbits, I can assure you that “Microvalue” is a very appropriate label for it to be released on.
There’s nothing that says a ninja can’t also learn karate – everyone should have a hobby, after all – but it’s annoying me more than I’d like to admit that the star of International Ninja Rabbits is wearing a karate gi and not a ninja outfit. Not even a mask! I guess he wants to make damn sure everyone knows he’s a ninja rabbit and not a common-or-garden human ninja. It makes a real mockery of that "ninja combat" blurb, because he's obviously using karate, but more importantly whoever designed this cover managed to make the promise of "ninja combat" look boring. You wouldn't think such a thing could even be possible, but here we are.

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles

The glut of animal-themed ninjas is surely the result of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ runaway success, although ironically the word “ninja” was scrubbed from their name and replaced with “hero” in the UK, as “ninja” was deemed to be inherently violent and liable to drive British kids to silently assassinate their friends in the school playground. Don’t worry, they’re the same four radical turtle bros you know and love. Leonardo still leads, Donatello continues in his suspiciously vague role of “doing machines” and Michelangelo still sits splay-legged with his crotch on full display for all the world to see. What, were you expecting decorum? He grew up in a sewer.

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: The Coin-Op

There’s another TMNT game. It’s a decent approximation of the cartoon’s style, although the turtles’ grimacing faces make it clear that skateboarding through an open sewer pipe is not the tubular thrill-ride they thought it would be, but they can’t lose face by admitting it was a bad idea.

Last Ninja 2

Here’s the grammatically confusing Last Ninja 2, and when you are drawing a large number two for your cover art, at what point do you have to concede that it’s gotten away from you a little and your two is now too big? Okay, okay, so I’ll admit that this is a decent cover for a game about a shogun who travels through time and conquers New York, even if it doesn’t feel particularly ninja-y. Why, those could just as easily be the eyes of a mad wizard, vengeful ghost of a mafia boss or any other entity that might want to take over Manhattan. It needs a headband with some unrelated Japanese symbols on it, maybe a few shurikens. Hey, that’s a good point – all these ninja covers and not a single throwing star between them! It’s probably for the best given the, ahem, unpolished nature of most of this artwork. Any shurikens involved would probably have looked as though they’d been crafted using the same production method we used as kids: cutting rough star shapes out of Coke cans using a pair of rusty tin snips. It's a technique that leaves you with shurikens that don't fly very well and won't stick in things when thrown, but handling them will slice up your fingers like you approached Freddy Krueger for an ill-advised high five.

Ninja Remix

There are so many ninjas on the Spectrum that we’ve reached a point of ninjas within ninjas. The big ninja seems tense or at least very warm, the sweat pouring down his nose serving as a good example of why you shouldn’t keep your head completely covered all the time. The little ninja in his eye? Not so much. That ninja’s having the time of their life. They’re not doing a flying kick, they’re leaping into the air and clicking their heels together at the sheer joy of being a ninja. My best guess is that they’ve just seen their careers advisor from high school. The shadowy world of espionage in feudal Japan is difficult to break into, is it, Mr. Johnson? Well, who needs a back-up plan now!?

Legend of Kage

It might seem like a bit of a stretch, but the game’s blurb describes Kage as “a young ninja” and besides, there’s no way I was going to let that outfit slide. Who knew they had mankinis back then? Kage is out to rescue a kidnapped princess (as though there’s any other kind of princess) and he must have been given this task when the rest of the royal family saw him and said “look at what this weirdo is wearing, he must be pretty bloody brave.” Technically it’s a pretty good cover, with some dynamic cartoon action and a man in the background who appears to be carrying a carton of french fries on each ear, but I just can’t get past Kage’s clothes. It’s not even the near nudity and prospect for some truly bizarre tan lines, it’s that it looks so damned uncomfortable. You’re a ninja, Kage. Your uniform is essentially pyjamas. I would start seeing that snuggliness as a perk of the job, if I were you.

The Ninja Warriors

The only thing “incredible but true” about that tagline is that it’s truly, incredibly inaccurate. I don’t even understand what part of The Ninja Warriors is supposed to be true. That ninja warriors once existed? Because I think even that is up for debate, or at least the idea that real ninjas did a lot of warrior-ing is. They certainly didn’t fight cyborgs in a futuristic dictatorship, which is what happens in The Ninja Warriors. I feel the composition of this piece is rather unfair on the red ninja, too, especially considering she’s the player one character of Ninja Warriors. For a ninja it’s probably a relief to know your face is obscured, but that’s what the masks are for.

Shadow Dancer

You know, I always thought wolves had necks, but it seems I was mistaken. Apparently they’re all neck. Thanks for clearing that up, Shadow Dancer. Also, it’s nice to see Lawrence of Arabia’s still getting work.

Shadow Warriors

Or Ninja Gaiden to you and me, and here’s a cover included because a) it’s good and b) it’s incredibly “of its time.” There’s no way you could place that artwork at any other period than the late eighties / early nineties. Bright colours, a ruddy great ninja, and even graffiti-style lettering that adorned thousands of market-stall t-shirts during my youth. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, even without checking, those aren’t real Japanese characters. However, the Japanese should definitely adopt them as the pictograms for “gnarly” and “x-treme.”

Saboteur!

Finally for today, my absolute favourite ninja cover on the ZX Spectrum with Saboteur, a cover that has most certainly earned that exclamation mark in the title. Where can you start with this masterpiece? The title's sort of accurate, I guess. If you're trying to sabotage something, then murdering everyone in a three-mile radius will probably get the job done. Or how about the fact that the ninja has upgraded from primitive weapons like the sword to a fully-loaded MAC-10? He’s even put a silencer on it, as a gesture towards his ninja heritage. Then there’s his face, an expression of complete sensory overload, the look of a man who was pushed to the limit by the loud noises and flashing lights until he broke and began operating on pure instinct like a puppy during a fireworks show. No, the very best thing about it is that the ninja isn’t even looking at the man he’s kicking in the head. He’s a busy guy, he doesn’t have time to stare deeply into the eyes of each person whose life he snuffs out. I get the impression that the saboteur is very easily distracted, and should probably consult his doctor about potential ADD treatments.

There we go then, a hefty chunk – but not all – of the ninja-related covers of the ZX Spectrum. What did we learn from this look at the ancient shadow arts? That ninjas never use shurikens and they like to stand out in the open and fight, mostly, putting ninjas in the same category as professional boxers and half the clientèle of my hometown’s pubs at kicking out time. What a mysterious breed they are.

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THE NINJA (MASTER SYSTEM)

It's a videogame about ninjas. I am contractually obligated to write about a videogame starring ninjas at least once every couple of months. If I do not fill this obligation, my Internet Blogging (Pointless Nostalgia Division) Permit is taken away. So, here's Sega's 1986 Master System game The Ninja. It's got ninjas in it.

That's right, I'm not just a ninja, I'm the ninja. I am the pinnacle, the apogee, the very essence of ninja combat and none may stand against the shadowy martial arts that I possess. Or, as plurals in Japanese don't have a suffix attached, "The Ninja" refers to ninjakind as a whole. Given that this is an 8-bit action game, which do you think is more likely: that the player controls the only shuriken-tossing master of assassination in town or that this game features lots and lots of ninjas?

Before you get thrown into the action, there's a bit of story waffle. It's nothing particularly interesholy shit stop the presses! The princess... has been kidnapped!! Well, that's a shocker. Only Kazamaru (that's you) can save her from her imprisonment in the basement of Ohkami Castle. It's a good job Kazamaru is a ninja and not a farmer or a travelling peddler then, isn't it?
It's interesting that The Ninja's plot is a standard "rescue-the-princess" affair, because it's actually a reworking of a 1985 arcade game called Ninja Princess, AKA Sega Ninja.

It starred a female ninja called Princess Kurumi, and while it's basically the same game it certainly looked a lot cutesier than the Master System version. The owners of the eight-bit home consoles were naturally ruggedly, manly types and thus the game was given a fresh coat of slightly drab paint and Princess Kurumi was replaced with Mr. Kazamaru to appeal to the masculine sensibilities of whoever was buying Master System games in 1986.

Here we go, then, off to save the princess in our ploofy cyan trousers and sleeveless denim jacket. Yes, that guy is the hero of The Ninja, not the other bloke who looks like, well, a ninja. He's your enemy, and to defeat him you must throw a knife into him. The Ninja is a run-n-gun game, or at least a run-n-shuriken game, and the basic gameplay doesn't take much explaining: advance up the screen, killing any ninjas you encounter. One fire button makes Kazamaru throw a knife in whichever of the eight directions he's facing, while the other makes you throw knives directly up the screen no matter what direction you're facing. At first this sounds rather redundant, but it is in fact extremely useful, and if you're like me you'll end up using the "fire straight ahead" button far more than the other one.

One-hit kills are the order of the day, both for you and every non-boss enemy, so advancing carefully is generally preferable to charging off ahead and bellowing like a maniac. That's what these sword-wielding ninjas are doing. They have no ranged attack, but Kazamaru does. Remember these ninjas for their bravery, but pity them for their stupidity.

By the way, this is not a rock. It's a ninja pretending to be a rock. All the other ninjas laughed at him when he skipped Advanced Poisoned Darts and Teleportation 101 during his time at Ninja University in order to devote his time to becoming the best boulder-mimic of the Edo period, but who's laughing now? That's right, no-one. Okay, so maybe Kazamaru is laughing a little, because these rock-ninjas are extremely obvious and take far too long to transform, allowing you to stand nearby and casually whip shurikens at them until their transformation is complete, killing them the instant they reveal themselves.

After killing a few ninjas, the boss appears. He appears to have a tagine for a head, so I'm going to call him Tagenie the Ninja Enforcer. He's wearing a hi-vis fluorescent tabard, but his otherwise admirable commitment to health and safety is undermined by his insistence on throwing a deadly weapon around. It's that thing next to Kazamaru's head, the one that looks like two lumps of metal connected by a spring. I have no idea what it's supposed to be, and even if I wanted to ask Tagenie what it was, he wouldn't be able to hear me because his head's stuck in a north African cooking utensil. So I just threw shurikens at him until he died, which didn't take long.

These really are rocks. Stage two has you running from right to left, avoiding the rolling boulders and the occasional ninja who pops up from the dirt. The boulders are by far the bigger threat. These aren't very good ninjas we're dealing with.

The boss is Tagenie again, and that's also the case for the next, ooh, eight stages or so. The evil daimyo of Ohkami Castle has a lot of faith in this guy. Tagenie can throw shurikens now, which makes him a little tougher, but if you throw your projectile into an enemy projectile, you knock it out of the air with a strangely satisfying "tink!" sound effect.

Stage three is like stage one, but with added dogs. Or possibly ninjas pretending to be dogs, because they briefly leave a human-shaped outline when you kill them. Other than the dogs, it's essentially the same as the first stage, so I'll take this opportunity to talk about The Ninja's power-ups. There are two types of scroll to collect that make you a better ninja: blue ones that increase your running speed to make you faster than even the most finely-honed ninja dogs, and red ones that change your throwing knives into shurikens. The shurikens are vastly superior to the knives because they travel through multiple enemies, making them almost mandatory for the later stages. If you lose a life you also lose your power-ups until you can find another scroll, so obviously the best course of action is to not die.

Neat, a new background and a new enemy. These are lady ninjas, and here you can see one of them leaping from her hiding spot behind that building with the intention of sticking her katana down Kazamaru's ear. I like the lady ninjas, they've got a bit more panache, and their battle plan of cautious observation is more effective than the usual "run towards our target like a gaggle of angry yet impotent geese" or "pretend to be a rock". I mean come on, look at these clowns:

Do I even need to include a link to Yakety Sax? I can't imagine many people could see this embarrassing display of ninja ineptitude without the Benny Hill theme popping into their heads.
You might also notice that you can walk backwards and return to parts of the stage that you already progressed from. This allows Kazamaru to execute the most powerful attack in his arsenal: running the hell away. Yep, because many of the enemies simply charge at you, the best way to defeat them is to get close enough to annoy them and them walk backward, firing shurikens upward using the "fire shurikens upwards" button when they bunch together. I told you that button was more useful than it sounds.

For stage five, Kazamaru floats down the river on a log, and due to the lack of a jump button you can only move onto a different log when it drifts next to the one you're currently standing on. It's a pretty fun stage, and all credit to Sega for mixing up the gameplay a little bit because the same walk-backwards-and-throw-shurikens gameplay could get a little stale after ten-plus stages.
This is also where you'll start getting some real use out of Kazamaru's other defensive ninja technique: if you press both buttons together, you'll momentarily vanish in a puff of smoke, turn invisible and become completely immune to enemy attacks. You can even move while you're invisible, and as you can imagine it gets you out of some hairy situations, like being trapped on a log while ninjas throw sharp bits of metal at you.

In the next stage, the river become shallow enough for our hero to hop off his log and explore the tranquil streets of Ohkami castle's town. It'd be more peaceful if it wasn't packed with rowdy ninja teens, hanging around outside the local shops and hurling shurikens at passers-by, but I suppose that's where I come in. While I may not have rescued the princess yet, I've already done the populace a favour by eliminating the delinquent element.

Things in town don't stay peaceful for long, and the next stage sees Kazamaru running the gauntlet against a herd of horses. Herd's the right word for a group of horses, right? For a second there I thought it was "flock". A noble flock of horses, sailing through the blue skies. Look, it's late, alright? Give me a break.
The guy at the top-right of the screen is an enemy. He breathes fire. Extremely short-ranged fire, and as such he really has to put his all into chasing the hero down. Sadly, this does not leave him out of breath and unable to expel fiery death from his lungs once he catches up with you, but it's such an amusing thought that I'm going to pretend that's what happens.

Further into the town, and Kazamaru gets a chance to relax in the gardens. I mean he can relax now, because I've killed all the ninjas. Pay no mind to that ninja buried up to his neck in the dirt. He's only doing it for the attention.

We're up to stage nine now, and there's a wall that must be climbed. It's okay, our hero can still throw shurikens and become intangible even when he's hanging from a rock face by one hand. Having realised that their previous tactics weren't really working, the ninjas on this stage try to surround Kazamaru at any opportunity. All this means is that you feel extra smug when they all throw shurikens at you at once and you simply vanish and let them fly through you. If only those shurikens could hurt other ninjas, it'd be perfect.

It's a long climb, but I've just about reached the top and it's be a real shame if anything were to kill me now.

Okay, so I might have let myself get killed just so I could show off this animation, but I honestly thought it was kind of a neat thing to have in the game. Sega could easily have just made Kazamaru disappear or explode or something when he gets hit, but instead they bothered to show him falling all the way down past all that progress he just made. It's a little thing, but in a game this basic it's the little things that make the difference.

Tagenie is waiting for you up here, too, protected by some stray ninjas and these brown lumps that are falling out of what I can only hope aren't the castle's garderobes. Unluckily for him, Tagenie isn't any more effective when perched on a castle wall than he was on more solid ground and he's fairly easy to get rid of. It's the last time we'll be seeing him too. God speed, my stew-cooking friend.

Okay, so now that I've entered the castle itself I'll admit that I'm kinda running out of things to say about The Ninja. Throw shurikens at bad guys, that's about it. Happily, while The Ninja might be basic it does what it does rather well. Movement is fluid and responsive, the action is fast-paced enough and the stages are short enough that their repetitiveness never really becomes an issue, and Kazamaru has enough tricks up his sleeves that he always feels capable despite the hovering spectre of one-hit deaths.

There's a new boss! He's got two pistols, John Woo style. You'd think this would make him a more threatening prospect than Tagenie, what with the firearms and all, but his choice of weapons actually makes him easier to beat. Simply stand directly below the boss and throw shurikens upwards - your projectiles will destroy the boss' bullets, and enough of them will sneak through to kill him. It's all a little underwhelming, really.

The final two stages are pretty much identical - short corridors packed with brightly-coloured samurai and the same pistol-packing boss at the end of each. They're also the easiest stages of the game: as mentioned, the bosses pose no real threat and the standard enemies can easily be dealt with by teleporting backwards. It's all a bit of an anticlimax, really, and as the last boss falls I hope the princess didn't see any of it because it'll devalue my heroics if she realises she could have just walked out almost unopposed at any time.

But wait, what's this? I'm not allowed to enter the castle's basement? Well, I don't know who's planning to stop me, given that I've murdered everyone in a ten-mile radius, but okay. Oh, secret scrolls, you say? Well, I'm terribly sorry I didn't interrupt my princess-rescuing mission to hunt around for some rolled-up bits of paper. I suppose I'll have to go back to the start of the game and find them, then.
Okay, to give some credit to The Ninja, it does actually mention that you must find all the secret scrolls to see the true ending during the intro crawl, and the game is kind enough to only send you back to the last stage that you didn't find the scroll on, but that doesn't stop finding the scrolls themselves from being the kind of frustrating, opaque bullshit that 8-bit games seemed to revel in.

The first one is easy enough to locate because it's dropped by an enemy, but the other four are hidden in that deeply infuriating "stand in this specific spot and face up" or "shoot this otherwise unremarkable statue five times" manner that I has to be my most hated aspect of retro gaming. There's a difference between exploration and standing on every square inch of the gameplay area and throwing knives around like a tornado passing through the cutlery district.
I eventually found all the scrolls. Did I use a guide? Of course I did, I've yet to reach quite the levels of idiocy require to do it blind. Give me time, though. I'm sure I'll get there.

Once you've collected all the scrolls, you are told the secret method required to enter the real final stage, which of course is some daft "stand here, face right, fire and vanish" nonsense. This gets you into Ohkami castle's basement, which they apparently use to store both their kidnapped princesses and that winter's supply of firewood.

A maze, just what I was looking forward to. Well, it's not really a maze as such, you just have to choose the right path when heading forward or you'll reach a dead end and have to backtrack, and this is the only stage in which the enemies respawn so it can get fairly difficult. If only Kazamaru's ninja skills extending to climbing over these not particularly tall logs.

In the end, I gambled on the final boss being a guy with two pistols, and my risk paid off as I charged ahead, teleported my way past all the enemies and filled the final boss with shurikens before they could catch me. Not the most exciting way to end my quest, but it'll do for me.

That's your lot for The Ninja. Peace is restored, the princess is rescued and probably won't be kidnapped for another, ooh, three weeks. Good job, Kazamaru.

I suppose "they lived happily ever after" doesn't mean they lived happily together, but I sort of assume they do, mainly because I think Kazamaru has killed anyone who might have been a rival for the princess' affections.
I think I've said enough about The Ninja for you to make up your mind as to whether you'd like to play it, but I will say that I definitely enjoyed it. It's simple but fun, hard without ever being cruel, and playing it with a guide to the location of those bloody scrolls on hand immediately removes the game's biggest flaw. My only regret is that I never found out what Tagenie was cooking up in that head of his.

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