The PC Engine version of Sega‘s Shinobi was developed and published by Asmik Corporation in 1989, and it features some interesting changes to the arcade version.

The most notable difference is that the big boss guy of the first stage – Ken Oh – appears at the end of each sublevel, to throw a fireball at you, before disappearing. When I first saw him, I was shocked and ran away, and when I returned he had gone… I think this is a nice touch – adding tension to the game; previewing the upcoming boss battle, and also giving them an opportunity to kill you early (unless you run away – I doubt very much that you can kill him so early in the game). And when you do eventually face-off against him in the final sublevel, he’s extremely difficult to take out. In fact, I’d have to say that this port is even more difficult than the arcade version. It is ridiculously hard in places…

This version of the game is also missing the bonus stage, where you throw shuriken at the advancing ninja. Which is surprising, but not a great loss.

There are a few other minor changes, like the timing of some of the on-screen messages, and the fact that Joe Musashi (the main character that you play) doesn’t seem to have a proper transition animation when you jump between the higher and lower platforms. Some of the enemies seem to rush you much more quickly than in the arcade original, too.

Overall, though, Shinobi on the PC Engine is a solid port, with good audio and visuals. At the time of writing, there isn’t an English translation available for this yet, but it doesn’t really matter as there’s very little text in the game anyway. There is a noise fix hack available for it, though, which is apparently useful for those playing the game on real hardware or FPGA systems.

More: Shinobi on Wikipedia
More: Shinobi on romhacking.net