Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi シャドー・ダンサー - Genesis Longplay - No Deaths (Nomiss) Real Hardware

A no miss clear run of Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi (シャドー・ダンサー ザ・シークレット・オブ・シノビ) for the Sega Genesis. Captured straight from a region modified X'Eye, no cheats. Shadow Dancer is a Shinobi spin-off that differs substantially from its arcade counterpart, providing an experience much more like the original 'Shinobi' arcade game for the Mega Drive than either Super Shinobi game (or "Revenge of Shinobi" and "Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master") available for the console. It's short and succinct and packs a lot of punch, but I feel it falls a bit short in stage variety and is too heavy on rote memorization. Like the original Shinobi, it's got a bit of a Rolling Thunder vibe going on with lightning-fast action and much to suggest the player make quick, decisive movement. Unfortunately, a lot of that just means memorizing where every enemy is, what every enemy does, and exactly what to do when they perform whatever move they're capable of. It facilitates difficulty and snazzy looking play, but I feel like it makes a lot of the game much too rote. Combining that with the fact the game is EXTREMELY generous with 1ups seems to suggest you're meant to very casually roll with the punches and take a bunch of deaths. While this nomiss really isn't that impressive, it took me a decent chunk of time to pull it off just because of the sheer number of things it's easy to forget on one play. "Ah, I should have baited the jumping ninjas this way." "Oh, right, there's THREE gun guys hidden in the darkness, here." "Oops, guess I forgot that guy shoots while prone instead of while standing." Et cetera, et cetera. I feel once you're good at the game, much of it is sleepwalking, and the rare bits where you need to pay a lot of attention are simply remembering what it was you're meant to do. I play pretty well on the run, but I use a single bomb near the end when I forget how the next pattern of guys spawns in and how to react and accidentally just push forward. There are two higher loops, with the third loop being outright cruel in where it will position some enemies. Due to the extremely generous 1up litter, a 1CC on it isn't too hard at all, but a nomiss seems like I'd just be spending a lot of time to drill in new ways to react to situations. You can also play with sword-only (shurikens become available for boss fights) for an extra challenge, but it actually makes a few parts easier given you can reliably do a slash when you want to and mostly just makes dealing with the pistol guys deeply obnoxious. I credit-fed a sword-only loop 3 run, which wasn't too bad, minus the first room in stage 5, which is some sort of insane evil. Yet another Mega Drive featuring art by the talented Rieko Kodama (credited as "PHENIX RIE" in most games), this falls short of some of the other games you see her working on by sheer nature of a lack of variety. Palettes are a bit samey, stage variety honestly doesn't really go all that many places, and there aren't actually that many different enemy types. The character art is deeply charming, but I'm none too wowed by things like the final level being a dingy, semi-empty factory full of exactly-one-enemy-type-at-a-time and concluding in a boss fight with a guy who stands there and just summons dudes from the previous room. But I must digress! The game isn't so bad, at all, I'm just not particularly in love with it. It's more than serviceable, there's a pretty good degree of polish, the soundtrack us unsurprisingly great... I just don't jive with the fundamental mechanics or genre conceits. I haven't revisited The Super Shinobi in ages and should absolutely give it another look to see if I like it as much as like time i gave it a full run - which was quite a bit. I hope it holds up!