Reader Question: Wild Strong Opinions on Ninja Princess
originally posted on Cohost, 12-11-2023
JoNoEe asks: Whats the game you have wild strong opinions about that nobody else seems to talk about or play?
This is an excellent question because it's just a blank check to talk about basically any game I've ever loved, lol. I'm gonna give this opportunity to the best game of 1985 (yes, even better than that other 1985 game with those strange mushroom brothers): SEGA's Ninja Princess.
I often say that the first perfect video game ever released was Enix's 1986 masterpiece Dragon Quest, but Ninja Princess proved that video games were on the precipice of perfection just a single year earlier. To this day I still hold that Ninja Princess is one of the most deeply fascinating, holistically designed video games not just in its genre but of all time.
Stern Electronics' 1980 game Berzerk single handedly gave birth to the run-and-gun genre in spectacular fashion, and the games industry wasted no time attempting to recapture its brilliance. Vid Kidz' 1982 release Robotron: 2084 tried introducing a more complicated win condition with the goal of saving a human family scrambling around the screen; later that same year, Taito's Front Line equipped players with a secondary weapon which allowed for more strategic on-foot combat, as well as providing an occasional tank to hop into which dynamically shifted the sensation of playing from being under-powered to over-powered. Other games like Nichibutsu's 1984 proto-cute-em-up Itazura Tenshi found a voice in the crowd by applying run-and-gun design philosophy to more fantastical, abstract settings like an angel soaring beyond the night sky and connecting stars to form constellations.
At such a young age, the medium was ripe with fresh ideas which developers were tripping over themselves to push out the door – and I don't use the phrase "tripping over themselves" lightly. Even my beloved Itazura Tenshi doesn't quite compare to the pure, refined elegance of Berzerk, to say nothing of the other games in the genre. Run-and-guns were plentiful and they were creative, but even with their new gameplay concepts, they often lacked the sorts of mechanical polish necessary to make them as imminently enjoyable to play as the catalystic Berzerk.
As SEGA was wont to do, they were sitting in the corner, watching, listening, eager to twist burgeoning trends as they had done with Head On and Zaxxon. Well, clearly run-and-guns were the perfect target. Arcade players loved them, but nobody had yet stepped up and squeezed as much potential out of the format as it was clearly capable of. So, deploying the cartoonishly cutesy artistic stylings of then-fledgling now-legendary Reiko Kodama (she had only ever worked on one single game before this!), SEGA developed and released such a profoundly unique run-and-gun that it still has no exact peer almost 40 years later.
There are many secrets to the delicious intricacies of Ninja Princess's design, but its single most critical stroke of genius is the weapon system. Everything hinges on the weapon system. What I mean by this is that there isn't really a "weapon system" at all, at least not in the traditional sense; players and enemies alike use the exact same projectile1 as each other for the entire game, the humble kunai. By limiting the scope so drastically, SEGA was able to ensure that this kunai was the single most versatile, sophisticated weapon the genre had ever seen (or ever will see?). What's amazing about this kunai is that it is both an offensive and defensive tool. It only takes a single hit to defeat players and enemies alike, but oncoming kunai can be deflected by sending out an opposing one – and again, players and enemies are both capable of doing so. This single feature completely upends the traditional way players engage with shooting games, where shooting is passive and dodging is active. In Ninja Princess, shooting must be as active as dodging, if not more so. Kunai cannot be thrown haphazardly because they can easily be deflected by enemy kunai, so special attention must be put forward to observe enemy behaviors and act accordingly. Observe the enemy, learn when they attack, how they attack, why they attack, and strike when they're vulnerable – this is the heart of Ninja Princess. Even popcorn enemies with low score values can incite vicious duels of pixel-grazing dodges and cat-reflexive deflection. I have never seen such a simple weapon carry so much profundity.
Of course, this can only be the case if the player is disincentivized from spamming the attack button and sending out thirty kunai per second. Who cares if one kunai gets deflected when 14 more are following behind? This is where Ninja Princess's immaculate scoring system comes into play.
Ninja Princess is not impressed with the player's ability to simply defeat an enemy. The primary concern Ninja Princess has is efficiency. At the end of the stage, the amount of shots fired are compared against the amount of shots landed, and the ratio between those two numbers is awarded as bonus points. These bonus points weigh significantly more than any points that could be accumulated during the stage itself. And as is standard with arcade games, gathering points is the only way to gain extra lives – an absolutely necessary commodity for anyone hoping to see this game through to the end.
I cannot speak enough to how absolutely in love I am with this scoring system. The best scoring systems are the ones that reward players who engage meaningfully with its systems, so as game mechanics have become more complicated so have their scoring systems. This is okay! Complicated, in-depth scoring systems lend themselves beautifully to intense investment and attachment to any given game. At the same time, the absolute pristine simplicity of Ninja Princess's scoring system makes it possibly the best scoring system I've ever witnessed. Ever! It so cleanly, so immediately, so effectively conveys the most engaging way to interact with the game, and proportionately rewards appropriate play.
This pressure from the scoring system also feeds back into the brilliance of the kunai weapon. It is an offensive weapon and a defensive weapon, yes – but now there are meaningful stakes for having an enemy deflect the player's oncoming kunai, and there are similar stakes for players choosing to deflect enemy kunai with their own. Players must split-second negotiate with themselves whether deflecting a shot is worth impacting the end-stage bonus points, and hearing the "tink!" of an enemy deflecting an attack becomes a symbol of an extra life growing further away. Extra caution is thus required to observe when and why enemies will be vulnerable. This is how Ninja Princess ensures every player is compelled to play carefully, considerately, and constantly conscious of every nuance of its systems. I have never seen such a simple scoring system carry so much profundity.
However, in order to reach the end-stage bonus at all, the titular Ninja Princess first must of course reach the end of the stage. Waiting at the end of most stages is a boss battle, though as is becoming a clear mission statement throughout Ninja Princess, these bosses do not act as in a typical shooting game and simply sit around throwing out attack patterns. After all, this is a run-and-gun – half of the genre's name alludes to movement! As such, Ninja Princess sees no point in these traditionally stagnant encounters: instead, bosses chase the player backwards through the stage. I'll say this again: bosses chase the player backwards through the stage. For anyone unfamiliar with this style of game, let me make it clear: even today, this doesn't really happen!! Why don't more games do this?? It's so cool!! These boss fights turn a single stage into two the same way, for example, classical composers would develop musical ideas by playing them backwards or flipping their melodies upside down. It's such a smart, economical, creative way to design and utilize stages. Of all the innovations Ninja Princess puts forth, this is possibly the most flexible one that I can't believe more games are not pilfering. I have never seen such simple boss encounters carry so much profundity.
There are other sparklingly innovative gems to dissect from Ninja Princess including its shockingly diverse level designs and gimmicks (again, most of which we still never see in run-and-guns) but I believe I've made my point. To circle back to your question regarding games nobody "talks about or plays," you might be wondering why nobody talks about or plays Ninja Princess when it's one of the early masterpieces of not just its genre but the entire medium. This unfortunately has one simple answer: it has never been ported, re-released, or otherwise recirculated since its original release in the 80's. Never. It had a few crummy home ports on the SG-1000, MSX, and SEGA Master System a year after its arcade release, but that's it. Ninja Princess has never been heard from again since 1986. Never. One of the best run-and-gun games ever made! It's been completely absent from cultural consciousness for longer than my entire life on this Earth. It's a damn shame.
Anyways, as I said at the start, great question. Anyone interested in more write-ups like this, please feel free to ask this question as many times as you'd like, lol
1 Enemies have a couple visually distinct variations from the Ninja Princess' kunai, and the Princess herself can upgrade her kunai to a shuriken which pierces through more than one enemy. Functionally, all these weapons still behave the same way as the kunai.
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