There's a hokum plot about a clan of ninjas, a golden palace appearing in the middle of Tokyo, some Evil Ninja Blokes and more undead ghoul-type creatures than you can shake a katana at. Any update of such a formula into a modern game would need quite a bit of a rethink to make it work after all, even though it's fun to go back and play through the original Shinobi now on an emulator, you'd hardly pay £40 for it.Īt first glance, it appears that Sega have done almost exactly what's required with Shinobi, and the game is initially very promising. There wasn't a lot of complexity or depth there for the most part, levels were defeated by a combination of lightning-fast reflexes and learning off the positions of enemies by heart. Those who remember the original Shinobi titles will recall that they were entertaining, hugely unforgiving and often bastard hard but ultimately very satisfying games to play. The first level boss will teach you that the sword is mightier than the Apache Longbow. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our optimism was once again misplaced. Therefore, when Sega announced that Shinobi was in line for a major facelift, our reaction was definitely veering towards the 'ooh cool' end of the scale rather than the 'drop the 3D engine and step away from the old franchise with your hands where I can see them' end.

Somehow, though, the idea of our favourite games of yesteryear being given a new lease of life always gets us excited, and we manage to cast aside memories like Frogger and Daytona USA in favour of unbridled optimism. In fact, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel just to think of any arcade classics which have turned into enjoyable games once passed through the modern Make-It-3D TM development process Defender, anyone? We didn't think so.

Resurrecting arcade legends and bringing them up to date is a great idea on paper, but it never seems to work out all that well in the real world.

Shinobi ps2 spin off