Every now and then it is fun to step back from the current ultra-realistic world of video gaming, and to take a moment to experience gaming as it was in the early days – a time when gameplay took precedence over graphics, and developers took pride in delivering an absolutely brutal degree of difficulty. Save the Ninja Clan is a veritable trip back in time to the early days of hardcore platforming – where timing and precision are key to surviving each one-hit-and-you’re-dead level.
While the low-res 2D-platforming action is very much along the lines of classic 8-bit bump-n-jump games like Jumpman and Miner2049er, Save the Ninja Clan secretly harbors an inner soul that was born and bred on tough-as-nails cult favorites Panzer Dragoon Orta and Ninja Gaiden. It might look cute, but Save the Ninja Clan is definitely not kids play.
The gameplay is straightforward; the gamer is introduced to a series of short levels, and it is the gamer’s duty to guide the ninja(s) to grab the elusive scrolls. The levels consist of the standard platforming fare – plateaus, floating crates, natural obstacles, unnatural obstacles, and enemies. The ninja’s only weapons are the throwing knife, and is/her own natural skills. Players can evade enemy fire with either well-timed jumps or canceling out with the knife. Precision is key because every jump has to be on point or it’s an immediate game over. Enemy movement, platform movement, turret fire – everything seems to have been timed to require exacting patterns of response from the player.
Save the Ninja Clan’s Added depth comes from the on-the-fly swapping between three color-coded Ninja characters; the Green Ninja can double-jump, the Purple Ninja can run, and the Grey Ninja has an invincible dash. The mechanic is reminiscent of Panzer Dragoon Orta, in which gamers could cycle between various dragon forms to master each situation.
Save the Ninja Clan’s largest stumbling block is in the translation to HD. This is especially the case on the PSVita screen where, for example, written instructions are so tiny that they are all but illegible. While the instructions aren’t necessarily, err…necessary…it does remind the gamer that this is simply a port of the PSN title rather than a standalone handheld release. And yes, Save the Ninja Clan is also out on PSN for the PS4, but oddly there is no cross-buy option so each will set you back $3 – and while that $6 is hardly enough to break the bank, having the built-in option to hop back and forth between the console and handheld would have been nice.
Save the Ninja Clan probably isn’t going to end up a cult classic on its own, but it does deliver the cult-classic gameplay that old school gamers are longing for. It’s tough as nails, but nobody said having fun had to be easy.
