From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Reflections: "Shinobi II: The Silent Fury" (Game Gear)

About eight years ago, something wonderful happened: The G.G. Shinobi, a game I had been desperately desiring to play ever since the day I first saw it in action, suddenly came to the 3DS' Virtual Console as part of a surprise expansion that brought Game Gear and its games to the service. On that magic day, I wasted no time in hitting up the eShop and purchasing myself a copy of the game. Then I spent the next few hours joyfully engaging in my first play-through of it. And by the time I'd completed that first play-through of The G.G Shinobi, I'd fallen deeply in love with it. In fact, I already considered it to be one of my favorite portable games of all time! And because it was, I played through it a countless number of times over the next half-decade. I never tired of it.

All that time, I was aware that it had a sequel, yes, but I didn't know much about it. All I knew was what I was hearing--what critics and forum-goers were saying: "It's even better than the first!" they were always excitedly stating.

And that was easy to believe. "If this sequel came out a year and a half later, after the hardware had matured and the developers had gained so much valuable experience, then it has to be the case that it's very much superior to the first game!" I told myself.

I continued to eagerly anticipate the day when I could play it for myself and discover just how much grander it actually was!

Though, I didn't want to see it in action or know anything about its gameplay beforehand. I wanted everything about it to be a total surprise; I wanted for it to be an entirely unknown entity that would appear one day, unexpectedly, and absolutely blow me away with its astonishingly new gameplay features!

"The day this game releases on the 3DS Virtual Console," I said to myself, "I'm going to be all over it!"

Unfortunately, none of that ever happened. Instead the Game Gear release list started to dry up, and within a year, Sega stopped publishing Game Gear games altogether (I guess they weren't selling well enough). Still, I decided that it was best to continue waiting; I figured that it was inevitable that Game Gear would come back in full force on a future Virtual Console service--perhaps on the one linked to Nintendo's next portable device.

I waited seven years. And, sadly, there was nothing. Never once during that span did I hear or read anything about the possibility of Game Gear games making their big return. It simply wasn't happening, and it didn't appear as though it ever would--not when the Virtual Console was effectively dead and Sega apparently had no interest in making Game Gear a part of its Sega Ages line.

Continuing to wait was pointless, I knew, so I decided to give in and take the immediately available option: emulation. And that's how it came to be: In November of 2019, approximately one year ago, I was finally able to play Shinobi II: The Silent Fury for the first time!

And, well, the experience didn't exactly play out like I expected it would.

Ever since then, I've been constantly reflecting on the experience and trying to find words that could help me to accurately express how it was that my expectations were defied. For a very specific reason (one on which I'll elaborate in my closing thoughts), this has proven to be quite difficult, and I've only been able to find what I'd term to be "a merely adequate amount of them." Though, they'll have to be enough because, really, it doesn't seem likely that any others are ever going to come to me.

And now, if you'll allow me the opportunity, I'd like to share those words with you and in the process tell you all about The Silent Fury and the type of game that it is.

 The first thing you should know about The Silent Fury is that it doesn't aspire to break the mold. It's honest about this fact; it informs you of such the moment you take control of the action, at which point you quickly discover that it looks, sounds and plays a whole lot like its predecessor. In the moments that follow, though, it sends a second, more-promising message; it keenly reveals to you that it has expanded and improved upon its predecessor's every aspect--that it's not simply a carbon copy of The G.G. Shinobi--and then proudly demonstrates the ways in which it has gone about doing so.

Noticeable additions have been made everywhere.

Take the game's structuring, for instance. It's identical to the original's (there are four initial stages that you can tackle in any order you so please, and once they've been completed, you can then infiltrate the enemy's Neo City fortress), yes, but this time there's a twist: You now have two separate goals in each of the initial four stages; you have to rescue your captured ninja friend (now called an "Elemental Ninja," as per the manual's story description, which I'll talk about later) and also locate and retrieve the Elemental Crystal that was stolen from him. This change works to add a whole-new exploration element to the gameplay! It completely eliminates stifling linearity and invites you to search every inch of the initial stages, all of which are now more expansive, more complexly designed, and packed with secret areas!

Though, you don't have to achieve both goals in one go. In fact, there are times when you simply can't because your party lacks the ninja friend whose abilities are needed to access the stage area in which the crystal is being held. So what the game enables you to do is return to stages (you couldn't do this in the original); if, while you're exploring a stage, you find that you're unable to gain further access, you can back later on with a friend whose abilities will help you to advance. Also, I should note, the game automatically returns you to the stage-select screen after you defeat a stage's guardian, which will certainly prevent you from being able to achieve both goals in one go.

Oh, and keep in mind that a stage's minor enemies become tougher once the stage's guardian has been destroyed.

Optionally, you can search stages for the returning Power Up items, each of which expands the ninja's shared health meter by two bars (the are four in all--one in each stage).

You can exit a stage by entering into the defeated guardians' chamber. Doing so returns you to the stage-select screen. Note that each boss chamber has a "Transport Item" (a checkpoint, basically) somewhere in proximity to it; you can warp to this checkpoint at any time by using a specific ninjutsu power (more on this in a bit), doing which eliminates the need for backtracking.

Because it contains such systems, The Silent Fury is very much comparable to games like Strider and QuackShot Starring Donald Duck; like them, The Silent Fury is a stage-by-stage action-platformer with action-adventure elements. That's where it's most unique in comparison to the original.

And once you achieve all of the mandatory goals (save all four of your ninja friends and retrieve their elemental crystals), you gain entry to the final stage: the enemy's Neo City fortress, which is once again a giant labyrinthine obstacle course.

 As you would expect, each ninja possesses his own unique weapon, ninjutsu power and set of special abilities. Though, these aren't the exact same heroes you remember from The G.G. Shinobi; no--each of them has changed somewhat since the last mission. These changes were made because the development team recognized that the ninjas were previously unbalanced; so to get them a little closer to parity, the team made a few tweaks.

Let's look at each one individually:

Our main character is, of course, the longtime series protagonist Joe Musashi, whose ninja garb is partly red-colored. He strikes with a katana; it's still a short-range weapon, yes, but this time its attack-power has nearly doubled, and consequently he's now able to destroy most minor enemies with a single blow (the first time through a stage, at least). However, his previously used Earthquake magic has been replaced with "Teleport" magic that functions to transport he and his friends directly to a stage's checkpoint. This magic is particularly useful when you're stuck in some far-flung corner of a stage and can't remember how to get back to its guardian's chamber.

The pink-colored ninja (who I affectionally refer to as "Pinky") is on the surface identical to his The G.G. Shinobi counterpart: He attacks with bombs, which he tosses in a downward arc (a bomb will travel a little farther if you hold up as you toss it); he can use his Spider-Walk ability to cling to and walk on ceilings; and his Fireburst magic functions to create a massive blast of light that can both illuminate darkened rooms and temporarily freeze all onscreen enemies. Though, because his bomb attack was clearly overpowered in the previous game (as was he, by extension), the developers decided to weaken it--to cut its attack-power in half.

That's only a single change, yeah, but it's one that works to render him far less useful overall (he used to be my main, but now, because his attack-power is so very average, I barely use him!). The Spider-Walk is still very handy, sure, but to say as much is to admit that he's now merely a specialist.

The yellow-colored ninja has experienced the most significant changes. In The G.G. Shinobi, he attacked with chargeable force-spheres that traveled across the entire screen but didn't hit for much damage. This time, though, he wields a boomerang-like shuriken that is both larger and more powerful than even the largest force-sphere! It doesn't fly across the entire screen, no, but even then it still travels a decent length! Plus he can throw shuriken both forward and upward! This makes him far more useful than he was previously, since he can now pick off enemies that lurk at the farthest point of either axis and do so very efficiently.

Also, in a game whose stages contain multiple water segments, his returning water-walking ability proves to be invaluable. You can't fully traverse most stages without it. The yellow ninja makes these segments a breeze.

For these reasons, he has become my go-to character in place of Pinky. Using him is always the safest choice.

Otherwise, his Lightning magic still functions the same: It calls down a lightning bolt that surrounds and protects him from attacks (it's basically temporary invincibility).

The green-colored ninja's attack style and ability set haven't changed: He throws small shurikens straight ahead, across the entire screen. He can double-jump and thus cover more ground horizontally and vertically than any of his ninja friends. And he can execute an 8-shuriken spread shot by attacking while at the peak of his second jump. Though, he has experienced one change: He no longer has command of Self-Blast magic; rather, it's now he who commands the Earthquake magic (now called "Hammer-Quake") that functions to destroy certain barriers. Still, his overall usefulness-level is about the same.

And, finally, there's the blue-colored ninja, who also hasn't changed much. He attacks with the chain-and-dagger, a long-range weapon that extends about one-fourth of the screen's length and hits for average damage. It's not a powerful weapon, no, but it's still great for attacking enemies from a safe distance. It's been improved in two ways: Its range has increased slightly, and its tip now has a wider hitbox, which allows for you to more easily hook it onto pegs, poles and such. He also has the same Tornado magic, using which transforms him into a living whirlwind that can freely move about open spaces for about five seconds; while he's in this state, he can damage enemies and break open item boxes.

The rebalancing effort is largely successful. It leaves some casualties, yes (Pinky is no longer as useful as he once was), but still it works to encourage more-proportional use of all five ninjas. So it won't be the case that you use only, say, two of them and relegate the rest to specialist duty.

 The Silent Fury uses the same item system. That is, all of its items are placed in boxes that you can break open with striking moves. And not surprisingly, the item assortment is largely the same: There are the hearts that replenish two units of health; the ninjutsu symbols that add single points to your magic supply (which is seen on the pause menu, the place from which you can activate ninjutsu magic); the 1up symbols that grant you extra lives; and the well-hidden Power Symbols that, as mentioned, expand the ninjas' shared life meter by two bars (though, they have seen a minor visual change: their symbols now bear equal signs rather than cubes).

There is only one new procurable item type: the Elemental Crystals, which are also well-hidden. If you hope to access the final stage, you'll need to locate and retrieve all four of them.

I have to mention that there's been a very favorable change to made to the system itself: Exposed items don't disappear permanently if you scroll them offscreen, as they did in the previous game; rather, the game simply returns them to their item boxes, which respawn once you scroll the screen back over. This proves to be beneficial in scenarios where you've exposed a heart item while you are already at full health or exposed a ninjutsu symbol when your ninjutsu supply is already at the maximum nine. Now you can just leave them where they are--come back and pick them up if you need them.

Then there's the new non-procurable item type: the aforementioned Transport Item, which functions as a stage's checkpoint. You can return to it by using Musashi's Teleport magic.

And of course, because this is a Shinobi game, half of the boxes contain not items but instead damaging bombs, which explode one second after they're revealed. The level designer, as per usual, was sure to stick them in the trickiest spots--in places where they're tough to avoid (the only explanation for the continuation of this practice is that someone on Team Shinobi found it to be endlessly hilarious). Their blasts are avoidable, yes, but still your best defense against them is memorization; if you can remember where they are, you can, in your subsequent play-throughs, simply avoid breaking open their containing boxes.

 At first glance, The Silent Fury appears to be graphically identical its predecessor. "This looks exactly the same as The G.G. Shinobi!" you'll probably say to yourself the moment the initially-selected stage's opening screen comes into view.

Though, you'll soon learn that theirs is mostly a surface-level similarity. When you start to look more closely at The Silent Fury--do so much as simply observe what it's throwing at you--it'll quickly become obvious to you that it's visually superior in just about every way. You'll find that its colors are bolder and more vibrant. Its textures are glossier, sharper-looking, better-shaded, and more detailed; and in general they're more finely designed, theirs a higher-quality collective that does splendidly to create more-vivid, more-eye-pleasing environments. Its background imagery is larger in scale, busier, and far more striking (to see the difference, compare the Building stage's tall, luminous skyscrapers to any of the The G.G. Shinobi's contrastingly tiny, largely featureless constructions).

The backgrounds, in particular, work hard to steal your attention and make a strong impression on you. Take, for instance, the Canyon stage's beautifully rendered scenery: Its dominant visual is a large cloud mass that endlessly scrolls leftward. What's most impressive about the cloud mass, though, is that it's comprised of three separate portions, each of which scrolls along at a different speed and helps to form an object that appears to have very real three-dimensional depth to it. It'll have you believing that a large number of background layers are at work.

Of course, even the most powerful 8-bit machines can only render two or three layers at most, but you'll think otherwise when you observe the Canyon's background; you'll be convinced that the Game Gear's hardware is more advanced than it actually is! That's the power of The Silent Fury's visuals.

The game takes some shortcuts, sure. Most noticeably, it recycles some assets from The G.G. Shinobi. Certainly the Castle stage's pagoda will look very familiar to you as will the Building stage's opening area, which is constructed mostly of the same red steel beams and cranes that you saw in The G.G. Shinobi. So yes--there's a bit of a redundancy factor, and sometimes you might feel as though you're simply revisiting stage areas from the previous game.

Still, such areas represent only a tiny portion of The Silent Fury's world. Really, there's so much more to it than a couple of familiar-looking settings; it's much large than its predecessor, and it has so many new things it wants to show you. And all of them are great-looking. All of them are worthy of being admiringly gazed upon.

In short: The Silent Fury is a very-impressive-looking 8-bit game. It's easily the Game Gear's most visually striking game.

 The game's character design and depth of animation are one-to-one with The G.G. Shinobi's, which is to say that they're both quite excellent. Characters are well-drawn, sharp-looking, and nicely shaded, and they walk, run, jump, skate, and fly about smoothly and do so over multiple frames.

Very often, boss characters are large and impressive-looking, and their activities completely fill the entire screen, which makes for battles that are all at once interesting, intense and instantly memorable.

Oh, and the ninjas now have an idle animation! When you leave them motionless, they face the camera and fold their arms. You know--to show you how calm and cool they are!

 The Silent Fury, as is the continuing theme, also sounds a lot like The G.G. Shinobi. Its music uses the same type of instrumentation and possesses the same wonderfully distinctive qualities--that unmistakable "8-bit Shinobi" flavor and an intrinsic Japanese-sounding vibe.

Though, when you listen to the two games' soundtracks side by side, you immediately notice that The Silent Fury's sound quality is actually much-improved over its predecessors'. You find that the music has better depth of sound--that it has so much more reverberance to it; that every note is both deeper and more sonorous. The boost in sound quality becomes most evident when you compare The Silent Fury's Neo City stage theme to The G.G. Shinobi's, which it borrows and updates; you instantly perceive that the former's notes are so much fuller and more resonant.

More importantly, its tunes do well to immerse you in the action. They're high in energy, inspiriting and expectedly rockin', and they do a great job of defining environments and therein creating and conveying atmosphere. That's everything you could want from a game's music.

Still, though, I personally prefer The G.G. Shinobi's soundtrack. The game's sound quality is lacking in comparison, sure, but still it has better, more-memorable tunes that do an even more exceptional job of creating energy, inspiriting the player, and describing the state of environments. I don't say this to diminish The Silent Fury's soundtrack, no; it's certainly great. It's just that it's not quite as great as The G.G. Shinobi's.

In terms of sound effects, nothing has changed. The Silent Fury pretty much reuses all of The G.G. Shinobi's sounds as is. And they are, as they were previously, nicely produced, crisp-sounding and viscerally pleasing. As ever, it's always satisfying to hear an item-grab's sonorous ring, a connecting weapon-strike's sharp peal, or a boss' thunderous explosion.

 Nothing has changed about the controls, either, which is fine because the established control system is already exemplary. This is to say that The Silent Fury's controls function just as smoothly as The G.G. Shinobi's: The hero characters walk, jump, attack, crouch-walk and reverse direction with great fluidity; their jumps can be fully modulated; and all of their actions execute precisely and responsively. The two words that best describe the controls are intuitive and reliable.

The one exception, as is series tradition, is the green ninja's double-jump move, which feels neither intuitive nor reliable. The timing for the double-jump is so super-specific (you have to press the jump button at the exact moment your first jump hits its apex) that it's near-impossible to pull off the move with any consistency; unless you have the motion perception of a Terminator, you're guaranteed to miss the double-jump anywhere from 25-50% of the time and consequently come to the conclusion that the move simply doesn't function properly. It actually does; it's just that the window is so incredibly tiny.

The move's unreliability can become a huge problem in one particular room of the Neo City fortress--the one with the spaced-apart vertically-moving platforms and the spike-lined floor and ceiling. Almost all of its jumps require the full distance of the double-jump. If you miss a single one of them, you're dead. And if the situation is that you lack the ability to consistently pull off double-jumps and currently you have no other means of long-distance transport (that is, you don't have enough ninjutsu to cheaply tornado your way across the entire room), you're probably screwed. In any run, you can potentially lose everything here--all of your lives and all of your progress.

The double-jump's unreliability isn't so much a flaw as it is a bad design choice made intentionally. This isn't something new; annoyingly, it's part and parcel of any Shinobi experience. It's just something you have to learn to deal with.

 In general, The Silent Fury is more difficult than the The G.G. Shinobi. The enemies are more aggressive. The platforming is a bit trickier. And the stages are larger and at the same time more complexly designed and more maze-like, so now you have to endure longer and also spend a lot more time thinking about the surrounding environments and figuring out how they all connect to each other.

Boss battles, in particular, are much tougher. Bosses' patterns are still simple and easy to memorize, yes, but this time your simply knowing how they operate means little on its own. Since they're bigger and faster, and their attacks use up a whole lot more space, you now have to execute your moves more quickly, more deftly and with much greater precision; if you don't apply that level of focus, you'll get bounced around and repeatedly destroyed.

Then there's the Neo City stage, whose challenges are more punishing and more unforgiving than the The G.G. Shinobi's and, honestly, not that much fun. Too many of its challenge rooms require that you exhibit both perfect accuracy and super-precise timing and do so with a great degree of consistency. You're given absolutely no leeway; you screw up a single action and you're dead. And so it becomes the case that you can very easily drain all of your lives in any single one of these rooms. That's why I dislike so many of them.

On top of that, you now have to fight four Neo City-exclusive bosses--four shadowy Shinobi doppelgangers--in addition to the four reappearing stage guardians, none of which, by the way, are depowered (though, you can still find pathways that allow you to skip over one or two of them). The doppelganger battles, overall, aren't terribly difficult (save for the one against the blue shadow ninja, whose pattern, in contrast to the others', seems random; all you can do is tank him and hope to hold out), no, but they're still pretty taxing--mainly because you're engaging in them after having spent a half an hour traversing a stress-inducing labyrinth. So these fights put a lot of pressure on you--particularly when you're low on lives; if you run out of them here, you learn, you have to repeat the entire stage.

Thankfully, The Silent Fury grants you unlimited continues (whereas the previous game only gave you three), so you don't have to worry about having to repeat the entire game. Also, it has a password system, using which allows you to continue the game from where you left off with all collected items in possession; passwords appear on the "Try Again!" and Game Over screens, right beneath your score, and again after the "Continue Game?" countdown has concluded. You can't miss it.

 Would you be surprised if I told you that The Silent Fury's story is virtually identical to its predecessor's?

I don't think you would be. No--my guess is that you're the type of people who are quick to pick up on themes.

So yes--its story certainly is similar. It's so similar, in fact, that I debated whether or not I should even mention it. The long and short of it is that the Oboro School of Ninjas has been attacked by an evil group called the Techno-Warriors and specifically by its newest recruit: the Black Ninja, who has ravaged the school, stolen its four Elemental Crystals (which have been under its protection "for thousands of years"), and kidnapped the four ninja masters (the "Elemental Ninjas") who had been chosen to watch over and protect the crystals. So now the legendary Joe Musashi must return to action and take on "his toughest enemies yet."

Though, he won't be able to achieve victory on his own, no; if he hopes to succeed, he'll have to rescue the four Elemental Ninjas--without whom he can't advance, since their special abilities are required assets--and organize them into a unit. Together they must traverse their way through four "Rounds" (the straightforwardly-labeled "Building," "Castle," "Factory" and "Canyon" stages), take down the Techno-Warriors' guardians, retrieve the four Elemental Crystals, and destroy the Black Ninja and his fortress!

Groundbreaking stuff, I know.

But, really, I'm not going to get on the game's case for this, no. After all: We don't play this type of game for the story. Rather, we treat the story as it should be treated: as the hastily prepared excuse we need to justify our spending multiple hours a day mindlessly slicing up armies of virtual baddies! And we should be proud to do so!

Closing Thoughts

 In the end, I can't help but feel disappointed with The Silent Fury. It just doesn't deliver the type of evolutionary experience that I look for in sequels to great games. When I play it, I never once forget about The G.G. Shinobi or feel as though I'm playing some "next-level" sequel. Instead it's merely "the next in the series."

Now, sure--I do entertain the thought that most of this is my fault. Maybe I was expecting way too much from the game. Maybe this is yet another instance in which I built a game up so much in my head--set such an insanely high bar for it--that there wasn't any game that could have realistically met my expectation. I was hoping that the developers had taken what they did with The G.G. Shinobi and raised it to a whole new level. Obviously they weren't aiming quite that high; rather, they were looking to simply refine and innovate on the existing formula.

I mean, yeah--I'm happy with all of the modifications that they made. I'm very much fond of the newly added exploration element, and I strongly appreciate all of the improvements that have been made to the weapon mechanics, the visuals, and the music. But those enhancements, on their own, don't help The Silent Fury to surpass The G.G. Shinobi, no; they merely provide it a shinier exterior. Because as I always say: Having more content and being a little bigger, longer and more polished doesn't necessarily equate to being "better." Most of the time, developers put all of that extra stuff in there to distract you from that fact that they simply iterated. That's exactly what Team Shinobi did with The Silent Fury.

And that's the reason why I've had so much trouble finding enough new words to explain how I feel about The Silent Fury. It doesn't inspire any. It doesn't do anything that I haven't already talked about in my The G.G. Shinobi "Treasure Trove" piece. So instead the only way I can talk about The Silent Fury is in the context of how it compares to The G.G. Shinobi. And that sucks because I really didn't want it to be that way; I wanted to give it its own exclusive space, celebrate it in a unique fashion, and really go big with it, since it is, after all, a sequel to one of my all-time-favorite portable games. Sadly, though, I'm not able to do as much because quite simply The Silent Fury doesn't have what it takes to escape its predecessor's shadow.

 Now don't get me wrong: The Silent Fury is still a very enjoyable action game. It plays and controls just as as well as The G.G. Shinobi. It looks and sounds great. Its level design is topnotch. All of its stage settings are interesting and certainly worthy of being joyfully examined. And its action is both fun and satisfying.

It's just that none of those attributes prevent it from feeling largely like a retread--like a slight variation of a game we've already played. It reminds me of the latter three NES Mega Man games in how it takes half-steps but never a true next step, which is what it needed to do to have a shot at being the undisputed best Shinobi game on the Game Gear. Unfortunately it didn't.

 So that's the story with The Silent Fury: It's a great action game. It's one of the Game Gear's best games and one of the best portable games period. But it's not quite as good as The G.G. Shinobi, which doesn't have the same level of audio or visual quality, no, but wins because it has superior tunes and more-alluring, more-wondrous settings, and it does a better job of providing me fun, satisfying ninja action in an ideal length of time and in just the right quantity.

 So whenever I'm craving some portable Shinobi action, I'm always going to turn to The G.G. Shinobi first; it simply does it better. I'm not saying that The Silent Fury isn't going to get its share of attention; it definitely will! It's just that I probably won't be returning to it nearly as I often as I do to The G.G. Shinobi.

But surely I'll be returning to Shinobi II: The Silent Fury fairly often. And I suspect that, much like things developed with a lot of other games in this series, I'll come to appreciate it more and more over time.