Noob playing through the Steam ROM of "Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi" for Sega Genesis, in the emulator Mednafen, on difficulty 1 of 3 and with the Infinite Lives cheat FF13DE:0009 from https://gamehacking.org/game/15831 .
0:00 - intro story, Options
1:56 - NON-SHURIKEN mode quick test
4:10 - burn your down town
46:27 - weird lighting
1:04:35 - boss I guess
1:11:23 - ending, credits, wrap
1:19:51 - bit more NON-SHURIKEN mode
The first Genesis Shinobi game, The Super Shinobi aka The Revenge of Shinobi, had all kinds of bad design stuff going on, but at least it was sort of interesting sometimes. I kinda thought Shadow Dancer was goin' somewhere with its smoother action and...dog, but it ends up feeling quite slight and uninteresting by comparison. Ninja vs lizard people? Sounds corny as heck but maybe fun but isn't; gee, it's almost like it isn't really about lizard people at all and some bored writer just made that part up afterward.
There's an option to play through without the (now limitless) shuriken except for having shuriken in boss fights. That seemed like it could be relatively cool but I found the regular playthrough so tasteless that I dunno if I'll ever work up the interest to try.
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