![Kisou Jidaigeki Sugoroku: Shinobi no Roku [奇想時代劇双六 忍ノ六] Game Sample - Playstation](/images/yt/rr/kisou-jidaigeki-sugoroku-shinobi-no-roku-game-sample-playstation-uwq7l.jpg)
Kisou Jidaigeki Sugoroku: Shinobi no Roku [奇想時代劇双六 忍ノ六] Game Sample - Playstation
30"KJS:SnR" (known as "Ninroku" for short) is, as you can probably guess from the title, a sugoroku / board game about ninjas and samurai, developed and published by the short-lived studio, Astec 21 (who have one of the strangest and creepiest company intro movies ever made along with Dennou Eizou Seisakusho) in 2000 as their last PS game. What you probably wouldn't guess, is that the game's core concept revolves around balance in the ninja world and aliens. Released at the somewhat budget price of 4,800 yen, the game is rather strange by sugoroku game standards, with an emphasis on combat, but bears many on the usual trappings of this genre with a few veritable twists.
The game takes place near the end of a parallel version of Japan's Edo / Tokugawa Period, where extraterrestrial beings have upset the balance of Japan, causing strife and turmoil all in an effort to learn the secrets of the Shinobi, believing this to be the key to dominating the universe. In an effort to stop this, humans trifled with forces beyond their understanding by making two artificial shinobi who were as alien as they were human, which only added to the conflicts, so the shogunate has gathered as many officers and warriors as possible in an attempt to quell the invasion. The secret to this are "life balls", the essence of humanity with divine hidden powers, which are scattered across the world and the key to ending it all. However, among all of them stand six ninjas with exceptional talent who lead the offensive to stop the aliens, so the first to collect 1000 of these balls will go down in history as a renowned hero. Yeah... the characters and themes are mostly pretty typical of this setting, but the over-arching plot is nonsense.
The first thing you'll notice right away is the presentation; the audio and video is reminiscent to a high quality SNES/SFC game rather than a Playstation game... it isn't pushing the system in any way and looks like it was made by amateurs. What little 3D the game employs is some of the most simplistic and terrible I've seen on a 32-bit platform and the sprites barely animate, BUT that isn't to say the game is ugly -- there is quite a bit of nice art and the colors are vibrant and easy on the eyes. Quite a bit of the music is pretty cool too, though the voice acting is a little rough in spots... some lines are delivered with little emotion even when the script calls for "!!" or "..." and so on and so forth, but it's more character specific than an issue with the script's entirety. The framerate is a buttery smooth 60FPS, which is great, though combat looks sped up and the game has a slight interlaced look even on progressive sources when not played on an original PS1. At first, I thought something was wrong with my system, so I tried it in an emulator, but it does the same thing.
Could I fix it? Yeah, mainly with post production tools, but It's not a deal-breaker per se. Moving on, the gameplay is your standard luck-based board game with the ability to move around and have random events trigger, but there are two main differences: the combat and the aliens. Combat in this game happens at the beginning of EVERY player's movement phase (versus when you land next to a player or through an event) and can be set to turn-based or real-time. Players choose two cards with different parameters and traits (such as changing a card, hiding the card from ability-stealing cards, re-positioning cards, etc.) and can trigger wild cards with additional effects. Cards can deal damage or heal, but there are also cards that can group characters together for divided damage or pick out specific characters to gang up on them (which regrettably means you can attack yourself...).
These conditions are compounded almost exponentially by items you find or officers you recruit, who can be deployed at spots to defeat aliens or damage other players and absorb damage for you in combat (they need to be healed to remain effective, which consumes life balls). Life balls are earned by killing aliens, clearing events, and other factors. Speaking of aliens, they swat players around which is annoying, but come in two types; their harmless incubation period and their full-blown invasion form if you don't defeat them during incubation, where they leave behind cursed items and cause other problems (they are a good way to get life balls). There is also unlockable omake content after getting certain endings and clearing the three game maps.
There's a little more to this game, but I'd say it's at least interesting, if slow paced (a normal game can last around an hour, or more than two hours depending on variables). There is even an Afro Samurai/Ninja in this game, which is between the time that the avant-garde doujinshi manga for Afro Samurai was released (between 1998-2002). Astec21 changed gears after this to focus on adult content under their "Atelier Kaguya" label. This is a video condensed to go from the intro to a possible ending. Enjoy.