The Revenge of Shinobi (Ver. 1.03) Stage 6: Chinatown
47This stage does NOT take place in China. It takes place in one of the several Chinatowns the USA contains. This one in particular seems to be the one Chicago has.
Also, its song is one of the best songs I've heard in this game. It captures Act 1's theme perfectly, giving off a sense that the hero is on his own, lonely, with everyone he meets trying to bring him down within an Asian city corrupted by the greed of Neo Zeed and the hope that his lover is still alive out there somewhere.
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In Act 1, there are several fighters here. More of the Kung-Fu fighters from before, as well as some purple-suited fighters that attack with chains.
There are also female fighters here, but they're more like deadly dancers. They're so far the ONLY type of enemy in the entire game that DON'T explode upon death. Instead, hurting them shreds their clothes, to which they must then kneel and cover up their feminine modesty with their arms. Tee-hee...
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Act 2 has Joe Musashi on a train heading towards New York City. At first, it's in a tunnel, and you'll have to watch out for the giant red "I"s that fly by until you get outside.
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The Act 3 boss is... Well... Spider-Man, at least in this version, that is. This discovery is probably the more popular or infamous part of the entire game.
Spider-Man attacks you with web traps, and invincible zipline attacks. Just jump up at him while he's on the ceiling while avoiding his attacks.
In this particular version, Version 1.03, when Spider-Man is defeated, he leaves and gets replaced by some sort of Devilman-like boss who attacks with bats. He himself turns into a red bat when he's defeated and explodes.
In earlier versions of this game, after being defeated, Spider-Man would instead stay on the stage and transform into Batman, but from there, he would fight the same way as the Devilman.
The reason for this is because the boss is actually not Spider-Man or Batman at all. He's just a shape-shifting enemy who happens to change into the Web Slinger and the Dark Knight.
All of this is based on how Sega may have lost the rights to Batman at one point, or maybe they never had them to begin with? Nonetheless, Version 1.02 is the first version where Sega actually acknowledges Spider-Man's copyright before the title screen sequence, to let us know personally that they did really get the license and permission to use him from Marvel.
The next revision of this game after 1.03 is actually only available in its 7th Generation re-releases, specifically Sony's Playstation Network, Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade, and Nintendo's Wii version of the Virtual Console. In that version, called 1.04, Spidey's rights have been long gone, but his whole boss battle is still the same as 1.03. He's just a weird pink color, now, and is not supposed to be called Spider-Man in any context. This was the only way to get this game released on later consoles, at all!