Video Game / 10 Second Ninja

You're a ninja, there are robots, you've got ten seconds to destroy them all.

10 Second Ninja is a series of hardcore platformers developed by Four Circle Interactive, built around speedrunning through short levels. As the name suggests, you have ten seconds to pass a given level by destroying all of the robot enemies within. Fortunately, being a Ninja, you have great dexterity, a sword, and a handful of shiruken at your disposal.

The first game features the world's first ninja taking on Nazi robots from space across five locales. The second game, 10 Second Ninja X, has a more fleshed-out plot where a forest-dwelling guardian ninja is kidnapped by a pirate captain and forced to run through a gauntlet of challenges.

10 Second Ninja and its sequel demonstrate the following tropes:

• Adolf Hitlarious: Robot Hitler from the first game is amazingly inept at being a villain.
• Cool Airship: Greatbeard's ship in the sequel, which serves as the Hub Level.
• Expy: Captain Greatbeard from X is one to Dr. Eggman, being a villainous roboticist who targets forest animals. His robots also look like Gamma.
• Gameplay Grading: The Marathon levels in the sequel grade the ninja on a scale that goes up to X.
• Heel–Face Turn: Greatbeard makes one in the sequel when he realizes he has no reason for his hatred of the Ninja, and leaves his ship with Benji to find a better life. You still fight him in the legacy levels, though.
• Heroic Mime: Neither of the two ninjas ever speaks. This becomes a point of consternation for Greatbeard in the sequel, and eventually leads him to question why he hates the ninja so much.
• Lightning Bruiser: Both ninjas are this, moving extremely quickly and being able to destroy most robots in a single strike.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Benji decides to try and crash the ship due to routinely getting knocked into hazards when exploring Greatbeard's challenges with the ninja.
• No Swastikas: Averted in the first game, where swastikas are clearly visible in Robot Hitler's lair. Played straight in the second, where they're replaced with diagonal crosses due to the levels now being owned by Captain Greatbeard.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Both you and the enemy robots are this. Both games do have Elite Mooks who take two hits, though.
• Pirates vs. Ninjas: The theme of 10 Second Ninja X.
• Race Against the Clock: Every level is this.
• Recurring Boss: Robot Hitler is the only boss in the first game, using his mouth laser to attack the Ninja at the end of every level set and taking three hits to defeat. In the sequel's legacy levels, he's supplanted by Greatbeard who functions the same way.
• Talking Down the Suicidal: Greatbeard does this to Benji when he decides to try and crash Greatbeard's ship.
• The Unfought: A subversion - despite riding an obvious weaponized hovercraft, Greatbeard doesn't show up as a boss in the main levels. However, he takes Robot Hitler's place as a boss in the legacy levels.