Charlie Ninja is a rather obscure
arcade game made in 1994 by Mitchell, a company behind other obscure gems such as Cannon Dancer (Also known as Osman in the West). You control a pair of ninjas hunting down a slew of strange, unrelated villians for monetary rewards.
It plays like a fairly average Platform Game, crossed with a Fighting Game: our heroes are able to perform a variety of special moves with specific button and joystick movement combinations. It also has a very peculiar art style, which looks like a homage/parody of American comic book and cartoon characters, complete with Written Sound Effects, many years before Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt made this style cool and fashionable.
This game provides examples of:
- Acro Fatic: The boss of stage four, a huge quarterback.
- Agony of the Feet: Happens to both the player and enemies if they step on spikes.
- Anachronism Stew: The first stage is set in the American wild west, complete with outlaws dressed in a cowboy getup, which is juxtaposed in later levels that feature an appropriate setting and technology. This actually fits within the game's zany nature.
- Animesque: Hugely Inverted. The game has a distinctive Comic book/Cartoon style with overexaggerated character proportions and Eagleland elements turned all the way up. You wouldn't know this game was made by a Japanese developer until you did research beforehand.
- Athletic Arena Level: Stage 4
- Efficient Displacement: The green-wearing Jason parodies in the last stage burst through the wall in this fashion.
- Fat Bastard: Bear.
- Flunky Boss: Every boss after the first one.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: The second, third and fifth bosses will run away once their health gets low, forcing you to catch up with them while running through a slew of mooks.
- Gratuitous English: Fitting with the cartoon-inspired style of the game. All of the voice samples seem to be from Western voice actors, although they are seemingly not credited.
- Guide Dang It!: While the attract mode takes its time to show that, by pressing both the jump and shoot button at the same time, you will activate the temporary invincibility (A rather difficult feat, huh?), the button and movement sequences used to perform the special moves are explained absolutely nowhere in the game.
- Hearts Are Health: They serve as your remaining Hit Points, and you lose one heart upon being hit.
- Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: The Jason parodies in the last stage.
- Leatherman: The third boss is a Macho Camp, kiss-blowing, gas-belching moustached delinquent named Freddie... Borders on Take That! crossed with No Celebrities Were Harmed.
- McNinja: While made by Japanese game developers, the two playable characters are not Japanese.
- Mecha-Mooks: One of the enemies in stage 5 are robotic ninjas.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Freddie (mentioned above) and possibly Sanders (an officer named Sanders).
- Non-Indicative Name: The ninja characters are named Roy and Lon. There are no characters (ninja or otherwise) named Charlie in this game.
- One-Hit Kill: Dr. Mac's horizontal charge move. If this hits, you're dead regardless of health.
- Mad Scientist: Some enemies in the final stage, and the Final Boss.
- Remilitarized Zone: The second stage, the enemies for this stage are the M16 toting soldiers, a Rambo-parody, and tanks.
- Satire/Parody/Pastiche: Two enemies are parodies of Rambo and Jason Voorhees.
- Shoryuken: One of the special input moves, performed with a Shoryuken motion no less.
- Shout-Out: When the final boss, Dr. Mac, is defeated, he gets on his knees begs for mercy. It's also interesting to note that the final boss is a multi-phase fight involving the boss (a mad scientist) riding within a mech..
- Some Dexterity Required: You can input Street Fighter-esque motions to use Special attacks.
- Special Attack: Three of them
- Dragon Stab (F, D, DF, Attack): Slides across the ground with a stab, the does a Shoryuken
- Dragoon Spin (U, UF, F, Attack): Does a spinning move that damages enemies
- Hurricane Slam (D, DF, F, Jump): Performs a Hurricane Kick that move upwards, can be controlled with left/right.
- Take Cover!: Pressing Attack and Jump will make you use an Invisibility Cloak, rendering you invulnerable to attacks. It wears off after a short time, though.
- Taken for Granite: Dr Mac's machine can fire out energy rings that petrify you.
- Underground Monkey: The coloured ninjas. Green ones turn into a spikeball that floats up and sprays spikes, Black ones throw a shuriken, Blue ones slash the player, Pink ones do a diving attack, and Yellow ones throw firebombs.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Subverted. One of the enemies in stage 4 are cheerleaders, thing is, they often obscure their face with their pom-poms, and defeating them reveals that they are infact crossdressing males, complete with an obviously manly appearance.
