YMMV / The Ninja Warriors (1994)

• Awesome Music: Every level and boss has their own theme, but Banglar's takes the cake. Jubei's one is pretty good too. The remake includes some music from The Ninja Warriors (1987), including the fan-favourite Daddy Mulk.
• Demonic Spiders: Golems. These tall robots automatically block frontal attacks that aren't specials or thrown mooks. The explosion from their mid-range Eye Beams are unblockable while their basic attack has rather long range and deals high damage. Sure, they're vulnerable to being thrown — but that requires you to get near them in the midst of other mooks, and the Golems have their own throw which hurts a good bit should you be unlucky or too slow. Finally, you'll need to throw them, throw other mooks into them, or combo them from behind a good few times, as they have lots of health. They're more manageable in the remake, as they're vulnerable to the increased amount of Special Attacks.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • There's more than one reason why Jubei commits Seppuku after being beaten by the robot ninjas. Firstly, he lost his honor after failing to beat them for Banglar, and secondly, he's essentially an Old Master black belt in martial arts who lost to a prototype robot ninja that just rolled off of the assembly line a few DAYS ago — which is a rather shameful and dishonorable defeat.
  • Why does Yaksha have large breasts in her design? Her name suggests that she could be possibly based off a female Yaksha from Hindu Mythology, who are known for having exaggerated breasts.
  • Why does Banglar dies after shattering the cockpit in his machine? Well, you see shards of glass flying everywhere and we all know that shards of glass are REALLY freaking sharp and can cause a lot of harm.
• Goddamned Bats: Some enemies in the game are far more irritating than the others:
  • The weakest enemies, the knife-wielding army men, comes at you in swarms and can still knock you over if they land enough hits.
  • The female ninjas constantly jump around, allowing them to easily get behind you. They're hard to combo as they get knocked down if you hit them when they're jumping and can block your combos even after getting hit. They also have a surprisingly high amount of HP for a fast enemy.
  • Saru, the monkey ninjas. They're short, allowing them to hit low and also makes many basic attacks sail over them, are annoyingly agile and attack quickly, and can deal pretty good amounts of damage.
  • Pumas, the synthetic humanoid Elite Mooks. They are the fastest normal enemy in the game and play keep away often, use a Slide Attack to knock you over, can jump behind you, and finally can turn on a shielding that prevents them from being grabbed. Like the female ninjas, they also have a good amount of HP for a fast-moving enemy.
  • In the remake, ranged enemies like Machine Gun Army and Shadow Men become this thanks to the longer screen. This allows them to keep much further away than in the original game, and take shots at you from afar before you can close the distance. They still have low HP and are easily killed once you can reach them, however.
  • Attack Drones in the remake. They only take one hit to go down, but as Airborne Mooks they fly high making it harder to hit them, and if the player isn't paying attention and doesn't kill them quickly, they will lower their height and fire a salvo of unblockable rockets that knock the player down on hit.
• Player Punch: You'll know this coming if you played the arcade predecessor, but still: after assassinating Banglar, the resistance that you had helped the whole time activates the self-destruction code and destroy the robots with Banglar's base. Things look real bad for the populace after Mulk takes over as the new dictator with the completed ninja robots as his new army. With Banglar, there was at least a shred of hope in both the resistance and the ninja robots. With Mulk, there is none, especially when one Flawed Prototype could already take down Banglar and his army.
• Remade and Improved: The Ninja Warriors (1994) is itself kind of a remake of The Ninja Warriors (1987), but in 2018, The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors (The Ninja Warriors: Once Again in Japan) asserts itself as an improved remake of 1994's The Ninja Warriors with greatly improved graphics and sprite animations across the whole board, two new and unique characters to play in the form of Yaksha and Raiden, remixed music, and co-op multiplayer.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The lack of a score system in Ninja Saviors. The best you get is fastest time, but it is only recorded if you do a no death run for the entire playthrough. The only other record keeping is of individual stages beaten and an unlockable time attack mode. What makes this even more odd is that the original SNES version has a score system. Why they decided to remove it in the remake nor give an alternative score attack mode is never known (though it could be attributed to the ALSO-removed time limit giving players plenty of easy opportunity to milk endlessly-spawning enemy areas for what are effectively risk-free points). This does hurt the replay value.
  • In the two player mode of Ninja Saviors, both players share the same life bar unlike most Beat 'em Up games. If both players are not in sync with each other, or if at least one is a less skilled player, expect a lot of deaths.
• That One Boss:
  • Or two, in the case of Phobos and Deimos. Two heavily modified Gigant-model robots. Very strong, very fast, can jump and slide across the room, and more health than any other boss. Good luck, buddy! If that wasn't bad enough, the remake makes them even tougher by upgrading both into the newer-model Gigants, giving them immunity to most throws as well as knockback resistance. The only silver lining is that if both are hit at the same time, it does double damage to their Shared Life-Meter. Get both of these guys on the same side of the room and Raiden's guns will rip them apart.
  • In the remake, Banglar is a very difficult fight by Final Boss standards if you're playing as Raiden. Thanks to Raiden's massive size, slow speed and slow rate of turning, the second half of the fight becomes difficult as the laser walls become difficult to avoid, while floor-sweeping lasers are added in, all of which can and will interrupt his command grabs. Worse still, the area that Raiden's throws hit varies depending on the number of enemies he's grabbed, which can making hitting Banglar tough. Finally, the huge amount of Mooks that constantly appear will have an easy time hitting Raiden, chipping away at his health and pausing him long enough for the laser walls and sweeping lasers to hit. It quickly becomes a war of attrition once Banglar Turns Red and the opportunities for safe attack grow ever fewer.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The USA and European version of the SNES game removes green blood effect, and replaces female enemies with generic mooks. This means there are less enemy types, making the game somewhat more repetitive. The remake doesn't have the regional difference.
  • In Ninja Saviors, the first boss was upgraded to a new-model Gigant, meaning he's twice the size he used to be, gained some extra features and became a Wake-Up Call Boss, requiring players to learn how to dodge and block early on.

---