Hi there!

So when you cross Robots with Ninjas, you get Ninja Warriors:

Not to be confused with Ninja Warriors Again (not Turbo! ) from the SNES, which is the sequel, this is the conversion of an original Taito Arcade. In case you're wondering about the narrow screenshot, that's because the gimmick of the Arcade was that it had 3 monitors mounted in a row, giving it a pretty wide display. And what you see above is what the clever conversion team figured to be the best solution to reproduce that effect

Well, the positive side effect of this are the fairly detailed backgrounds they could fit into the memory now. Music is still only played on the title screen though, all audio you get during the game are 2-3 SFX. I didn't check into the robot/ninja/war story, but I assume the player has a good enough reason to annihilate what feels like an entire army along his way though

It's smoothly playable and not too hard, but also a lot less exciting and varied than Shinobi. There's no extra weapons to pick up for example: Besides a katana you only have 30 shurikens, which get restocked at the beginning of each of the six stages. There's also no platforming bits or any other diversion - all just unspectacular standard brawling.

Unspectacular is also what I'd rate the ending, after defeating the boss all you get to see is a building crumbling to dust:

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see its sequel "Ninja Warriors Again", but first it'll continue with something else.

Greetings,

Manuel