If Ninja Gaiden was the best ninja game on the NES, then this game is considered the best on the Sega Genesis. What does that mean? Nothing, really; only that we are haphazardly choosing universally liked games. As someone who never had a Genesis, and never really liked the controller or many of the games, I find Shinobi III’s acclaim dubious, but we will just have to see, now won’t we?

According to Wikipedia, the source for all knowledge, in Japan this game was released 1993 as The Super Shinobi II, which, honestly, would not have been too bad of a title. It’s not just Super Shinobi II, it’s THE Super Shinobi II. But that’s beside the point.

Apparently, super evil bad guy Neo Zeed is up to his old tricks again, and with his trusty band of vagabonds has recreated what once was a lofty crime syndicate. (There never really is a good type of syndicate, is there? That word as a noun just has too much negative connotation.) Joe Musashi, in doing what he does best, has “felt” the presence of these bad dudes and since he lives on a mountaintop and has nothing else better to do, he descends to kick some syndicate ass and find the new boss who is known as the Shadow Master. SPOILER ALERT: Shadow Master = Neo Zeed.

Joe Musashi, a.k.a. Shinobi, jumps and kicks and does other ninja-y stuff. At this point in discussing the ninja games we are playing nothing is new. Run-in-this-direction-and-kill is really the soup du jour of most of these games. I would just accept that by now.

We currently have Shinobi III scheduled to begin around noon on Saturday, May 22nd.