It Takes Two To Tengo
HIGH Brutal artisanal arcade action. Dense, lush pixel art.
LOW Desperately needs a proper practice mode.
WTF A ninja with a shotgun just feels wrong (but also kinda right?)
Tengo Project is a team of three industry veterans devoted to keeping arcade culture alive in a world that has mostly forgotten it, but they occupy a wholly unique place even within that niche — they’re not restoring and preserving classics like the arch-archivists at M2, nor are they general workmanlike preservationists a la Hamster. Instead, Tengo Project returns to old arcade or console titles and completely re-envisions them.
As such, it’s easy to reach for the term “remake,” but Tengo’s title are remakes only in the sense that a butterfly is a remake of a caterpillar. Each piece from them carries forward the life force of its inspiration, but transformed into something new and striking. Their latest, Shadow of the Ninja: Reborn, may be the most ornate expression of their process yet.
Reborn has its roots in an NES title called — you guessed it — Shadow of the Ninja, a late-era 2D NES action-platformer in the vein of classics like Ninja Gaiden, and Reborn could still be described as such. You can sense the NES texture underneath, now enriched with an elegant suite of deepened mechanics, all of which are honed to fine points that the game will happily skewer players on. The difficulty here? Well it’s pungent, intense, and bracing — it’s an heir to (and evolution of) the kind of brutal things that Ghosts ‘n Goblins and the early Castlevanias were doing.
Player characters Hayate and Kaede are ninja, so they’re not as stiff-jointed as Arthur or the Belmonts, but neither are they lightning-fast. Their moveset is nuanced and powerful, but also laden with recovery frames and balancing drawbacks. As is always the case with experiences of this ilk, engaging with the possibilities and limitations of the moveset is the first step on the long road to mastery. The two core verbs are a sword attack which fans out in front of the character and can destroy some projectiles, and a long-range kusarigama attack, which can be aimed in both orthogonal and diagonal directions.
Then there’s the item system, which is baroque, wild, and wooly. Crates throughout each level contain items that can be swapped between and used like sub-weapons. There are a gobsmacking 53 different items altogether, including a tea kettle, a butcher saw, a pirate ship cannon, a tonfa, and even a suite of decidedly un-ninjalike military hardware like a minigun or a pump-action shotgun. There’s a lot of functional overlap between items in a general sense (lots of big clubs, lots of projectile weapons, etc.) but there’s nuance too — the blunderbuss fires a wild mess of pellets, for instance, while the pump-action keeps its spread much tighter.
Superplayers will probably establish a meta for which items are best, but all the ones I’ve found have felt extremely powerful and are a satisfying way to tip the odds in the player’s favor. A good thing, because there’s a bristling bestiary standing between these little ninja and the credits. There are hench-gorillas, onmyoji riding magical waterspouts, gun-toting mecha, lava monsters… and that’s before taking the bosses into account, each of which is a rich course of brutality on its own, with complex, demanding attack patterns.
It’s a testament to the mechanical richness on display in Reborn that I have gone this long without discussing the incredible visuals. This is pixel work from true artists, and I love the Tengo Project house style — it’s multilayered and lush, with a particular eye to color and shadow to create depth, backgrounds that teem with movement, and buttery-smooth animations that are detailed, but never cumbersome. Reborn may be Tengo’s most impressive work to date purely from a visual perspective, and just being able to see what the next screen looks like, the next enemy, the next boss, is as much a reward as the conquering of the obstacles themselves.
In a larger sense, Reborn is fashioned from arcade-style philosophies. It’s meant to be played over and over… to be mastered, cleared from start to finish without dying, and played for speed. That’s going to take some time for all but the Chosen Ones. I’m a long-time arcade player (I have 1ccs under my belt) but I still haven’t finished Reborn’s six stages. It’s a beast from the start, and by the time players reach stage three the gloves are off — and there wasn’t much glove to begin with. Practice is key.
Sadly, that process is made more difficult than it needs to be due to the lack of a proper practice mode. This is something that dogs other Tengo Project releases, but it’s an even bigger problem with Reborn because each sub-section of a stage is really a level unto itself — there’s no way to jump into a specific section without playing through the portions of the level that precede it. Reborn is a test for serious arcade players, and Tengo Project surely knows that. Seeing them continue to hold back on features that are quickly becoming standard in this style of game is disappointing to say the least.
Each Tengo Project release is a handcrafted monument to a type of experience and particular strain of gaming culture that is mostly forgotten by the mainstream. This is not “Retro Gaming” as marketed to us for the last 20 years, but a type of design that fully embodies the specific, timeless, vibrant virtues of the ’80s and ’90s in new and exciting forms. Reborn is for sickos, by sickos. For those that have love in their heart for arcade culture, and for muscular, uncompromising, full-blooded action built on a system of beautifully-tuned mechanics, Shadow of the Ninja: Reborn will be one of the best things they can buy this year.
8.5 out of 10
— Ben Schwartz
Disclosures: This game is developed by Tengo Project and published by Natsume Atari. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, Switch, and XBO/X/S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 7 hours were devoted to the game, and it was not completed (yet!). 0 hours were spent in the two-player mode.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Fantasy Violence and Mild Blood. The official rating states: “This is an action platformer in which players assume the role of ninjas attempting to stop a demon invasion. Players traverse side-scrolling levels to defeat human and fantastical enemies (e.g., robots, monkeys, ninjas) in melee-style combat. Players use swords, chains, guns, and cannonballs to attack and kill enemies. Combat is highlighted by impact sounds, colorful light effects, and brief blood-splatter effects.”
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is no dialogue in the game itself, but the attract mode does have subtitles for the Japanese text crawl. They cannot be altered or resized but the text doesn’t appear in the game proper at all. All enemy attacks are telegraphed visually, none appear to rely on sound cues alone. This game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.
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