Reviews from

in the past


Simple, tight side scrolling action. My only complaint with it is that the final boss stinks. Other than that? Extremely solid gameplay, great pixel art, great music, awesome characters to play as. All around a good time.

replayed on hard; its good until the final boss (he kinda sucks)

eles realmente deixaram os sprites com seios maiores

Kinda disappointed with this Tengo Project title ngl. While I do think The Ninja Saviors has some fun bits and decent depth, it got tiring fast and the final boss was annoying. I can’t imagine multiplayer being better when Tengo is infamous for having awful co-op mechanics. I do look forward to their next project despite not liking this game.


I love the original for the snes, and I truly think this one might be the best version. It is quite polished and will keep you coming back for more. The new playable characters are great and add a lot of diversity gameplay wise. A true classic that got a new blood in it's veins to shine brighter.

The Ninja Warriors Once Again is the second remake/remaster from Natsume-owned studio, Tengo Project. This studio is a group of individuals, originally from Natsume, that have reuinited and, for the past few years, have been on a mission to remake the games they've worked on years past. The first one was Wild Guns Reloaded, a fully loaded remake of the SNES 1994 original, Wild Guns. The second one is The Ninja Warriors Again, a fully equipped remake of the SNES 1994 original, The Ninja Warriors Again. They've struck gold once again, because this remake, and all their remakes, are blueprints of what remakes should be like.

The Ninja Warriors Once Again is a beat 'em up. Unlike most other beat 'em ups, this one is not a belt-scroller, but a side-scroller. You can play as one of five characters, two of which are unlockable by completing Normal and Hard mode. Each one has their own moveset and combo strings. They are all very different and play very different, which offers a lot of replayability to this title. I struck a cord with Ninja, a big robotic grappler who has a lot of really strong throws that assist with crowd control.

I cleared this one, and the only real walls I ran into were Stage 5's boss, Jubei, who's just insane to run into after playing the first 5 levels. He's fast and strong, and you need to preempt and block a lot of his attacks to get an opening. The second is Stage 7's boss, Zelos. The boss himself isn't bad, but in Hard mode, he gets a lot of fodder that you need to kill or avoid or throw at him in order to do some good damage. I died to them several times on my runs, but once you get through, you're pretty home-free for Stage 8. Just be careful with the final boss.

I wholly recommend this game if you're looking for a great 2D beat 'em up in an era where there are so few.

Halfway between a Shinobi game and a traditional beat-'em-up, The Ninja Saviors pushes you to master its wonderfully diverse roster's full movesets in a way that strongly emphasizes positioning and crowd control. Beautiful-looking remake, too.

I enjoy a good beat-em-up game, but this one really expects you to play with a friend, which I couldn't.

O melhor beat em' up (ou brawler chame como quiser) já feito de VERDADE.
Começando pelo combate que apesar de simples é simples o suficiente para ser complexo(se isso sequer faz sentido não importa) mas é tão legal e prazeroso de jogar e isso que importa é tão redondo e gostoso eu AMEI.
A direção visual é magnifica linda e perfeita, as pixel arts são tão bem feitas detalhadas e criadas com tempo carinho e amor e eu amo muito isso.
E tudo que disse me leva ao ponto que amei esse jogo, e é tão difícil as vezes mas feito de uma maneira onde não é frustante e sim gostoso de tentar de novo ( os bosses são os melhores que já vi nesse tipo de jogo são difíceis mas não ridículos e mal balanceados.
Enfim meu sonho é ver esse jogo no pc pra eu poder dar de gift na steam para todos os meus amigos e forçar eles a jogar essa coisa incrível comigo.

Tengo Project does it again. Big shock.

I'm really glad Natsume has been giving these guys all the support they need to put out these incredibly fun and graphically beautiful retro revivals. I've had my eye on Ninja Saviors for a while but finally took the plunge when it was on sale recently and I'm kinda kicking myself for not grabbing it sooner.

This is a pretty simple single-plane beat-em-up with five selectable characters (two of which must be unlocked), each having their own unique set of moves, strengths, and weaknesses, providing some really good replay value. Each character builds a battery meter the longer they're active, allowing them to use some of their meter to perform specials and all of their meter (once maxed) to throw out a screen clearing bomb. You lose meter if you get combo'd or hit by an enemy's strong attack, which is a smart way of encouraging the player to make frequent use of their special abilities rather than let them go to waste.

Of the five characters, I think my favorites are Ninja and Yaksha. Ninja is a big guy with nunchaku who is incapable of jumping but makes up for it with very wide attacks. He also has a dash which is very good for getting up in enemies faces. Yaksha has a low jump and fairly low movement speed, but is able to extend her arms, grab enemies, and whip them around. Her slow speed is somewhat made up for by her ability to grab the ground and vault herself around, but this can be a little clumsy and takes some getting used to.

While Ninja Saviors is a great game, it's not quite as good as Wild Guns or Pocky & Rocky, and while I never played the original Ninja Warriors I do have to wonder if its faults are a consequence of slavishly following the orginal's design. Each character moves pretty stiffly for a ninja. I mean, they're also androids so... I guess it makes sense they would all be very lumbering to some degree, but while pulling off combos and throwing enemies around I did start to wonder why simply walking back and forth had to be so slow. The animation that plays when you're knocked down is also interminable, and you have no invincibility frames when you get back up, which can cause you to get smacked back onto your ass immediately. This is thankfully not that much of a problem until very late in the game, but it did make the final boss pretty miserable to beat.

As with other Tengo Project games, the sprite work is gorgeous. Everything is so incredibly detailed and animates smoothly. It was also designed by an art team that was terminally horny, which becomes incredibly apparent if you look at any side-by-side of Kunoichi's sprites from the start of the series to now. Not hard to imagine a scenario where the head of the art team dictated changes to the sprites as his subordinates grew increasingly distressed. Or maybe they were all in on it...

Uh, anyway, this game is pretty good!

Pretty fun beatemup. Had a good time playing this one.

I only did a playthrough with Kunioichi, but I was expecting a little more. Her moveset's pretty fun and you can pull off a lot of cool maneuvers, but the enemies aren't too varied or interesting. Generally speaking, The Ninja Saviors is very repetitive, and it ends without any real high points. Even the final boss is kinda lame, and the ending sorta left me scratching my head.

As far as 2D beat 'em ups go this is one of my favorites. Great spritework, nice soundtrack, cool character designs and the attacks have plenty of oomph to them. Really nice being able to block too though I wish they would just give me a block button and not make me attack first. Only issue with it is that the robot enemies that are only hurt by specials and throws can be kind of tedious.

They made the final combat (which is the 1cc killer of this game) even more difficult, respect to that.
Also Natsume rocks

The Ninja Warriors was one of the best beat em ups on the SNES and this remake makes it ones of the best I've played.

An excellent side scrolling beat em up with good art, mechanics, animations and a well made remake that adds a lot to the game. The remake includes different music options to use, a larger playing field with updated backgrounds, two new characters for a total of five, new moves for each character, uses both the Kunoichi and Monkey enemies that were in different region versions of the original game, and adds a two player mode. Each of the five characters plays in a very unique way with very different focuses to their playstyle and how they move, with one of the new characters being the largest character I've seen available in a beat em up that can transform between two different modes and who is so large that they use a button combination just to turn around. One of the few beat em ups to both include an option to block and being even rarer among games by having it be both useful and responsive and holding block allows you to still move around and gives access to quick dodges that can avoid or block attacks and put you behind or closer to enemies. A fairly rapidly recharging battery meter allows you to perform a screen wide damaging bomb attack to deplete the full charge or to use a portion of it for a special move unique to each character either done from a stance or by altering the final blow of a combo, taking a harder hit that knocks you down will drain your battery back to nothing giving even more incentive to block and dodge.

There is both a normal and hard mode with the hard mode changing up enemy numbers and variety and the game unlimited continues that start you at a stage checkpoint with the option to change character. Three problems I had come form of there being no ability to save or continue from where you left off so you need to finish in one sitting or keep the game left on (though beaten stages can be replayed by themselves and it is not a long game so this isn't too much of an issue), there is no ability to rebind block to a button instead of holding attack which I've always found an awkward way to block (though this might be the only game I've played to use that method while still being responsive), and enemies love moving off screen and just staying there frequently backing away to leave the screen or trying to attack while out of sight.

Video: https://youtu.be/VJpmE7hdghs?si=xBmAh-cY8MgEZnKX

Un classique du BTA bien remis au goût du jour. Beaux sprites à l'ancienne, gameplay plus complexe qu'il n'y paraît, pléthore de persos jouables et un challenge relevé. Belle découverte pour moi qui n'avait jamais fait l'original.

when I first played TMNT: Shredder's Revenge upon it's release last year as someone who's experience with the beat 'em up genre was an oft-forgotten memory of playing Streets of Rage 2 for 15 minutes on the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection on the PS3. When I played River City Ransom, I glanced into an adjacent genre (to say, I think River City Ransom is less of a beat 'em up and more of a brawler, which one can easily relate to the Yakuza series) and imagined a world where every Final Fight had RPG elements. I thought to myself "A series with such interesting character designs and a fun world deserves something more than a quick and easy beat 'em up, it deserves something deeper". A few months later (Last week!) I played Final Fight, and decided that Final Fight deserved nothing. I looked deep into the design elements of both Final Fight and Captain Commando, two games I played on back to back days. I decided the separating factor between an all timer beat 'em up and Final Fight is X-Factor. I prophesised that any good beat 'em up had at least one pertinent element worth discussing with any friend about why they should play THAT beat 'em up, as opposed to any other one.

I'll tell you now, I was wrong.

The Ninja Saviors is the best beat 'em up not because of any design trick, or cool spectacle moment. It's because, simply, The Ninja Saviors is designed by developers so adept in their own craft that even the strongest of armour would be cut by it's sharp edges.

Every movement in The Ninja Saviors is deliberate, every hit and every block is crucial. Every enemy slowly builds a library of tactics in your mind, and there's never a confusion of what to do once an enemy hits the screen. When five enemies appear on screen at the same time, there is no immediate confusion on what the solution is. This consistency shines brightly in a world of similar titles designed with your quarters in mind.

The Ninja Saviors is slow. It's slow on purpose. Closing distance is not always easy, getting away from an enemies attack even harder, yet it all comes together in a perfect mosaic of action design. Jumping and attacking feels purposeful, and the slow get up animation requires the player to plan out what they want to do in advance. It's heavy in all the right ways, leaving a real weight to every attack.

To put it simply, The Ninja Saviors is a sanctuary of action. It doesn't require any tricks, it requires no spectacle, because it's design is so innately intuitive and exemplary. It's the best beat 'em up of all time, no question about it.

I had a blast playing through Tengo Project's Ninja Saviors. I ran through the game mostly as Ninja, a hulking cyborg-ninja with glowing red eyes and huge metal arms. It felt like I was playing through one of those ultraviolent 90s OVAs, and I was playing as the bad guy. Like all beat em ups, there's not very much difficulty here outside of the bosses, and even the majority of those are chumps; unlike most beat em ups, the minute to minute gameplay is really fun and interesting. The different action buttons all change depending on the direction you're holding, and the context—whether you're holding an enemy, on the ground, in the air, dashing, etc. There's a ton of depth to the beating them upping, and getting a handle on your character is really rewarding. My only real complaint is that a few bosses can feel cheap, and that it's just a smidge too long for me to run through on a whim. Looking forward to dipping back into this one and playing with the other characters.

Pretty simple, fun co-op beat-em-up. The screen can get a bit too cluttered at times, and it very much is a 90s beat-em-up (for better and for worse), but it's overall quite enjoyable with a friend.

Thanks to C_F for introducing this game to me and playing through it with me. Was a very fun time.

- Normal, Kunoichi, 2023
- Normal, Yaksha, 2023

The Ninja Warriors is one of Taito’s best, both the ostentatious ultra widescreen arcade cabinet and the stellar Super Famicom beat ‘em up. This remake is how ya do it, folks: take the 16 bit graphics and make it widescreen, super clean and super smooth. The package is a little sparse but the game is just so heavy and sticky and weird and wonderful.

It takes a keen eye but you can see if you look at the box art that this is a new version of The Ninja Warriors Again, and is therefore automatically one of the greatest games of all time. Only real experts and visionaries can see these nuances.

The SNES installment, Ninja Warriors Again, was already on my shortlist for best brawler of all time. The second axis which gives "belt scrollers" their name was never what made these games interesting to me, and Ninja Warriors happily sacrifices it in favor of letting the player add up/down modifiers to their inputs. I think it's a good trade, and it was rare for any brawler to remain as consistently fun as Ninja Warriors Again over its runtime. Whatever problems you think might result from losing the "belt" are mitigated by the ability to block, and jump while blocking. The secret to the game's success was how different each of the three characters was to control, with Ninja in particular being easily my favorite "heavy" in the genre, unable to jump but given truly oppressive throws to compensate. On the other end of the spectrum, Kamaitachi is very fast but loses the ability to grab and throw enemies via traditional means (i.e. in the manner of a Final Fight character). Kunoichi feels more traditional and is a perfect on-ramp.

That's all regarding the SNES version, mind you. Ninja Saviors takes that version as a base, adds some tweaked movesets to round out each member of the cast, and adds two more playable characters. Raiden's not my favorite but he is cathartic, impossibly large, more like a showstopper boss than a player character. Wire-armed Yaksha is better. She has high maneuverability tied to a number of her attacks, but low maneuverability in a neutral state, so she's more technical and confusing than the original trio, and a perfect addition to an overhaul of a decades-old game.

People overlook Ninja Saviors, but it's honestly my choice for best brawler ever despite (or because of) its departures from the Final Fight/Streets of Rage blueprint. The only things I dislike about the game, honestly, are:

1. It hasn't been brought to PC, unlike Wild Guns Reloaded.
2. I strongly prefer the non-U.S. name (Ninja Warriors Once Again).


Best version of the best beatemup

Expanded version of one of my favorite games of all time.
Nuff said.

Never played this one back in the day so it was cool to be able to play it on a newer gen console with even a Physical release of the game.

Overall this is a pretty fun Side scrolling beat em up with a interesting blocking mechanic and some cool bosses. My issues lay mainly with the final boss being such a big letdown and a very boring fight. Past that I do recommend this game !