Fun game. Very, very easy compared to the NES trilogy, but still worthwhile to play through. I do find it kind of unusual that the prototype version contains a (relatively) full story, while the final game strips nearly all of the story text out, while mangling what's left. It's really a shame, considering how story-driven Ninja Gaiden as a series has been from the beginning. I can say that the cutscenes here can be surprisingly bloody, compared to what was shown on the NES - though the cutscenes themselves end up being kinda bland in comparison to how tightly-paced and constructed the NES trilogy's cutscenes can be. Those are a spectacle to witness.

I do have to say that I would probably like this more if the game were both more difficult, as well as has a more brisk pace going for it. I couldn't help but notice while playing, that there were a lot of enemies that took more than one hit to kill. Considering in the NES trilogy, enemies rarely if ever took more than one hit to kill - that makes those games move at a very fast pace, while the Master System game requires you to move a little slower and more methodically in order to dispatch everyone in your path. Yet, this doesn't quite nail the deliberate precision of a series such as Shinobi, either. This isn't enough to ruin the game by any means, but I do wish the difficulty/design balance could have been managed a bit better.