I remember it with perfect and disquieting clarity: a line from an
early 1990s issue of GamePro. A writeup about a new arcade game stated “the all-girl round is imaginative, and it starts with a surprise
that we can’t reveal here, but watch out! These women are MEAN!”
This evocation of feminine mystery must have lodged deep within my
borderline-teenage brain, because it stayed with me long after I forgot even the
title of the game it was talking about. I recalled only that it was some side-scrolling brawler, and
the arcades of the 1990s practically used those to prop open doors and whack
cockroaches. Well over a decade later, I remembered that curious phrase and finally
figured out that it described Ninja Combat for the Neo Geo.
The second stage of
Ninja Combat leads the player to a group
of women menaced by the game’s generic ninja. They even call for help with a
plaintive sound effect. And you, as the hero, clearly should rescue
these women just as you would a kidnapped president.
Then comes the surprise. Once you advance, the terrified
hostages reveal themselves to be disguised ninja women and attack you. I’m not
sure why the Gamepro blurb connoted this as “mean,” but I'll say this much: it would have surprised my younger self. Hostages were a cliche in arcade games even back in 1991, but we were used to freeing them for bonus
points, whether it was the children in
Moonwalker or the stone-encased citizens
of
Black Tiger (all of whom were old men for some reason). It’s a tradition
that lives on today in any arcade light-gun shooter where unfortunate civilians cringe and dash through zombie outbreaks or anti-terrorist firefights. These citizens are inevitably mowed down by unwary
younger players, who learn that shooting the innocent costs soldiers or police
officers only a chunk of life meter. Or a few weeks of paid leave until the
investigation clears them.
Ninja Combat isn’t very good. It’s the sort of primitive
arcade title that gave the Neo Geo a reputation for mediocre games costing
$200 and lasting about forty-five minutes. Yet it’s not without some invention.
Enemy mid-bosses become playable characters once defeated, the cutscenes have
some hysterical acting, and the enemy ninja include such novelties as harpy ninja, fan ninja,
and burly executioner ninja whose Klansman-like hoods weren’t changed to appease North American audiences.
Is there more to
Ninja Combat's little joke about captive damsels in arcade brawlers? Is it subtly telling us that the concept of helpless, imperiled women pleading for rescue is an
outdated and chauvinistic ideal, and that those who accept it do so to their ninja-swamped misfortune?
Probably not.
