Console Corner: The Ninja Saviors Return of the Warriors review
Gamers of the 80s and 90s will remember the beat-em-up classic Ninja Warriors, well now it has been reinvented for Nintendo Switch and PS4.
Ninja Saviors: The Return of the Warriors was released last week and immediately grabbed my attention.
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I don’t know if it is because my daughter starts secondary school this week or whether the Switch has rekindled the gaming joy of my youth but I have found myself increasingly drawn to retro nostalgic gaming of late.
So this remaster of the 1994 SNES classic, which itself was a console port of the 1987 arcade game, was right up my street.
And it did not disappoint.
The plot - for those new to the game - is prime 80s/90s beat-em-up.
In a dystopian future, the world is dominated by a dictatorial regime ruled by a dwarfish mutant creature who calls himself Banglar the Tyrant.
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Banglar commands an army of brainwashed human soldiers, vicious mutants and non-sentient combat robots.
It is up to you to restore order. And you have a choice of five very different characters to help you do just that.
Ninja is a hulking tank armed with nunchucks perfect for steaming through hordes of bad guys.
The more lithe Kunoichi offers a more agile playing style and deadly jump attacks.
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Kamaitachi boasts a scythe and speed of attack. There are also another two additional characters to choose from in ROTW in the form of Yaksha - a very short female ninja with extending arms - and Raiden, who is a colossal mechanised shinobi ninja robot. NSROTW features enhanced graphics as you would expect but also adds new gameplay elements.
There is 16:9 widescreen support, local two-player co-op mode and a rather cool option to select music from the arcade and SNES games.
The crowning achievement, though, is the depth to the combat. If beat-em-ups from the 80s and 90s died a death in the noughties it was solely down to a lack of depth. Button mashing became a thing of the past and the repetitive nature of these side-scrolling fighting games quickly became old hat.
In NSROTW, though, there is a quite frankly unbelievable amount of depth to the combat, to the point I’m not even sure I have fully discovered all the moves and combos yet and I’ve been playing solidly for over a week.
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I have been playing on the Switch and it has been great having a game that is excellent both docked and in handheld mode.
NSROTW is competitively priced (£16.99 digital download) and if you want to immerse yourself in some genuine top class nostalgic action, look no further, it won’t let you down.