The Ninja Warriors Once Again Story

The Ninja Warriors (also known as The Ninja Warriors Again in Japan, The Ninja Warriors: New Generation in Europe) is a side-scrolling Beat 'em Up developed by Natsume and released by Taito for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1994. It is loosely based on the 1987 Taito arcade game The Ninja Warriors, being more of a remake of the original than a port. Again is single plane beat-'em-up much like its predecessor, but it has a bigger emphasis on Final Fight-style combos and input-based special moves, as well as multiple playable characters.

In a dystopian future where the population of an unspecified country has been oppressed by the military and Brainwashed. The leader of this nation is known as Banglar the Tyrant. The only hope for this broken society is a small underground resistance with plans of assassinating Banglar using three androids. Development of the androids was a lengthy process and due to Banglar's forces beating them back literally to their very doorstep, The resistance had no choice but to dispatch the androids untested.

The player can pick from the strong Ninja, the balanced Kunoichi or the fast Kamaitachi. Each character has a combination of throws, ground attacks and jumping attacks. Each also has a gauge that fills up over time. Once the gauge is full, a portion of it can be used to add a stronger attack to the end of a character's ground combo or the entire gauge can be used to deal damage to every enemy on screen. If you get knocked down while the gauge is filling up, the entire gauge will be depleted.

The game features nine stages, with distinct bosses, a variety of mooks who can go off the edges of the screen even though you can't, and really cool music.

Announced in 2018, a remake in a similar vein to that of Wild Guns: Reloaded, that being The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors (The Ninja Warriors: Once Again in JP). The remake features two new [unlockable] characters (Raiden and Yaksha), co-op multiplayer, and a graphical upgrade. The remake will be released on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 on July 25, 2019 in JP/Asia regions, August 30th in EU/PAL regions and October 15th in the US.

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This game provides examples of:

• Action Bomb: Your characters blow up at the end to destroy the Big Bad's HQ in a massive explosion.
• Action Robot Girl: Kunoichi, and in the remake, Yaksha.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Banglar. In The Ninja Warriors, he was a Zero-Effort Boss who offered little resistance. In this game, he pilots a machine that spawns deadly laser walls, summons grunts like no tomorrow, and can't be hurt by your regular attacks. In the remake, he adds more laser walls including one around himself, and also has two turrets that fire beams across the floor.
  • Gigant, the first boss in the game was rather easy thanks to having low HP for a boss and easily flinched from your attacks. In the remake, Banglar's forces roll out an improved version with a noticeable HP increase, an Immunity to Flinching against most non-special attacks and a rather noticeable size boost, making him a tougher opponent. And lest you forget, the stage 6 bosses are modified Gigants... and both also gain his new capabilities.
  • In the remake, Yamori throws six bombs each time instead of two, making his bomb attack far more tricky to avoid.
  • The remake has Silverman's Kill Sat laser slowly chase towards the player before it expires, instead of just staying in one location.
  • Zelos in the remake has the ability to go into a temporary unthrowable mode like the Puma mooks.
  • On the flip side, the original trio of playable characters all have new attacks added to their movelists.
• A.I. Breaker:
  • Chainsaw Bull cannot reach a crouching Kamaitachi with his charge attack, meaning that all Kamaitachi has to do is crouch at a distance to goad the boss into using it, then combo him when he charges near and knock him away, rinse and repeat. The same problem happens with Jubei, who cannot reach a crouching Kamaitachi with most of his attacks that aren't the green flames.
  • Despite being a Badass Normal with a pimp cane and ability to take a lot of damage, Silverman (the boss of Stage 4) doesn't know how to counter crouch attacks (unless it's from Ninja or Raiden, who are too big to avoid his cane). The remake gives him an overhead swing attack to rectify this weakness.
• Airborne Mook: The remake has flying Attack Drones as new enemies. They will descend a bit to fire out a rocket salvo, but thankfully have very low health, being destroyed in just one hit from most characters.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Zelos has green coloured skin, justified because he's a mutant.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Kamaitaichi is based on the sickle weasel Youkai of the same name, being fast and using sickles as his weapons.
  • The Saru ninjas are heavily based on monkeys like their namesake suggests, having a monkey-like look and stature while also being agile.
  • The third boss Yamori is lizard-themed, being named after a Gecko, climbing on walls, and having the ability to turn invisible like Hollywood Chameleons.
• Arm Cannon: This is Ninja's super move. He points his arm and a panel opens up for a small cannon to pop out. One massive blast later and no more enemies... Raiden in the remake uses his arm jets as flamethrower in a few attacks.
• Art Evolution: The art in Once Again got an overhaul compared to the original SNES game. Natsume even has a page on their website showing the differences.
• Attack Drone: 3SVO II are small white robots that move on the floor and fire lasers. They are short, making them slightly difficult to hit (Hint: throw them for massive damage). The remake also has flying attack drones with guns which serve as Airborne Mooks.
• Back from the Brink: The beginning of the game has Banglar's forces literally right at Resistance's doorstep. Cue the ninjas being dispatched to eventually turn the war around.
• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick: Kunoichi, Ninja and Kamaitaichi remain as the Balance, Power, and Skill respectively in the remake, but it also adds another Skill character in Yaksha, who relies a lot on her flexible arms use maneuverable attacks and is even stated to be a "tech type" in her description, and a high-powered Gimmick character in Raiden who plays less like a Beat 'em Up player character and more like a Beat Em Up boss.
• Balance, Speed, Strength Trio: Respectively Kunoichi, Kamaitachi, and Ninja.
• Big Guy: Originally it was just Ninja, who weighs over 1500 pounds and has the height of a NBA forward. Yeah he's a bit sluggish but he can really go to town with his hefty punches, nunchuks and devastating throws. The rebellion have since upped the stakes in the re-release with the far more massive Raiden, a straight-up assault mech who outsizes even the Gigants.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Kamaitachi is armed with wickedly-curved blades built into his arms. He likes to whip them around.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: Blocking an enemy attack will make said attacks deal no damage no matter how strong. Of course, you need to block low if the attacks hit your legs, and some enemy attacks cannot be blocked at all.
• Bloodier and Gorier: While the SNES game was an entirely bloodless affair, the remake adds various blood effects (tinted green in the Japanese version), some of which are actually taken straight from the 1987 arcade game.
• Boobs of Steel:
  • Puns aside, the Kunoichi has a decent bust size in the original game, however, she got them upgraded slightly in the remake.
  • Yaksha, one of the new playable characters of featured in Once Again, has even larger breasts and unlike Kunoichi she doesn't even use weapons, instead fighting with kicks and her Extendable Arms. In fact, her breasts appear to be the storage compartments for said Extendable Arms — when she extends them, her bust shrinks.
• Breath Weapon: The Fire Ninjas (the mooks in red gis with long blonde hair) are actually fire-breathers.
• Boss Remix: With another boss, even. Phobos and Deimos' Battle Theme Music is a remixed version of Gigant's, which makes sense because they're two custom-made Gigants.
• Bowdlerize: The Kunoichi enemies were removed in the overseas versions due to Nintendo of America's stance against the depicting violence against women. However, instead of replacing them with sprite-swapped versions of the same enemy like Capcom did with the SNES versions of Final Fight games, they simply replaced all of their appearances with that of another enemy character (Saru). Both the Japanese version of Again and the remake toss both Kunoichi and Saru at you.
• Cane Fu: Silverman's weapon and martial art of choice.
• Combos: Your regular attacks do this automatically, so it's probably more an example of Button Mashing. Each character also has a second, more powerful combo finisher, but it requires a portion of your Blaster bar and the game never tells you how to do it (hint: it's just holding up on the controls, when you do your combo. Ninja generates a powerful blast from an Arm Cannon that pops out, Kamaitachi extends his arms forward while they're glowing, and Kunoichi runs forward with her katana to gut everyone in her path).
• Chainsaw Good: Chainsaw Bull (the Stage 2 boss) is a giant of a man with a yellow coat and fireman's hat, gas mask, and a chainsaw that he uses to cut through a steel door just prior to engaging you.
• Charged Attack:
  • The main charge meter is a Collect type that charges automatically over time, but depletes completely if you get knocked down while it's recharging. Functionally, it's more of a Mana Meter for your Special Attacks and a Smart Bomb when full.
  • Raiden has a Hold-type in the form of his Ground Punch. The longer it's charged, the bigger the resulting explosion when he punches the ground.
• Chicken Walker: Raiden, who's huge enough to qualify as an assault mech, can transform into a configuration like this, with birdlike legs, which brings a set of very dangerous guns to the fore.
• Cool Shades: The Fox enemies wear sunglasses.
• Crate Expectations: Usually contain health items. Can be thrown at Mooks. In fact, this is required to break them open.
• Critical Existence Failure: You can be perfectly fine with even a sliver of health left, but as soon as that last bit is gone, your robot's outer shell explodes off, revealing the robotic skeleton beneath.
• Cruel Twist Ending: Your prototype ninja robots kill the evil Banglar and end his reign of terror... only for your ninjas' leader Mulk to make them self-destruct to blow up the dictator's estate, and then he becomes the new president and takes over the country with completed versions of the robot ninjas. It turns out that the new government was no better than the one you overthrew.
• Cyber Ninja: All of the player characters are robot ninjas sent to kill Banglar.
• Determinator: The player-controlled androids are programmed for a single purpose: Kill Banglar. It's also the reason why they were forced to self-destruct after killing him, as their ability to think for themselves was not fully developed.
• Dark Action Girl: The Kunoichi enemies.
• Dash Attack: Kunoichi performs hers by holding down and pressing jump, giving her a forward stab with a kunai. Ninja performs his by holding forwards and pressing jump, giving him a Jet Pack-boosted tackle that can be followed into a knockdown kick.
• Degraded Boss: Gigant (the Stage 1 boss) is apparently produced in limited quantities. Some units appear later as a Mini-Boss, and a pair of upgraded, head-swapped models named Phobos and Deimos appear as the twin bosses of Stage 6.
• Deadly Rotary Fan: The second stage has these. They're safe to cross when they're not spinning. Mooks will happily run into these when they're spinning, however. This remains the case in the remake.
• Death from Above: The new moves that the original Ninja Warriors get amount to this (outside of their new battery-consuming moves). Kunoichi has the Helmsplitter which is her doing a big forward somersault and slashing out with her katana, Ninja jumps up and gives the enemy over 1500 pounds of elbow drop for a lot of damage, and Kamitachi will spiral through the air with his blades out (this move uses some battery power). The new warriors, Yaksha and Raiden also have their own deadly attacks from the air.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The two new characters from the remake have quirks that make playing with them more difficult than usual, but very enjoyable when mastered.
  • Yaksha is outright considered a technical/skill-based character by the game. Her movement is slow, her jump height is low, and her basic attacks don't have very good range. However, she has several options for mobility and air combos. Her Up+Basic Grab will take her (and an enemy) into the air, allowing an aerial combo, or use a powerful downward arm attack on enemies below. Her command grab costs energy and hits at a very awkward distance, being unable to hit enemies right in front of her, but can hit enemies in the air and do multiple things — it can perform a Metronomic Man Mashing, throw an enemy high into the air or forwards, and if it misses, she can use her arms to vault forward or up into the air. Once the player knows how to use her command grabs properly and at the right distances, she becomes a very powerful character thanks to her combo ability.
  • Raiden, befitting his status as big stompy mech, moves painfully slow, has a non-trivial windup to his jumps, and if you let the enemies surround him you're as good as scrap because he's a very large character that doesn't have many options to deal with spread out crowds. However, if you position yourself in the right spots, you can mow down hordes of mooks without breaking a sweat, thanks to his grabs, which let him grab multiple guys at once, and his Chicken Walker alt mode that attacks with a machinegun and missiles that deal a ton of damage and have a large area of effect.
• Difficulty by Region: The Japanese title has those skimpily-dressed Kunoichi enemies while the English version replaces them with additional instances of Saru, the short ninja with Wolverine Claws. Saru is shorter and can do heavier damage if he gets a combo going, but Kunoichi dodges around a lot more, and more effectively.
• Divergent Character Evolution: The Ninja and both, the player and enemy versions of Kunoichi, all have different designs, unlike the arcade original, where they were all head/palette swaps.
• Downer Ending: Following the destruction of the Banglar's fortress, Mulk becomes the new President and the android technology continued to develop. This technology however is used for destructive means, and Mulk becomes no better than Banglar, with some remarking that "history repeats itself."
• Dual Boss: Phobos and Deimos from Stage 6. They also share the same lifebar.
• Elevator Action Sequence: You fight a bunch of enemies in an elevator just before the fight with Zelos, the seventh boss.
• Elite Mooks:
  • Golems, tall bipedal robots with high HP and immunity to most forms of damage from the front. They also come with a powerful grab and a ranged attack with their Eye Beams.
  • Flame Ninjas, firebreathing ninjas that have moderately high HP, can teleport, and attack for good damage at mid-range with a fire breath.
  • Foxes, Cool Shades-wearing guys in suits which move fast, have moderate health, and come with attacks like flying kicks and are one of the few enemies with a grab attack.
  • Pumas, fast-moving synthetic humanoids with considerable amounts of health, the ability to move quickly and shield themselves, preventing them from being thrown. They are only found in the last two stages of the game and pose a reasonable threat. Tellingly, the final encounter of enemies before the final boss consists of both Pumas and Foxes.
• Expy: Kamaitachi seems to be loosely based on the Tsuchigumo enemies from the arcade version. Both are named after a Yōkai.
• Extendable Arms: This is Yaksha's special ability. Her arms are extendable and stretchy which ties into her technical playstyle.
• Eye Beams: The Golem robots use one to blow up an area on the ground. Of course, they can only use it if their heads are intact. 3SVO II will fire theirs forward as a projectile.
• Fanservice Pack: The remake in The Ninja Warriors Once Again, possibly courtesy of the advances that made Yaksha possible, sees the resistance upgrading Kunoichi's bust size by a rather noticeable amount ◊.
• Fat Bastard: Banglar.
• Fighting with Chucks: Ninja is armed with a big metal pair of nunchaku for maximum face-hurtage.
• Flash Step: Jubei, the Stage 5 boss, is a white-haired, Power Tattooed, heavily-muscular Old Master who can do this, in addition to summoning columns of green flame and just punching the crap out of you.
• Flawed Prototype: The circuitry for the android ninjas to think for themselves was not developed properly, and their sole purpose was to destroy Banglar. Due to this, they had to self-destruct after fulfilling their mission.
• Flunky Boss: Every single boss (except Yamori and the android twins) fights alongside their underlings. In the remake's hard mode, even Yamori and the Android Twins have their own flunkies. In the case of the Final Boss, flunkies are actually a good thing, as the only way to damage him is to throw his men into him.
• Friendly Fireproof: Subverted with the enemies and bosses, some of which are capable of hurting and killing their own allies via throwing you into them, or via explosive attacks. Played straight for both players in the remake, who cannot hurt each other.
• Full-Circle Revolution: The ending heavily implies that new leader Mulk became no better than Banglar after mass-producing completed ninja robots, possibly to control the population just like Banglar did.
• Future Copter: In the remake, Stage 4's boss has replaced the regular gun-copter he used to use with a fancy, futuristic hover-copter.
• Fuuma Shuriken: Kunoichi can throw 3 very large, green glowing shurikens. Doing so uses some of her battery energy.
• Gainaxing: In the remake, the Kunoichi's breasts jiggle with every step. So do Yaksha's, but even more so, thanks to her larger bust.
• Giant Mook: The Over Shinobu are larger then even Ninja.
• The Goomba: The regular soldiers. These take one hit to die (Kamaitaichi might have to hit them twice), come in large numbers, and are hardly a threat at all.
• Grapple Move: Grabs and throws are performed differently with the characters. Each character can follow up their grab with a different move depending on which directional button is pressed.
  • Kunoichi can grab enemies by touching them, but cannot move while holding them and will drop them after some time if not followed up.
  • Ninja will grab enemies by touching them and can move around while holding them, taking a longer time before he drops them compared to Kunoichi.
  • Kamaitachi cannot grab enemies by simply touching them, rather, the player has to hold forwards or backwards + press the attack button after he hits an enemy at close range to throw them.
  • Yaksha and Raiden, the two new characters introduced in the remake sport both a basic grab and a command grab that depletes their energy meter. Yaksha's command grab in particular has an awkward hit range and cannot affect enemies right in front, but has a powerful follow up if it connects.
• Gratuitous Ninja: Pretty much the whole point of this game.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Ninja can pick up regular mooks just by walking into them, and then swing them to floor any nearby mooks. Kunoichi and Kamaitachi can throw them for the same effect. Raiden, being absolutely huge, can even do this with big guys, like the Gigants, though grabbing enemies requires a special action for it.
• Groin Attack: Kunoichi's pummel move (Grab, Down+Attack) has her punch her opponent below the waist. Hold the attack button to punch them there more times.
• Ground Punch: This is one of Raiden's attacks. He can also charge this attack by holding down the button, which strengthens it and causes increasing amounts of explosions the longer it's charged. His super move also does this, except it explodes the whole floor.
• Guide Dang It!: The game never mentions how to block or activate your secondary combo.
• Guns Are Worthless: The Machine Gun Army units have guns that deal only superficial damage. The robotic enemies in the 3SVO IIs, Golems, and flying Attack Drones in the remake deal rather small damage with their lasers/missiles; however some of these attacks do knock your character down. The exception being Raiden's guns in his Chicken Walker form: they deal huge amounts of damage while also able to hit multiple enemies in front of him.
• Head Swap: Snake to Panther (two mook enemies), and Phobos & Deimos (the Dual Boss of Stage 6) to Gigant (the first boss).
• Heal Thy Self: Energy tanks pop up here and there, often in crates.
• The Hero Dies: At the end of the game, your ninja robots are forced to self destruct after killing Banglar, as they lack the ability to properly think for themselves once their sole purpose in killing Banglar was achieved.
• Hidden Weapons: Raiden has 3 powerful, special weapons that he can only use in Chicken Walker form. He's got a 4-barrelled heavy machine gun, missile launchers and a 105mm anti-tank cannon whose shot cut through multiple targets for great damage (though a full burst from your machine gun does more damage overall).
• Highly Visible Ninja: All three player characters, as well as some mooks. Taken even further with Raiden in the remake: being one of these is unavoidable when you're a 4-meter, 32-ton assault mech.
• History Repeats: It's revealed in the ending that the new government set up by La Résistance, supported by a new generation of androids, is not much better then Banglar's dictatorship. A bit of a Downer Ending.
• Hoist Hero over Head: Raiden and Yaksha both have a press slam type of throw, though Raiden will only use against Gigants, whose size is similar to his own.
• Humongous Mecha: Gigant, the boss of the first stage, is a giant android made to look like a bodybuilder.
  • Raiden takes the cake, however. He's easily the largest playable character by far, even towering over the previously mentioned Gigant.
• Immune to Bullets: Well, not immune, but bullets do only superficial damage to the player characters.
• In a Single Bound: One of Kunoichi's new moves in the remake, she'll leap high in the air and come down with a katana slash. She can even do this attack while she's in midair from a jump.
• In Case of Boss Fight, Break Glass: You have to beat the Final Boss this way. The Final Boss, the evil dictator you're supposed to kill, is in a laser-spamming machine with a glass window. And there are loads of minions attacking you! You have to throw the minions into the glass to damage it until it breaks.
• Invisibility Cloak: Yamori (the Stage 3 boss), a genetic monstrosity with a skull for a face and clad in purple pinstripes, can cloak himself while he claws at you or drops grenades on you. You can just barely see him though, and he can still be hit while he's on the ground, causing his invisibility to flicker.
• Invisibility Flicker: When Yamori Turns Red, he turns on his Invisibility Cloak. If he's hit while invisible, he briefly turns visible for a second.
• Invulnerable Attack: Many of the three player characters' attack animations leave them immune to damage. Somebody has done a no damage run because of that.
• I Shall Taunt You: Banglar will laugh at you every time you get knocked down in his fight.
• Jet Pack: Ninja, who weighs almost one full ton, has a booster built into his back. This enables him to hover briefly and deliver a crushing kick that hits multiple times. Very spammable. Raiden has boosters in his arms, strong enough to lift all 32 massive, mechanical tons of him.
• Jump Physics: An important part of the game as each of the ninjas have different abilities in jumping. Agile warriors like Kamitachi and Kunoichi have attacks that let them change direction mid-air, Yasha can use her extendable arms to alter her jump movement - even giving her something akin to a double jump. Ninja is too heavy to jump and his jetpack just gives him a straight-up jump - he has to use his jetpack attack to change direction. The even heavier Raiden has somewhat more mobility in his rockets, especially in Chicken Walker mode, but these are treated as special moves.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Kunoichi's Weapon of Choice, and makes up the end part of her basic melee combo. The rest consists of Kunai stabs. The female ninjas you run into Dual Wield these.
• Killer Robot: The player characters, and a few Mecha-Mooks. Said Mooks sometimes have Eye Beams.
• Kill Sat: Silverman can call down a satellite laser beam, foretold by a highly visible Laser Sight. It's not that dangerous though, and more often hits the mooks he summons instead of you. In fact, he can do more damage to you by just whacking you with his cane.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: The Golems, which are tall bipedal robots with Eye Beams. They cannot be damaged from the front with regular attacks, however, the player can easily get around this by attacking their back, throwing them, or throwing somebody/something else into them.
• Let's Play: By none other than DeceasedCrab, here.
• Losing Your Head: After you hit a Golem enough times, its head explodes and the Golem starts moving faster.
• Made of Explodium: The Mecha-Mooks, as well as certain environmental objects, a tanker truck in the opening level, and Zelos upon defeat. Also, the player when you die.
• Made of Iron:
  • The player characters are capable of withstanding knives, bullets, explosives, chainsaws, Ninja magic spells and a variety of other nastiness. Some of it can be forgiven due to them being literally made of iron metal.
  • Honorable mention goes to Silverman who, for being a more or less normal man, can take enough kunai-stabbing, scythe-blading, rocket-punching, arena-exploding punishment to drop the entirety of a neighborhood gang (and then some). While possibly beating up robots with a cane.
• Magic Versus Science: Present with the fifth boss — Jubei, a ki-using ninja who can create supernatural green flames, versus your robot ninjas developed from the resistance's technology.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Raiden in the remake, a 4-meter, 32-ton Transforming Mecha that dwarfs every other character in the game (including the bosses). He has Super Armor against most enemy attacks, a hold-based Charged Attack Ground Punch unlike the other characters, a special command to turn around thanks to his slow speed and size, and plays more like a beat-em-up boss than a player character. Furthermore, Raiden is also the only character with two separate modes, a melee-based humanoid form, and a ranged walker mode.
• Mighty Glacier: Ninja is this compared to Kunoichi and Kamaitaichi, being the hard-hitting but slow member of the team. Raiden takes this even further, hitting extremely hard but moves even more slowly and is a huge target.
• More Dakka: Raiden's 4-barrelled heavy machine gun spits out devastating shots at fairly high rate of fire. It's such an effective weapon that it'll be easy to forget he's got a 105mm anti-tank cannon as well.
• The Napoleon: Banglar is pretty short.
• Ninja: Duh. This game has Ninjas coming out of its ears. One character is even called Ninja, Kunoichi means female ninja and she looks and moves more the part, and Kamaitachi when written in a certain way means "sickle weasel", hence his wicked arm blades. His appearance is more Killer Robot, but he definitely moves like a Ninja. The remake adds Yaksha, an infiltrator unit in the form of a small but busty woman, and Raiden, a 32-ton, 4-meter Transforming Mecha who is still a Ninja. You fight a few of them too.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The player characters make up the "Ninja" and "Robot" part of the equation.
• Nintendo Hard: Don't let the fact that you play as a nigh-unstoppable killer robot fool you. Several enemy formations and bosses you encounter can be very dangerous especially if they surround you, and a few combos or throws from them will make you see the Game Over screen far faster than you'd expect.
• Obstructive Foreground: Several areas have foreground objects that can block the player from seeing their player character and the enemies. Averted in the remake, where it's possible to see your character and enemies behind foreground, though partially obscured ◊.
• One-Man Army: Each of the playable ninja robots take out an army's worth of mooks and bosses to take down Banglar. And these ninjas are only Flawed Prototypes!
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Yaksha is smaller than most of the characters, yet is capable of kicking the ass off Banglar's minions.
• Play as a Boss: Raiden in the remake is essentially a playable boss in design. He dwarfs every other character in the game including the bosses, is Immune to Flinching against most attacks, sports a huge amount of powerful attacks that mow down enemies with ease, and he can turn into a walker with devastating ranged attacks. His main weaknesses however are his large size and slow movement which makes him easy to damage.
• Prehensile Hair: Downplayed, one of Kunoichi's grabs has her use her hair to wrap around and throw the enemy.
• Rubber Man: Zelos attacks you with his stretchy limbs.
• Science Fantasy: Most of the game is purely sci-fi, with robots, vehicles, guns, lasers, and other technologies. The fifth boss Jubei however has green fire Ki Manipulation and the red fire-breathing ninjas have teleportation, suggesting that supernatural elements do exist in the game.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: With the exception of Kamaitaichi, the playable characters who wear clothes are fully clothed. Meanwhile, the enemies and bosses include Stripperiffic female ninjas, a boss who is a Walking Shirtless Scene (Jubei), and another who reveals a lot of skin in his outfit (Zelos).
• Seppuku: As a ninja master, Jubei commits suicide after losing his honor from his defeat to the robot ninjas. He does so by enveloping himself in his own green flames.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Subverted with Yaksha. Her Extendable Arms appear to be stored within her Boobs of Steel, as shown when they shrink down every time she does extend them.
• Shared Life Meter:
  • Phobos and Deimos share the same health pool, and attacking both at the same time depletes it twice as fast.
  • The players themselves have this in the 2-player mode.
• Shout-Out: These two ◊ palette swaps of Snake look suspiciously like fire flower Mario and Luigi. Even more hilariously, both colours tend to appear together.
• Shows Damage: Golems lose their head once they take enough damage, preventing use of their Eye Beams.
• SkeleBot 9000: Kamataichi's design makes him look skeletal compared to the others.
• Skull for a Head: Raiden's design gives him a skull-like face.
• The Smurfette Principle: Kunoichi is the one female player character in the original game. In the English versions, she's the only female character in the game as the enemy female ninjas are not present. In the remake she's joined by Yaksha and the female enemies are present in all versions.
• Spike Shooter: Kamaitachi's new battery-using attack has him shoot metal spines in arc behind him, including some in the air to take out aerial enemies. So when using this, remember to face away from your enemies first.
• Spin Attack: Ninja can do this with his booster in the air, and with his Charged Attack. Kamaitachi does it as part of his regular combo. Yaksha has an aerial attack where she spins around her Extendable Arms. Raiden can do a spinning lariat to hit enemies behind him.
• Spread Shot: In the remake, Kunoichi can throw a spread of three kunai downards in the air, while Kamaitaichi can fire a spray of spikes from his back upwards as an Anti-Air move.
• Stance System: Raiden has two different stances — a melee-based humanoid form, and a walker form whose attacks are ranged. The latter form has powerful long distance attacks but all of them deplete energy, and he can only regenerate energy in the former form.
• Stock Ninja Weaponry: Kunoichi is the most stereotypical ninja out of the group and she carries kunai and a katana. In the remake, she also can hurl a few shurikens by using some battery power.
• Stripperific: The enemy Kunoichis you meet (in the Japanese version) are rather... impractically dressed. Probably the reason why they were replaced with more Wolverine-esque ninjas in the English versions.
• Super Strength: While it's most obvious with Raiden and Ninja, the other robots all possess enough strength to heave up even huge-sized enemies with ease (though only Raiden is big enough to pick up the really big guys). Also every one of your android ninjas are so strong, that many types of their attacks can flatline mooks in a single use.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: If Banglar didn't summon minions during his fight, you wouldn't be able to harm him via throwing said minions into the glass.
• Theme Naming: Some of the enemies.
  • Theme Twin Naming: Phobos and Deimos, the twin cyborg bosses, are named after twin Greek gods.
  • Animal Theme Naming: Some of the mooks, namely Snake, Fox, Panther, Puma and Saru ("monkey"). Some of the bosses as well — the boss Chainsaw Bull is built like a bull, while the boss Yamori is Gecko in Japanese and he fittingly enough climbs on walls.
• Throw a Barrel at It: In addition to Exploding Barrels, things you can throw at enemies include the aforementioned Crate Expectations, potted plants, motorcycles and other enemies.
• Throw the Mook at Them: All your characters are capable of using a Grapple Move to grab enemies and throw them into other enemies to cause damage and knockdown. Ninja in particular can pick up mooks by simply touching them. This mechanic is required for the Final Boss, who can only be damaged by thrown minions.
• Timed Mission: In Again, Every mission is timed, with a counter at the bottom counting down, though you really have to be stalling for it to be any sort of danger. In the remake, it instead just counts upward for Time Trial purposes (though you can't continue at all if you want your 'entire game' time to be recorded).
• Too Dumb to Live: The regular mooks, who walk into hazardous stuff like spinning fans, explosions, helicopter support gunfire and Bangler's laser walls.
• Transforming Mecha: Raiden can transform into a Chicken Walker to fire machineguns and bombs at his enemies.
• Turns Red: In the remake, Banglar starts turning on all 6 laser walls, using a laser wall around himself, and periodically sweeping the floor with laser beams once his health drops under half its maximum.
• Two Girls to a Team: In the remake, Yaksha joins Kunoichi as the second female playable character.
• Unblockable Attack: Ninja's new battery-powered move is his regular nunchuk combo finisher but glowing green. This move will go through enemy blocks and will also damage the Golem robots that are normally immune to regular strikes (they're treated as if they're in a state of constant blocking).
• Unskilled, but Strong: Raiden's a ninja but he sure fights like he's in a barroom brawl. Relying on Good Old Fisticuffs and brute strength throws (his signature throw is grabbing a pair of foes and mashing their faces into each other), he lacks the techniques of fellow Big Guy powerhouse, Ninja. That said he's 32 tons and he hits like it.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Yaksha has a different take on this — it's heavily implied that she stores her Extendable Arms inside her Boobs of Steel, which appear to shrink whenever she extends her arms.
• The Voiceless: Nobody really talks in this game beyond grunts of pain. The player robots may actually be The Speechless, but there's no way to tell for sure.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The remake promotes Gigant from a Warm-Up Boss into this, as he now has immunity to flinching from non-special moves or combo enders, can't be thrown by most characters, is far larger, is far more difficult to knock down, has a few new moves, and has a good bit more HP.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Jubei's only topwear is some bandages wrapped around his lower torso. Kamaitaichi is technically this since he lacks clothing on top, although there's no muscle as he's a SkeleBot 9000.
• Wall Crawl: The third boss Yamori can do this while throwing bombs, true to his namesake (Japanese for Gecko).
• Weaponized Exhaust: Raiden is capable of using his arm jets to torch enemies in his grab attacks.
• Wolverine Claws: Used by the monkey-like ninjas.
• Wrestler in All of Us: As befitting the other Big Guy of the team, Ninja can nail people with giant swings and atomic drops. In the remake, he gets a powerful elbow drop to give enemies some serious pain.
• Your Head A-Splode: When Gigants, Phobos and Deimos are defeated, they get back up... and their head blows up. Golems also lose their heads this way after enough damage, but they'll keep going and change their AI pattern to compensate.

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Alternative Title(s): The Ninja Saviors Return Of The Warriors, The Ninja Warriors Once Again

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TheNinjaWarriorsAgain