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Panic! Terrorists have captured the children of the world's leaders and due to an administrative error, the nation's security forces have *all* been given the weekend off! In desperation, the powers that be call on The Shinobi, master of mystical and martial arts, Ninja and part-time cabaret singer to rescue the kids, and turn those terrorists to sushi.

On his hunt for the trussed-up young 'uns, Mr. Shinobi patrols each sideways-scrolling, split-level stage, dodging gunmen (and their bullets), wall-crawling "Spidermen", other Ninjas and huge Oriental swords thrown by huge Orientals, picking up any trussed-up kids he finds along the way. Shin has an unlimited supply of shuriken stars to see off particularly troublesome bad guys, and he gets one magic mantra per level to bring down various smart-bomb-style cataclysms on his assailants.

After finding Megadrive Super Shinobi to be a drastically revised version of the coin-op, I expected the PC Engine's "Ordinary" Shinobi to be a pixel-perfect copy. I was surprised to find that the conversion actually bore a couple of differences which might disappoint fans of the original, the inexplicable lack of the 3D "Shuriken the Ninjas" end-of-level bonus game being one!

However, the gameplay doesn't really miss them, so players new to the game should find it an enjoyable and challenging test of reactions. Strangely enough, though, I think that in spite of its cast of Ninja types, beat-'em-up fans might be a tad disappointed with Shinobi because the dependence on skurikens for killing the enemy makes the game play more like a Rolling Thunder-style shoot-'em-up then a chopsocky fighting game.