Mirai Ninja
This game is featured in our latest digest, Namco Arcade Classics! Please check it out!
Namco released three side-scrollers in the arcades in 1988. Bravoman (or Beraboh-man) was a hit in Japan, and spawned a shoot-’em-up spin-off; Splatterhouse was a hit in America, and turned into a series. Both games were ported to NEC’s Turbografx-16, and have been re-released on multiple occasions.
Mirai Ninja (“future ninja”), meanwhile, was not a hit anywhere, and never received a console port or re-release. This is all the more ironic when you consider that it was the most ambitious of the three. Not only was it the only one to use Namco’s new System 2 arcade board, it was also one half of what the Japanese term a “mixed-media” project, meaning, in that case, that a live action film was developed concurrently with the game, so that both could support each other commercially on release.
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