#robot player

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.

Shamus: Case II

The follow-up to Shamus tries something completely different, shedding its Berzerk-esque gameplay for something a little bit more original. It’s actually a side-scrolling (sort of) action-shoot-em-up-platformer hybrid, while still maintaining the light exploratory elements of its predecessor. 

Shamus

Synapse Software was only alive for a few years in the early-to-mid 1980s, but during their brief existence, they developed a reputation for publishing excellent software, primarily for Atari 8-bit computers. One of their hallmark games was Shamus, developed by Cathryn Mataga. While the title suggests something to do with investigative work (a “shamus” is slang for a detective), it’s actually a little misleading, considering it stars a knife-flinging robot in a hat and trench coat, infiltrating the lab of his evil counterpart, Shadow. The title screen features a rendition of the tune “Funeral March of a Marionette”, more widely known as the song that accompanied Alfred Hitchcock movies.