Ninku Gaiden: Hiroyuki Daikatsugeki
released on Dec 03, 1995
Ninkuu Gaiden: Hiroyuki Daikatsugeki (忍空外伝 － ヒロユキ大活劇) is a Sega Game Gear top-down action game based on the Ninkuu franchise.
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Really really good Pengo clone. Marking it so I don't forget.
Update (May 20th, 2023):
Every time i try to write a longer review, I end up going back into the game and playing it all over again. It's a very, very good game. PLAY IT. However, there are two big problems that stop the game from being an all time great. Those are
1. The puzzle sections. Slide puzzle sections happen after you finish all the levels in a world but before the boss fight of that world. These totally ruin the flow of the game. You're used to these really fast and high reaction time Pengo levels, then suddenly you have to solve a slow, calculated puzzle. Although you can wait and inspect the puzzle for as long as you need to without pressing anything, that doesn't change the fact that you have to change your whole mind set while playing them, and they feel very out of place. If you fuck up the puzzle, you have to restart the level at the expense of a lost life. If you lose your lives, then you start the whole world over again. Not very fun, especially after you feel you're doing well. You'll either get these puzzles right away, or you'll spend a long ass time figuring it out. I wish they didn't make this a mandatory part of the game. After the first two worlds, the puzzles become randomly selected from an unknown list of them, meaning you can't simply remember what you did the last time you reached the puzzle section.
2. Those fucking frogs. The frog enemies are almost impossible to touch. They jump all over the map. Worse still, the map is absolutely covered in blocks that you can't easily get rid of. WORSE STILL is the little timer, that makes the enemies slowly get more hostile as time drags on, making them EVEN HARDER TO HIT. Not a poggers part of the game, I only cleared it once, then got filtered to high hell by the puzzle it decided to give me.
As far as I can tell, you don't need any Japanese to play this. BUT those two points can be quite frustrating if you're not ready for them. Other than that, the game is perfect. Even more so on real hardware. Play it play it play it
Update (May 20th, 2023):
Every time i try to write a longer review, I end up going back into the game and playing it all over again. It's a very, very good game. PLAY IT. However, there are two big problems that stop the game from being an all time great. Those are
1. The puzzle sections. Slide puzzle sections happen after you finish all the levels in a world but before the boss fight of that world. These totally ruin the flow of the game. You're used to these really fast and high reaction time Pengo levels, then suddenly you have to solve a slow, calculated puzzle. Although you can wait and inspect the puzzle for as long as you need to without pressing anything, that doesn't change the fact that you have to change your whole mind set while playing them, and they feel very out of place. If you fuck up the puzzle, you have to restart the level at the expense of a lost life. If you lose your lives, then you start the whole world over again. Not very fun, especially after you feel you're doing well. You'll either get these puzzles right away, or you'll spend a long ass time figuring it out. I wish they didn't make this a mandatory part of the game. After the first two worlds, the puzzles become randomly selected from an unknown list of them, meaning you can't simply remember what you did the last time you reached the puzzle section.
2. Those fucking frogs. The frog enemies are almost impossible to touch. They jump all over the map. Worse still, the map is absolutely covered in blocks that you can't easily get rid of. WORSE STILL is the little timer, that makes the enemies slowly get more hostile as time drags on, making them EVEN HARDER TO HIT. Not a poggers part of the game, I only cleared it once, then got filtered to high hell by the puzzle it decided to give me.
As far as I can tell, you don't need any Japanese to play this. BUT those two points can be quite frustrating if you're not ready for them. Other than that, the game is perfect. Even more so on real hardware. Play it play it play it