[76]: Sega Ages Shinobi
I shouldn’t have dismissed this one as a Rolling Thunder clone. As mentioned on the other thread, Shinobi very much feels like its own game thanks to more plentiful, varied level design, more breathing space, and a real good melee attack option that makes taking down trickier enemies a risky but rewarding endeavour.
While it’s very challenging it rarely felt unfair, only one stage towards the end required rote memorisation, otherwise enemies displayed logical and understandable behaviour so it was down to the level designers to try and overwhelm you. I don’t think I’ll ever get good enough to clear the game on a single credit, having used a few dozen to clear the Arcade game for the first time, but I managed to do so on the more lenient ‘Ages mode’.