Shadow of the Ninja Reborn is a beautiful, hard-as-nails action game from developer Tengo Project. The fourth entry in Tengo’s 16-bit taste remake series, it’s also arguably the most ambitious. Prior releases from Tengo Project, such as Pocky and Rocky Reshrined and The Ninja Warriors Once Again, were based on games that already existed in 16-bit form, making the transition easier to imagine – but this new game is based on an 8-bit NES game instead. As a result, everything needed to be completely re-imagined from the ground-up. From gameplay to visuals and audio, this is a masterpiece of pixel art action that simply must be experienced if you have any love for classic gaming.
To refresh your memory, Tengo Project is a three-man group of creators that previously worked on classic Natsume games dating back to the 90s. Starting with 2016’s Wild Guns Reloaded, the team has continued to craft new takes on titles they had worked on decades ago. The result is some of the finest pixel art ever to grace a screen. Tengo’s latest releases answer the question – what would games look like if designers had continued to focus on 2D pixel art rather than polygons?
Shadow of the Ninja Reborn sees the developers take their art one step further. With prior releases, you could directly follow the visual lineage from Super NES to the new Tengo Project releases. However, the new game is a remake of a 1990 NES ninja action game. Essentially, this is the first time where the designer had to create an original art style from the ground up rather than simply expanding on the prior work. Instead of adding detail to existing art, the entire visual design has changed, bringing it more into line with other recent Tengo titles.
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