 It can be tough to stand out as a beat-em-up in the 16-bit era. So many are the same repetitive button-mashing attacks, the same goons over and over, you know the drill. These are just staples of the genre, though, that's just how it is with beat-em-ups. And people either love them or find them mind-numbingly boring. Ninja Warrior stands out among its peers because it executes the fundamental beat-em-up stuff really well, and because it's got a few extra things, like humor, whether it be intentional or unintentional. Ninja Warriors does a nice job of providing a little bit of variety as well, as you've got three characters to choose from, the huge brutish guy, the agile kunoishi, and the robot android, whatever. I'll just call him the well-dressed robot, since he has the decency to wear pants. Strange that Dockers sprung for product placement in a Super Nintendo game, but hey, good for them. In fact, he kinda looks like Jeff from Craig Ferguson's late night show. Anyway, I usually love being the big strong guy in these games because I don't want to worry about defense or taking damage in games like this, I just like to bulldoze my way through stuff. But in this game, I was a bit disappointed with the big dude. He doesn't jump, and he's painfully slow compared to how fast the enemies are. The kunoishi and the well-dressed robot are much more fun to use. There's plenty of background objects you can interact with, although there's not as much interesting stuff going on within the levels themselves as there is with a game like, say, Turtles in Time. It should be noted that there's no up or down here, like at most beat-em-ups. The action is strictly left to right like a fighting game. There is a nice variety of enemies here. There's dudes with assault rifles, these midgets with wolverine claws that bounce around, fire-breathing dudes that look like Super Saiyan Goku, there's, uh, guys in suits, there's big dudes you gotta attack at the knees, and conversely, there's other guys who attack your knees. If there's a flaw in the action in this game, it's that it uses those guys and that attack in particular way too often. But still, you gotta love how freaking dumb these guys are. It's obliviously walking into gigantic propellers. There's nine levels, which is plenty long for a beat-em-up and it's pretty tough too, but if for whatever reason you don't think it's tough enough, there's a hard mode to pick from as well, where the goons are even more knee-slashingly quick. The only real negative about this game I can come up with is that there's no multiplayer at all. Oh well. Also want to mention real quick that this is not a port of the original Ninja Warrior's arcade game from the 80's, this is a complete remake. In fact, in Japan, it's known as Ninja Warriors again. Aww, Ninja Warriors again! Anyway, if you're jonesing for a single player beat em up and somehow missed Ninja Warriors, you're gonna wanna check it out. It's a little bit of a change of pace from the classics.