Ninjas are cool. They’re even cooler if you’re a self-referential hipster living your better days on the Internet. How things become “trendy” on the Internet is not the focus here, but suffice it to say the Chuck Norris games are likely not far off. Ninjas have been a huge part of the gaming environment for decades and with good reason. They make both great heroes and great villains. They can also be adapted into a variety of gameplay styles. Below is a look at some of the more memorable incarnation of the ninja in video games, with a look toward the future and where gaming ninjas might be headed next.

The Adventurer - Ninja Gaiden (NES)

While not the first incarnation of the ninja in gaming form, Ninja Gaiden for the arcade and NES are two of the most famous. Plus, they encapsulate the same style that previous titles such as The Last Ninja employed. Ninjas began as adventurers. In Ninja Gaiden you must guide Ryu through several stages around the world as he tries to avenge the death of his father. Along the way he meets a variety of characters who try to help him; though in the end most betray him.

It’s important that most will betray Ryu in the end. While Ryu is personally played up as a respectable character, the ninjas generally are not. Oddly, the actually heroic samurai are rarely featured in games (with the Samurai Warriors series being an exception). This idea that the ninja is alone, even among friends, is carried on throughout the history of the gaming ninja.

The Brawler - Mortal Kombat

The ninjas took a different track with the release of the Mortal Kombat series. Suddenly they were no longer adventurers, but hardened brawlers searching out any way possible to win, including the use of weapons. While the ninja characters in Mortal Kombat and other fighting series (such as Dead or Alive) did tend to be leaner and faster than many of their combatants, there was still an intimacy in their interactions that the adventurers lacked.

Of course, the ideas of betrayal and revenge were often retained in these brawler versions of the ninja legacy. Oddly, we start to see the idea of the ninja slightly deluded here, as well. Sub-Zero of Mortal Kombat fame is Chinese and not Japanese. Later, the Kombat legacy dwells into the idea of robotic cyber-ninjas and ghost assassins. While this was obviously done as a way to increase the character count via platelet swaps (changing the character costume), it does make for some credibility issues. This is, of course, to say nothing of Dead or Alive’s “buoyant” ninjas.

The Sneaker - Tenchu

Stealth has always been a part of the ninja mythology, and with titles such as Tenchu developers started to play it up. No longer was the ninja simply exploring, nor fighting, but instead they had a mission and had to do it without being seen. This was obviously a fairly radical shift from the two previous incarnations of the ninja legacy. While more interesting and perhaps historically accurate, this vision of the ninja was also less exciting in a traditional sense. While it might be fine to sneak Solid Snake or Sam Fisher around, a ninja was supposed to be a well oiled killing machine in many minds.

Gamers would soon get their chance to let their inner ninja out to cause havoc, but there is certainly a charm about the stealth titles. At a time when almost every genre was going somewhat stealth, the ninja games seemed to make the most sense and felt the least shoehorned. Tenchu was a particularly interesting series as though it never reached mainstream success status, it did produce a plethora of sequels and spin-offs. It truly became a niche hit.

The Mauler - Ninja Gaiden (Xbox)

With the reboot of the Ninja Giaden franchise also came a reboot of the ninja legacy. Ninjas in games became less stealthy and generally less of brawlers. The new ninja was a brutal killer that used weapons and magic on opponents. It wasn’t enough to score a stealth kill, this new incarnation was happier to lop an arm or leg off in the process. While a lot of the adventuring aspect of the original Ninja Giaden returned, the brutality and violence level was turned up considerably. This was due partly to increased graphics that allowed such displays, but more so to an increased appetite among gamers for the macabre. Oddly enough, this shift was due in part to titles such as Mortal Kombat.

The trend certainly isn’t reversing. Early video and images of Ninja Giaden 2 for the Xbox 360 show it to be an even more brutal vision of the ninja. At times the game appears to reach beyond the stylish to the absurd as buckets of blood fill the screen for the simplest slash on an enemy. It would seem to be the extreme end of this new ninja movement. So, where does that leave the future? If history ahs shown anything, it’s that the ninja legacy must evolve to survive. The next incarnation is likely to both resemble, and seemly completely alien to those that came before it. The one thing you can count on is the ninja remaining a key figure in video games for years to come.

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