A Mega Drive classic! Great music, controls, graphics and fun!
The story is very basic. After being defeated by Joe, Zeed returns as Neo Zeed 3 years later and want to take their revenge by killing the Oboro clan and Joe. Joe finds the clan killed and learns of Neo Zeed's evil plans and how they kidnapped his bride to be through his master's last words (you can learn this by waiting a while on the START screen or instruction manual).
Basic but effective.
The controls are very nice and can be changed through the options. I personally use A for jumping, B for attacking and C for powers. Movement is responsive and there is no delay when using A, B or C.
Your basic attack is throwing ninja stars but you can acquire upgrades throughout the game, making them more powerful.
There are multiple ninja powers (4 in total): A shield of thunder that takes a few hits for you, dragon flamed columns that damages enemies, one that lets you jump higher and one that lets you damage all enemies on screen for the cost of a life.
Double jumps can be performed buy tapping the jump button at the peak of a regular jump (unlike the original in which you hold up and jump to get to a higher platform).
The sound track is amazing. It's probably worth downloading! You can go through all the music within the options menu, which I have done many times. Each level has it's own beat, and they are all great.
The graphic are very nice and colouful. Every time you finish a level it's very exciting to see the next. The animation on Joe and others are very nice also. They get an A+ for graphics.
The difficulty is very high. Even on easy! The first couple of levels and easy enough, but by the military base level it gets very intense. bullets and ninja stars coming from all sides. It becomes frantic very quick. But this is something games don't see very often now...A challenge. And when you do rescue Joe's bride from the head of Neo Zeed, you feel very satisfied.
NOTES: The first couple of bosses are very regular. But then you come across other bosses such as the Terminator, Spider Man/Batman, Godzilla etc. That blew my mind. The sort of "Oh my god! *(Friend's Name)*, get over here! It's Spider Man...WOW he just turned into Batman!"
The Revenge of Shinobi is one of my favorite games not only on the Mega Drive, but of all time. If playing games on older systems isn't your thing you can download it on XBLA or PSN. I highly recommend this game.