Shadow Dancer is for all intents and purposes a remake of the first Shinobi. The mechanics carry over, save hostages, fire off stars, follow the bosses patterns (the first a direct copy paste of the original games), use power-ups to decimate everything on screen and play bizarre ninja themed mini-games between levels.
Some key differences though. when Shinobi was ported to the Master System, the amount of enemies on screen and the general pacing of the gameplay was slowed down, likewise instead of a single death hit, the player was given a life bar.
This made for a far fairer, less cheaper, and ultimately superior game to the arcade version regardless of a downgrade in graphical fidelity. It threw away it coins munching shackles to adhere to a home console mentality many other ports lacked.
Shadow Dancer plays very much like the arcade version of the original Shinobi. A single slip up taking a projectile or connecting with an enemy means Game Over, with the game making frequent attempts to bum rush the player at inopportune moments.
Depending on your mentality this can either be great, or simply frustrating. For me personally, I prefer the changes to the Master System, it's a far better game in my eyes.
Visually, this is a nice looking game, though not even close to the artistic display in Revenge Of The Shinobi, it's brother also on the Genesis.
The most unique aspect here is a wolf companion that serves almost like tails does in Sonic as both a partial utility.
By simple holding down the fire button it will charge at enemies on the same level plane, rendering them immobile for a short time.
It's very useful, never boring to activate and not overpowered, used in context situations the developers clearly thought through.
Music is pretty good, though other titles such as G.G Shinobi have far more memorable soundtracks.
Overall, it's a good game. Not the best in the series, not the worst. If you have this and Revenge Of The Shinobi, go for that.
If you have a choice of any, the original Master System title and the G.G 1/2 titles are a lot better as well in my opinion. Aside from the wolf mechanic this is competent but uninspired.
