PixlBit

The incorrect title is the least of your worries in this terrible action RPG

Despite the title indicating that this game stars one ninja boy, it's actually about two ninja boys. Super Ninja Boy was developed and published by Culture Brain, and is a sequel to their first ninjatastic action RPG for the NES, Little Ninja Brothers (which is actually the second game in the series but the first one to use action RPG elements. Confused yet?). This action RPG/platformer hybrid was released for the Super Nintendo in 1991 and made it to North America in 1992. If you're an RPG fan, you'll want to avoid this game as it does everything wrong.

The story is completely bizarre. You're treated to tiny boxes of pictures while you read the text at the bottom of the screen. Was it too difficult to make the pictures bigger? Anyways, here's the story: A guy named Rub-a-Doc shows up in Chinaland to promote peace and he becomes very popular. After awhile, he leaves and everyone goes back to living normal lives. That's when trouble starts brewing in Yokan, the capital city, so the ninja boys go to investigate. They discover that people have been kidnapped, so they must rescue them. That's how the story starts, and I honestly can't tell you what happens later on since the rest of the game will bore you to tears. I imagine the story is very cliched, but it's not a good start (seriously, "Rub-a-Doc?" Was that the best they could come up with?). 

The main characters of the game are the two ninja boys, Jack and Ryu. If you're playing alone, you'll play as Jack automatically, but you can change characters at the convenience store. This is pretty pointless since Ryu is a palette swap of Jack, but I guess if you prefer the color blue to red you can use him. It would have been nice if they had atleast tried to differentiate between the two; even their heads on the menu screens are identical, pixel by pixel.

You can tell that Culture Brain was trying very hard to imitate Final Fantasy IV (or maybe just the FF series in general) since the squatty character sprites, the towns, the world map, and the dungeons all feel like they belong in FF4. Even the staircase sound is used every time you enter a door or go down some stairs, which gets old fast. But where you find an amazingly rich experience in FF4, here you find a dull and frustrating adventure bogged down with problems galore.

The battle system is one such problem. At first it doesn't seem so bad. You're attacked randomly and suddenly the bad guys appear on screen. You can choose to fight them or run, but should you run, 99% of the time you won't be able to. So the fight starts, now with your character on the battlefield, waiting for the enemies. They'll start moving towards you from the right and left. There's only one attack button, so go up to the baddies and press it. Jack will punch them and maybe even pick them up and throw them. The battle ends once a predetermined number of enemies is defeated. Could this battle system be any more boring? No strategy is involved. The enemies are either stupidly easy or extremely difficult to figure out how to even hurt. Such as the dogs on the flying, uh, saucer things? They zoom across the screen, and jumping at them and punching them doesn't hurt them. Stand there and they'll kill you quickly. But you can't do anything expect punch them!

Well, there is magic too. I was hoping to get Fire as my first magic attack, but I should have known better for this game. The first magic spell you get is called Escape Leaf, which allows you to exit battles. This is actually very useful since battles are so annoying! The random encounter rate is ridiculous! You'll get attacked every two or three steps! Once, and I'm not joking, I didn't even move, and I was attacked! Looks like I'll use Escape Leaf. . . again.

SNB also has some platforming sections. Before you think they might be fun, let me dash your hopes: they're awful. The controls are floaty and Jack moves as if he's under water. The entire game seems to slow down as you make your way through some kind of temple level. I tried two of these levels, and they both had the same problem: platforms you couldn't reach. Jack can jump sideways by flipping through the air, and if you hold up and jump he can jump really high, but he can't move while in the air. So how does he reach that really high platform that is slightly to the left? I tried, but poor Jack died every time. Perhaps you have to use a special jumping magic spell? So the platforming is just as terrible as the RPG parts.

Should you be unfortunate enough to die, you'll end up at the convenience store (not the hospital, the convenience store). Here you can revive, change players, and get a password. Obviously the reviving option is only if you have a second player, and changing players is useless (as I mentioned before). Yes, the game uses passwords to save instead of saving right to the cartridge. But the passwords are also a pain because they're really long--24 characters to be exact! It'll take you five minutes to write it down and another five minutes to check it and make sure you got every character right. Then it will take you five minutes to put it in when you continue your game! Culture Brain, you lazy buffoons!

While the normal battles are action-oriented, the boss battles are turn-based, which is a nice change of pace. Sadly, they're still boring since you just "punch" and maybe use some magic, but the action is mainly boring because you're only using one character! FF4's battles were so great because you had to control and carefully watch over five characters at once! Here it's just Jack, and if you're playing two player, you still only need to take care of Jack. It would have been nice to see some awesome action boss battles. Jack and Ryu also share stacks, meaning HP and NP (magic), so it's really a team effort when you're playing two player.

The music is decent, but of course is not as enjoyable or creative as FF4's soundtrack, or even as interesting as The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, another action RPG for the SNES (although a very good one). In any case, the soundtrack does not save the rest of the game. Not even close.

Final Verdict--1 Star: A Waste of Time

With a ridiculous story, boring characters, a frustrating battle system, and the longest password system known to man, SNB is a piece of trash. I groaned every time I was attacked (which was constantly), and I can't say any part of this game is fun or even interesting. I honestly feel like I wasted my time playing it. I can't say, "This weird little game is interesting" or even "it's bad but creative." Nope. It rips off FF4 big time and fails to do anything right. Even the title is a misnomer, and that is all the evidence we need to prove that this game is not "super" at all.

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