I’ve been racking my brain trying to identify the name of a ninja hack-and-slash game I played many years ago. It’s a little known game that was released for the original x-box (I hope I have the platform right), and so by now the game is probably quite obscure. I even checked Wikipedia’s comprehensive “Ninja Video Games” page, but with no luck (either that or I glanced over the title without realizing it). The game did spawn one sequel, also for the x-box. I would say the game was released sometime between 2004-06.
If there’s one distinctive feature about the mechanics, I would say that it’s this: the ninja character had extreme aerial mobility. You could remain in the air indefinitely by repeating double jumps and air dashes. The character had something long trailing behind him, either his hair or a scarf. I also remember a cerberus boss battle. The opening stage was a bamboo forest with flying demons.
It wasn’t the deepest or most difficult game, and it suffered from frame rate issues, but it really captured shinobi and Japanese mythic aesthetics. Its atmosphere and visual style is the main reason I am trying to identify the game.
It sounds like it was Shinobi for PS2/Xbox.
His scarf trailed behind him and could pretty much bounce around in the air forever. Pretty hard game actually…you could go into a cool insta-kill mode though if you chained enough attacks.
2D? 3D? 3rd person? side scroller? Was it an indy title? little details like that would make it easier to track down.
Both Shinobi and Strider has a trailing red scarf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRGAu5SPLR4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S9Bg-yhdPc
The game was 3-D; third person like the Ninja Gaiden series. It wasn’t Shinobi or Strider because the game was set more in ancient Japan. There were no modern settings like cities, and there was certainly no mech element to any of the designs. The game had pretty nice particle and spark effects for its day; I think I remember lots of falling leaves and feathers.
pretty sure it’s “Otogi.” it also had a sequel on xbox.
Otogi: Myth of Demons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePwofMcospQ
Nother dope FromSoftware game. It’s an Xbox game, sadly it is not supported on the Xbox360 so if you want to play it you are going to need to pick up an original Xbox. There’s a sequel as well, Otogi 2.
That’s the game! I’m always impressed with the speed online communities can identify obscure games from a decade ago, or maybe the game isn’t as obscure as I think it is.
At any rate, I’ve always felt that Otogi was a pretty underrated game at the time. The sequel seems to have really good reviews as well. I wonder why the series never caught on.
it never caught on because most of the target audience for the game didnt own the console.
the art direction and music were exceptionally well done. some songs did a weird but effective job of combining traditional music with modern/electronic influences. one of my favourite boss fight themes is this (minor spoiler for otogi 1):
Spoiler
unfortunately i never played otogi 2, but some videos show that one of the boss fights…
Spoiler
was against a giant spider.
wouldve been great to play that.
I don’t think of Otogi as an obscure game, I remember vividly lots of people at my local game stop hype for it’s release. Really great game especially the sequel :tup:
(y)
Yes, another distinctive feature of Otogi, besides the infinite jumping, was that the environment was highly destructible. It’s a shame that Otogi’s audience owned PS2’s rather than X-Box’s; however, the PS2 just couldn’t handle all the particle effects and destructible items. Even on the X-Box the game lagged whenever there was too much on screen. The ironic thing, though, is that the lag gave the game a Matrix-like slow-mo feel that wasn’t too bad to look at.