VGRC

Never judge a game by its title

When I first saw the game Surf Ninjas for the Sega Game Gear, I immediately assumed we'd have a kickass game involving ninjas on surf boards, shredding down waves while fighting other ninjas. I exitedly plugged the cart into my Game Gear, only to realize how wrong I was.

Surf Ninjas does involve ninjas. However, they are dull and unexiting. You and your brother are apparently the last surviving members of a clan of warrior kings, who are being persued by the evil Colonial Chi, who for whatever reason, killed the boys' father and now wants the two boys dead. It's never stated why, but then again, I could only get to the second level before my Game Gear turned off, obviously so disgusted by the game I was forcing it to run. (Either that, or the batteries died, you decide!) So the game starts, with you pitted against legions of deadly ninjas, whom you must beat up.

Surf Ninjas is best related to a more familiar game, the classic Streets of Rage games. However, the difference here is that Surf Ninjas lacks everything that made Streets of Rage fun. The controls are quite simple: You move around with the D pad, jump with one button and attack with the other. Some other moves can be pulled off by mixing commands, but don't expect anything exiting; just your standard tossing of weapons and mid-air kicks. You can throw stuff at people, like fireballs that look like crumpled up paper bags, or daggers. You do all of this with probably the most piss-poor engine in the world, which makes controlling the game so hard you want to kick somebody in real life just because accomplishing it in game is next to impossible.

The ONLY standout feature in this game is the theme song. Sometimes, I find myself booting up my Game Gear emulator just to listen to the theme song for Surf Ninjas. In fact, it's so good, I'm boosting the game's score a point. However, once you get to playing the game, listen closely and you'll quickly find out that the background music actually pauses when an action is performed, as in jump, punch, whatever. The background music just STOPS so you can hear a jumping sound. And aside from the theme song, everything else is pretty unimpressive. The graphics are equally atrocious. Just look at Colonial Chi's face in the screenshot above. Who the fuck actually DESIGNS characters like that?

The most laughable thing in Surf Ninjas, however, is the hints system. That's right, in the pause menu, you can have your brother whip out his trusty Sega Game Gear, which displays useful tips such as "YOU ARE STALKED BY DEADLY NINJAS" or "COMPLETE EACH LEVEL QUICKLY." Wow! However could I live without such useful information?

So, next time you see a Sega fanboy boasting about how awesome and perfect the Sega Game Gear was, just show him this game, and point and laugh at him until he cries. He deserves it. Bonus points if the target actually works for Sega!