Ninku for Game Boy

Maybe I should take my own pictures from now.

There are two Ninku games for Game Boy. The one to the right is some board game that the Japanese market enjoyed, but hardly was popular anywhere else.

The one to the left is a fighting game. There are not that many good fighting games on the game boy. I recall that the Takara fighting games (Fatal Fury, Toshinden and others) are playable on the game boy. But I would stay away from Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat unless you are true fan of those series, or for their collectors value. I just read many people saying that Killer Instict for game boy is an impressive game. But I have never tried it, after having played the other two SNES ports I mentioned, I assume Killer Instict would be just as bad.

As for Ninku, there is a well acclaimed fighting game Ninku for Game Gear, and a Saturn game called Ninku with the psuedo-3D that the Saturn often used.

Alright, I'm back to my handheld now... And it isn't pink, it is raspberry.

Many fighting games have the problem that they are either to complicated, such as Street Fighter II Alpha for Super Famicom, or that they play badly, such as Ultraman for the super famicom and many others.

But I kind of liked Ninku because the controls worked well and the game was relatively easy. It took 30-45 minutes, which is around the time i had available.

Ninku is a Japanese anime and manga series. The game supposedly follows the series, although I can't say myself. Ninku is the name of a fictional fighting school and the main character is an odd looking 12 year old boy called Fuusuke of the Wind. ( I have to do a lot of research for my writings... )

The game has a story mode and a 2-player mode if you have two games and a link cable. In the story mode you follow Fuusuke as he battles some opponents. You start off by playing as Fuusuke. Later, you get to chose 2 other characters you can play as. The first one is rather weak, but the second one has some good special attacks.

As with many fighting games, the fights are hard until you find an attack that most opponents can't deal with. I discovered that Ninku's "crotch punch" is an effective attack against the opponents. You press Forward, Forward, B to do this special move.

There are other special attacks too.  All characters have the same pattern. You can press the basic Down, Down/Forward, Forward + button (A or B). You have Forward, Forward and Button (A or B). And I think there was a down, down/back, back and Button combination too.

There is also a second special attack. After you hit the opponent five times, a little meter will flash up near your life bar. To activate, press A+B. You "special special" move depends on which square the meter is right above. For Ninku, I found that the first square was very powerful.

Your health is a bit odd. You don't recover health you lost during a battle, but there are two mini games that allow you to win some health back. You can also change to one of the other characters that join later. If you die all your available characters you are game over. You do however have two (or three?) continues that restores the health of all characters.

In the story mode there are only 8-10 or so fights to go through. Until I discovered the powerful crotch-punch I had to restart at least once, but after that I came rather quickly to the last boss. He wasn't too hard, but I think I had to use one of the continues to restore my Fuusuke and his crotch-punch.

I enjoyed the Ninku characters and story of the game, even though it is in Japanese and I can't understand it. I guess that the anime must be a non-serious mixture of humour and adventure. In the first picture I am playing as a half naked guy with thongs who has powerful farts and can extend his limbs. (technical note: in the anime it is the penguin who has the farts, not Toji) Fuusuke looks absurd too.

Playing a game to the end means I enjoyed it, and so I rate it 4/5.