The Oboro family tree: A Shinobi series retrospective | Segaiden Special 02

The Shinobi series is making a comeback this summer after years of dormancy with LizardCube's Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. No simple visual facelift for a decades-old video game, Art of Vengeance appears to take a holistic approach to the series' evolution, pulling in bits and pieces from practically every game in the nearly 40-year history of Shinobi franchise. This episode, the first (but definitely not last) franchise retrospective for the Segaiden and NES Works projects, takes a look at the Shinobi games and how they evolved over time, with some thoughts on how those elements feed into Art of Vengeance. In addition to the arcade and Master System releases, which I covered last year, this episode also works as something of a preview for upcoming episodes on the Genesis and Game Gear titles, while also reaching even further ahead to games that are entirely outside of this channel's scope, like PlayStation 2 and 3DS. Oh, and modern systems (what with Art of Vengeance, you know). This episode was sponsored by Sega. Shinobi: Art of Vengeance arrives August 29th—preorder now and save 10%! Visit shinobi.sega.com to learn more.