Now this game was just awesome if you were or are a fan of 80's culture. Saving the President from ninjas sounds hilarious these, but back then you could see that kind of shlock in the movies of the Canon Film Group. Muscle bound Americans with a penchant for martial arts taking down the evil invaders who hate the capitalist way of life. Times were different with the Cold War in full force, and that's the kind of media that saturated the market. Bad guys were bad guys. You didn't need layers of context and subtlety for your villains. Slap on some ninjas masks and kidnap the President. Send in the good guys, the Bad Dudes, to save the day. Boom, the gamers were sold on premise alone.  

If you have played any beat em' ups then you know how this system works. You start of the left side of the screen and move your way right, taking out every bad guy in your way until you get to the stage boss. Beat the stage boss, move onto the next stage, wash, rinse, repeat. Fairly simple, but addictive system. Unlike the arcade version, you didn't have to pump quarters in to keep going either, you could just keep at it, alone or with a friend, until you beat the whole game. The difficulty and need for a bro to back you up artificially lengthened the game. That's just something they did back in the day to make your parents $60 bucks seem like a better investment. The game starts you off on the streets of New York City, but before long you're fighting ninjas on top of a moving big rig truck! That's just awesome. From there you move to a large storm sewer, a forest, a freight train, a cave and into an underground factory in order to save the President. The ninjas varied in their look and abilities, so you never knew what to expect at first, and would have to memorize patterns and moves depending on the look of the would be kidnapper ninjas. 

The controls can be the part where people are divided on the game. They are unfortunately not as crisp and responsive as they would be in a game like Double Dragon II: The Revenge. Blade and Striker handle about the same, and that means slow and sluggish at times. You'll feel like you have to stop to attack sometimes instead of a constant flow of move and attack. You get some weapons like nun-chucks and knives, but they don't help as much as you would like. It will feel like most attacks do the same amount of damage. Now earlier, I said that you would have to keep focus and memorize when dealing with the ninjas. Most of the time that is true, but at points it'll feel like AI got kidnapped too, as the ninjas will tend to blitz you. I never had a problem with this though, as it always reminded me of the incompetent henchmen in action movies that attack the protagonist one at a time and obviously get theirs heads handed to them. I always thought that was awesome myself. You get a kick out of kicking down ninja after ninja. Get a kick? Get it? You got it.