Ninja Commando

Ninja Commando (ニンジャコマンドー) is a top-down, vertically-scrolling run and gun video game developed by Alpha Denshi and published by SNK. It was first released in May 1992 in cartridge format, and in 1994 for the Neo Geo CD.

Gameplay
The overall gameplay is similar to this of the run-and-gun classic Commando, with the players battling their way up the top-down perspective screen. The players can choose between three ninja characters, all with differing abilities. Each of them has fighting game-style input commands that unleash their ninpo special moves. As usual in the genre, the game's stages end with boss battles.

Story
An elite group of three young Ninja Commandos ( Joe Tiger, an American descendant of the Kōga-ryū ninja whose weapons are shuriken, Ryu Dragon, the 23rd descendant of the famous ninja Fūma Kotarō (from World Heroes), who is using ninja magic fireballs in combat, and Rayar Eagle, the female ninja of the group, a British girl who has learned the ways of the Iga-ryū ninjutsu and whose weapon is a bow with flaming arrows) from around the world must team-up to stop the villain Spider and his Mars Corporation from using a time machine to destroy the past and control the future. The heroes chase after their enemy in seven time periods, including the Sengoku period in Japan (where Ryu avenges his ancestor by killing Oda Nobutada), the Ancient Egypt, the Stone Age, and China in the era of Three Kingdoms.

Re-releases
The game has been re-released on the Wii's Virtual Console in North America on July 14, 2008 (though the Wii Virtual Console version, like most other Neo Geo games, only allows three continues per player, which makes the game very difficult to complete without saving progress). It was also re-released in December 2008 as one of five games in the PlayStation 2 game compilation ADK Tamashii.