Pandora's Box: The Ultimate GameCube Tier List

#28: I-Ninja

Rating: T

Players: 1

Price Range: ~$35 USD

A 3D action-platformer similar to Super Mario Sunshine.

Yes, yes, gather around. It's story time...

You see, I've mentioned before this retro games store that my Grandmother used to take me to about a half-hour to an hour away when I was younger.

Besides Pac-Man World 2 with Pac-Man Vs. and another game, there was also this other one, one on a wire shelf to display games.

And one of them was this game.

I don't know what it was about it, whether it was the Namco name at the bottom or something else, I felt...compelled to buy it.

It was only about five U.S. dollars, so I thought, 'Eh, why not?'.

And so, I came home with it, and I loved it.

Truly a steal.

You see, this is a 3D action-platformer where you play as a ninja called...Ninja, in which you face off against Emperor O-Dor, his followers, and his army of assassins, the Ranx, in an attempt to destroy the dangerous Rage Stones once and for all.

By completing challenges, you gain Ranks to increase your Belt from white to the coveted black to be given access to more trials, stages, and boss fights.

You see, this game is like a collect-a-thon, but more so like Super Mario Sunshine instead of Super Mario 64.

While Super Mario 64 gave you hints to specific Power Stars to collect, you could go for other Stars if you wanted to, while in Sunshine, the level placed only one Shine per mission, but made the environment and objective wildly different in which you are doing something else entirely in the heavily modified stage.

I-Ninja is no different.

You play the same stage, but what you are doing and the path there is completely changed from the one before. Sometimes you just have to get to the end, other times, you need to get Red Coins (okay, that's straight from Mario, but it's fun here, it works), or even stealth sections where you need to avoid these sentries to progress to the end.

One of the more memorable missions is jumping on and rolling on a barrel with black powder to not only create a trail to light many things on fire at once, but also create an explosion at where you choose to leave it, and this is in addition to enemies and stage hazards. Truly creative.

The first world, Robot Beach, is a great example of this unique gameplay, as the whole area revolved around you entering the game's stages to retrieve pieces of this gigantic battle robot in the form of these giant spheres with...mechanical organs? Still, you roll on them Monkey Ball style to get to the end of the stage and even through these tubes with enemies in which hitting them all says "Strike!".

Very fun.

Combat is...good. Nothing spectacular, but it spices things up enough to always be fresh, with even new abilities and more powerful sword to be unlocked through kills and the money you get, encouraging you to engage in the admittedly simple, but accessible and fluid combat.

The graphics are also appealing, adopting a cartoony style that makes it stand out and keeps the frame rate consistently high at 60 FPS. I also like that the game's story doesn't take itself too seriously despite cutting Ranx in half leaves a split corpse with green insides. In fact, the game can be quite funny and goofy at times, and, without going into spoilers, the final conversation with the Emperor and Ninja is so bonkers and unhinged, that it actually made me laugh the first time I watched it.

See, this is what makes me laugh. Things so out there and sudden that it makes me giggle.

Like the best of memes, hence, the name.

And the Emperor's base is on the Moon, the actual Moon! He's so dangerous and powerful, that he built a base on the Moon.

And the game is hard, like, really hard. Easily one of the hardest 3D platformers I've ever played in a really long time, and that's saying something.

Some of these Rank missions leave almost no room for error, but unlike something like Viewtiful Joe where I never connected with it due to how insanely difficult it was, the stages here are challenging, but fair. However, I can't deny that it the difficulty won't sit well with everyone.

And the bosses are unbelievably brutal. The second to last boss in particular took an egregious amount of time, even if the ability to respawn in the middle of it back into the action just leads me to get destroyed again.

There is even this one-time Rank mission called Egg Shell Skull where you have to fight he first boss in the mech again...with only one hitpoint. That's right, getting git once will force you to redo the whole thing again, and given how hard it was to begin with, it was a bit too much for me at the time.

Still, I managed beat the game by the skin of my teeth, and my gosh was it a blast.

Oh, and by the way, don't ever 100% this game. You just get a short-lived combat arena that just...ends, and that's it. Not worth getting all the ranks in my opinion.

So, given that this game is so great, even if it's as tough as nails, who made it?

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Argonaut Software.

The people who made the original Star Fox and its sequel that never got released until the SNES Classic Edition and Nintendo Switch Online and the Croc games on the PlayStation.

What's even more sad is that this game was released on all three major platforms and didn't sell well on any of them. In fact, this was one of their last games before they went bankrupt.

Well, since the first Croc game is seeing a remaster on modern day platforms in the near future, I really hope to see this one make it to today's gaming landscape.

And so, if you haven't noticed, this is a hidden gem in my eyes. A truly fun game, even if it requires some patience and gamer skill.