I never thought I'd see the day when I REALLY meant it when I said a game sucked, but, man, here it is. And that just about wraps up my intro to....





When you press start at the beautifully crafted title screen, you get this plus no less than 10 seconds of waiting, so you get it here too.
Before I begin picking at every lame detail, wet your appetite with one of the worst pieces of video game music ever, the stage music to this game. Here. It's a little bit country, a little bit rock 'n roll, and a hell of a lot of inappropriateness for an action themed video game.
We're going to dissect the opening story here and a little bit of the game. No walkthroughs, tips, or tricks this time, because the game is THAT bad as it takes a good forcing to sit through it, let alone even TRY to remember the *1* combination of ninja arts that kills the final boss. But before we do that, here's the Kid-Niki touch to a few things that dawned on all of us while I was doing the "research" for this page...
WRATH OF THE BLACK MANTA
STARRING
(in alphabetical order):




Don't give me that look! You thought the same thing too once.

If children are "vanishing" from the streets, doesn't that more or less mean that they ARE being kidnapped?...or possibly falling down open sewers? And if they have the FBI on this case, wouldn't the former be true anyway? Looks like I beat Seanbaby to a case of good old fashioned Nintendo Logic. Will this case ever be solved? Looks like it's up to the good old Black Manta to answer that for us.

And the award for best sound effects in a video game....

Hopefully the phone didn't wake him up. I wouldn't want to have to think any less of a man who wears a ninja suit to bed.
Ok, I'm confused. Did the Master call, or did he just come in from another room? OR...did he call from the other room and then decide to bring the phone with him? It's as mysterious as the mystery of these disappearing children. "Master! What's up?" Looks like some writer at Taito is undeniably modern and hip to the kids of the late 80s...let's press on...
This needs no commentary... I would think that if they found a letter at the SCENE, more specifically, at the WATERFRONT, that SHOULD qualify as a lead, but why leave anything up to the FBI when you have a perfectly good, yet wrathful ninja at your disposal right here? That's right, Black Manta, outshine the police AND the FBI! Get to the bottom of the case! Stop the madness! And kudos to Taito for all of the wasted time and screen space in producing this segment.
Nevermind ninja skills and magic and general ass kicking, may he ONLY be guided by eternal wisdom.
And we're ready to start the game in a perfectly good action setting, New York City...

Doesn't look like any part of NYC I've ever been to, I guess I'm supposed to be fooled by all of the skyscrapers in the background, but I think picking at the realism here should be a moot point by now.
Walk to the (gasp!) right and you'll come across this...a note. A single, solitary, inanimate piece of paper on a random street in "New York City"...grab it and you'll get what appears to be a clue. A clue that must have baffled both the NYC police AND the FBI.

Any "man in red" in this game can be forced to talk simply by walking up to him. Our beloved Black Manta shows off his ninja skills here by putting Mr. Red man in a chokehold...then we're treated to the following conversation...
The red men will get more and more talkative as the game progresses but you'll find out I couldn't even sit through it long enough to go through all of these different conversations.

Walking to the right and eventually down, you'll come across this: A room inside one of an apparent multitude of multi-leveled sewers in NYC. They all pretty much look alike, with their "EXIT" sign above them. Guess that's how they fooled the police and the FBI for so long...if there's an exit sign, there can't possibly be a room behind the door, especially NOT in a sewer. The contents of the rooms are all pretty much the same as well: enemies in the rooms, kill them all and you get powered up to fight some more. Some rooms have the missing kids in them. Kill all the enemies there and you'll save them and have interesting conversations like the one further down this page...

This must be where all that ninja training paid off: in his ability to jump extra high to get out of a sewer...

As I said before, certain rooms have those missing kids in them. Apparently, the kidnappers decided to take it one step further and pack the kids in ice before leaving them in these crazy little sewer rooms. Kill all 3 enemies (there will be 3 eventually), and you save the kid, and every kid you save prompts a conversation such as this...
I love how Black Manta's facial expression NEVER changes once throughout the game. Whether he's talking to the Master, saving a kid, or choking a man in red, he's always got the same demeanor. And another thing, if the kid knows about the HIDDEN sewer rooms, why didn't he use one of them? I guess there's something to be said about throwing stars at a wall, or walking right to do so.

And that's about all I can stand. When I was like 10, this was about the coolest game ever. Too bad I didn't know HTML 9 years ago, then I could have made this hall of ridicule mean so much more. Oh well. If I had decided to play on, we would have gone through "Rio de Janiero" and 2 other exciting cities in our quest to help save Taro from this evil red-clothed gang that managed to baffle the FBI.


So....
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