REMEMBER THAT TIME SONNY CHIBA BEAT UP BATMAN, SPIDER-MAN, RAMBO, A TERMINATOR, JACKIE CHAN, DEVILMAN, GODZILLA AND THE LITTLEST HOBO?

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

Gaming wasn’t quite as 'corporate' as it is today. During the 1980s, the blueprints were pretty rough and the foundations were still being laid. Studios were finding their feet and and without a boardroom full of suits to scrutinise every single decision, dev teams were very often left to their own devices. It was like the wild West, or in this case, the East.

During this time, the Japanese were embracing Western culture in a big way. Music, fashion, food, comics and movies all penetrated the country, injecting a brash new style directly into the subconscious minds of the populous.

Keen to capitalize on this wave, many Japanese games of the era took inspiration from American pop culture. Some were subtle, some were loving homages and some were very bold.

The Super Shinobi (Or Revenge of Shinobi, as it’s known outside Japan) is one such example of this. It was so blatant, it turned the ‘inspiration’ dial so far up, that the knob fell off, and sparks flew out of the hole.

It features at least nine easily recognisable things, and I suspect a few other elements were heavily inspired by classic martial arts movies.

1. Spider-Man

2. Batman

3. Devilman

4. Jackie Chan

5. Sylvester Stallone (As John Rambo)

6. Arnold Schwarzenegger (As a CSM-101/T-800 Terminator

7. Godzilla

8. Sonny Chiba (As Joe Musashi on the title screen & Japanese game covers)

9. The Littlest Hobo (I might be clutching at straws with this one)

How this managed to make it to release is mind-boggling. Subsequent cartridge revisions (of which there were three, comprising four different physical releases in total) did omit almost all of the aforementioned characters and/or likenesses. Bizarrely, Spider-Man was actually licensed from Marvel (although this wasn’t made official until the second cart revision) and appears in all cartridge versions, as does the image of Sonny Chiba on the title screen.

The 2009 Virtual Console release is a very ‘beige affair’ indeed. The game is still excellent, but it’s been stripped of its soul. The special sauce it once had is now gone, including Sonny Chiba, which saw M2 director Tsuyoshi Matsuoka taking on the role of Joe for the title screen image. What became of Spider-Man? He’s now a weird, bright pink, spandex-wearing chap, due to the Marvel license long-since expiring.

And all these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Left: Sonny Chiba in Kage no Gundan Right: SEGA's Super Shinobi advertisement