Unlike most games of the action/platforming genre, your character here starts with all his weapons, which include a sword, throwing stars, a sweet chain/sickle combo, and dynamite (that one's not very ninja-like, but it comes in very handy).

A lot of the strategy of the game comes from knowing which weapon to pick for the particular part of the game you're on, which gives Ninja Spirit a nice bit of depth.

The "spirit" part of the game comes from the special power-ups that you can get, which add up to two ghost images of your character. This can effectively triple your firepower, and you'll need it.

While this isn't the hardest game out on the VC, there are definitely some tricky parts -- though thankfully, Ninja Spirit never gets so difficult as to be frustrating.

This is also one of the better-looking games on the TurboGrafx. Some of the bosses are quite impressive, most notably the first one, which takes up the entire screen. All in all, Ninja Spirit is a very solid game that should satisfy action fans.