The combination of ninjas and the beat-em-up genre would seem to be a winner, but unfortunately, Ninja Combat can't quite pull everything off.

It makes a bit of an effort to distinguish itself from the beat-em-up pack by giving your characters ranged attacks, which gives it a bit of a shooter flavor. The game also has an interesting gimmick of being able to choose boss characters to play the game with after you have beaten them.

Sadly, that's where the innovation ends. The gameplay favors button-mashing versus any sort of real strategy. With unlimited continues, you'll be able to get through Ninja Combat on your first time through, even after the game starts getting cheap.

And besides the last boss, which takes up the entire screen, the graphics and sound are barely above a Super NES game. They're not horrible, but nothing really that one expects from a Neo Geo release.

But, even with those flaws, Ninja Combat is a fairly solid, if uninspired, beat-em-up. While it can't compete with the best of the genre and is a bit overpriced at 900 points, if you're a fan of these types of games, it's probably worth a look.

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