The early to mid 90s gaming scene was dominated by one on one fighting games. Street Fighter 2 had everyone talking, and it wasn’t long before Mortal Kombat hit arcades and everyone was obsessed with kicking each other in the face and ripping each other’s hearts out…digitally that is.
So with these two huge hits, it didn’t take long before other companies wanted a piece of the action, and we started getting a slew of other one on one fighting games. Killer Instinct, Body Blows, Primal Rage…and ah yes of course…Kasumi Ninja.
Where as Nintendo had the exclusive Killer Instinct and Sega were going all 3D with Virtua Fighter, Atari were all about the Jaguar in the mid 90s. There were a bunch of exclusive games on the Jaguar and for every great game like Alien VS Predator or Tempest 2000, there was a dud, and there perhaps isn’t a better example of a dud on the Jag than Kasumi Ninja.
Kasumi Ninja is a one on one fighting game with digitized graphics much like Mortal Kombat. Real actors were filmed and the footage were turned into the graphics we see in the game. And whilst Mortal Kombat was an Arcade game that was ported to everything from the Mega Drive to the Amiga to the Game Boy, Kasumi Ninja was a Jaguar exclusive, so you can be certain that it takes advantage of the Jag’s 64-bits of power…right?
No it does not.
The game has gained a reputation of being one of the worst games ever and is definitely up there as being ranked as maybe the worst one on one fighter of all time. But is this really fair? Or has it’s legend as a bad game grown over the years and is carried on and elaborated on by people who have never played it?
Well, here’s my take: The game is actually a hell of a lot better than I expected, and I had a fair amount of fun playing it. Now don’t get me wrong, this is not a great game, and the truth is it’s not even a particularly good game. But is it the worst game ever? No way.
I think this is a game that didn’t so much do a lot wrong as much as it just didn’t do very much right.
Yes, sometimes you jump and kick and it doesn’t seem like the game has recognised that you pressed a button, but I found that this is often down to you needing to press a button at a slightly different timing than you would expect based on games like Mortal Kombat. This isn’t good, but you can quickly adapt to it.
For me, this may be the game’s biggest sin, as its something that affects my ability to play the game and win. Weird logic to gamplay like this isn’t good in any game, and especially not a fighter as quick recations and fluid gameplay should be the main thing any fighting game gets right.
But it’s after this that the game starts to get it’s bad reputation.
The character select screen is, for some reason, presented in first person. You walk around a small room in first person like you were playing Doom and select a character to play as and an opponent. Does this add anything? No. But I bet back in the day this was seen as a good idea to show off the power of the Jaguar.
In terms of characters you have what feel like bargain bin versions of other fighting game characters. I mean, if you look at the artwork on the box of the game and then see their in game sprites you’ll feel like you’ve walked into the cosplay section at Comic Con.
The hench Ninja on the front of the box is the game’s final boss Lord Gyaku, who when you meet him in game looks like a kid in Ninja PJs. What makes this worse is that this character is a pallette swap of the two starter characters Habaki and Senzo.
The green and yellow Habaki and Senzo are this games take on the Ryu and Ken or Scorpion and Sub Zero from Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat respectively. So in this sense you can’t blame them for following suit and having two pallette swap starter charcaters. Expect they suck and like the final boss look like it’s PJ city here.
After this you have Chagi who looks like this game’s Ryu or Liu Kang. Then Pakawa who is an older overweight native American, and doesn’t look at all intimidating. That statement stays true for all characters in fact as most of them look like they were random people brought in to record the footage.
Alaric looks like a discount Jack Black and Thundra looks like she came stright off the set of Glow. Their special moves are just as lame as the characters themselves with Thundra’s M Bison style flying through the air being hilariously bad. Mainly because she faceplants at the end of the move regardless of if she hits it or not.
Lastly there’s Danja who looks like Catwoman and Angus McGregor who looks like a cross between Vincent Van Gogh and Groundskeeper Willy from The Simpsons. Angus has the best special move of all of them as he lifts up his kilt to shoot a fireball out of his ding dong. I’m not kidding.
One thing that was particularly annoying about the game is the way it tricked me into playing it multiple times. When I booted up the Jaguar the game starts on Easy difficulty and this wasn’t something I paid any attention to. I dove straight in on the setting the game begins with. I wasn’t to know that once you’ve defeated all opponents that you are not allowed to face the final boss on Easy mode.
So I started the game again, but this time on Normal mode. The game let me face the final boss and I beat him. But then it told me that if I wanted to face the final boss’s true form I needed it to be on hard mode! Furious! So third time’s the charm.
But all these little gripes aside I didn’t think this was so bad a game. It was playable enough, and it has a charm where you can enjoy some of the weird and wonderful characters because they are bad.
The graphics aren’t great considering that the Jaguar was so much more powerful than the SNES, and the music is mostly forgettable. Only the Angus stage with bagpipe music stood out, and the final boss music added to how uneventful this tournament was.
I feel that if you were a Jaguar owner back in the day you’ll have disliked the game because it was worse than Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat in every way. And if you paid full price you’ll have felt gutted that it’s a poor man’s Mortal Kombat on a system where it should have had every advantage.
Playing it today, almost 30 years after it’s original release I can say that I didn’t feel the disappointment or hurt that Jaguar fans would have had back in the day. In fact with so many fighting games having been available for the past 30 years I think the only reason to play this today would be if you are a collector or just want to experience this slice of gaming history. That being the case I honestly didn’t find it that offensive and actually enjoyed the badness. Some bad games aren’t playable. This is. Some games have forgettable characters, but you’ll remember these.
Conclusion
So if you want to judge this game on a so bad it’s good level it’s a 5 out of 5. If you want to judge it by modern standards it’s a 1 out of 5. But within the historical context of this being a Jaguar game, and enjoying the game today for what it is, I give it 2 out of 5. Not great, but not the worst thing ever.
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