Sega Ninja

1985 video game

Sega Ninja, originally released as Ninja Princess (忍者プリンセス, Ninja Purinsesu) in Japan, is a run and gun video game released in arcades by Sega in 1985. The game features Princess Kurumi (くるみ姫 Kurumi Hime), the titular female ninja, battling enemies using throwing knives and throwing stars. The game was originally released in arcades as Ninja Princess in Japan and Sega Ninja internationally. In contrast to most later games in the genre, Ninja Princess has a feudal Japan setting with a female ninja protagonist who throws shuriken and knives. was released a year after the arcade game and changed the protagonist from female to male. Other changes include the rearranging of stages from the original Japanese release in western releases of the game as well as a scroll system, which requires that five green scrolls must be collected to get to the final level of the game, as all of them give hints on how the final level must be entered. If the player finishes the game without them, the game will backtrack to a level closest to where a missing scroll lies. Graphics are also different, made in a more realistic style.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Ninja Princess on their May 1, 1985 issue as being the most successful table arcade cabinet of the month. Computer Gaming World stated that the Master System version was the most entertaining of three martial arts games that Sega released together (the others were Black Belt and Kung Fu Kid), and approved of its unusual visual perspective.

In 2017, Sam Derboo of Hardcore Gaming 101 noted that Ninja Princess predates Capcom's genre popularizing run and gun shooter Commando (1985), and he considers Ninja Princess to be "in some ways the more advanced concept." While he considered Commando to be a refinement of Taito's Front Line (1982), he said that Ninja Princess brought "a fresh setting and interesting new elements." He also praises the female protagonist, but criticizes the console versions for making the protagonist a male ninja who has to rescue her instead. He nevertheless considers it "no doubt one of the better overhead run n gun shooters out in the mid ’80s." Sega Ninja is a plot point in the novel Ready Player Two (2020).