10 Gaming Franchises Sega Really Need To Resurrect
6. Shinobi
At one point in time Shinobi was one of Sega’s hottest properties; from the original 1987 coin-op through the 3 excellent Mega Drive games onto the sophisticated Saturn sequel the series captivated its audience.
The well-rounded mix of fighting and exploring in the Shinobi games always seemed to come up with fresh new challenges that kept them well ahead of the competition. And while the difficulty level was often set quite high, the games could eventually be mastered if you invested enough time in them.
After 1995 the series seemed to fall away. We had two games for the PlayStation 2, in 2002 and 2003 respectively, but neither managed to capture audiences as the earlier games had done. A Shinobi reboot was released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2011 to mixed reviews and Sega haven’t gone back since.
So what would Sega need to do to get Shinobi back to the top of people’s want lists? In my opinion they need to move away from the 2D style of previous games and turn Shinobi into a huge open world action adventure set in fuedal Japan. Take control of an ancestor of Joe Mushashi as he fights his way across the land trying to stop the advance of an evil Shogun empire. Learn new skills, upgrade your weapons in the villages and learn the location of the evil Emperor himself.