This is one of the few chances I get to type this and actually mean it:
Hope y'all love seeing low resolution ninja taint.

Introduction

Ninja Hayate was a 1984 arcade Laserdisc FMV game in the vein of Dragon's Lair where inputs have to be entered at the right time to advance forward. This was made a year before Time Gal so it's rougher to play and you don't even see all of the possible scenes in one session.
Revenge of the Ninja is a US exclusive port of Ninja Hayate for the Sega CD released in 1994, a little less than year after Time Gal's Sega CD port in the US. Renovation Products was the publisher with Wolf Team returning for development. This port definitely feels cheaper as the footage was straight digitized with heavy dithering, compared to how Time Gal on Sega CD redrew graphics to better fit the graphical limitations of the Sega CD. Revenge of the Ninja also adds a superfluous manual only backstory of getting revenge for Hayate's dad that mostly serves to justify why the footage has flashing spots for directional inputs. At the very least, the port does have some interesting additions. There's an English dub for this game as well as added music to scenes. This port also plays through all of the scenes in the game, compared to how the arcade version selected from a pool of scenes alongside with some guaranteed ones.
I already made a submission for Time Gal so it makes sense to me to go with this as a follow up. Would this mean that I cover the rest of Renovation Products' FMV games that saw release on the Sega CD? Who knows? I'm kind of ambivalent on wanting to check out Cobra Command, though at the same time Road Blasters is incredibly tempting.

Game notes

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
  • BIOS used: Sega CD Model 1 US (v1.10)
    • File name: SCD_m1_us_110.bin
    • SHA1 hash: 4F315ADCEF9B8FEB0364C21AB7F0EAF5457F3ED
  • Enters a game screen resolution code that doesn't affect gameplay
  • Plays on hardest difficulty

Extra notes

I enter a code at the title screen menu to change the game resolution to 320x224 pixels. This effectively adds black bars to the left and right sides of the screen. This affects the FMV video by changing it from being stretched to matching the aspect ratio of the original footage. I understand why the game was originally like that but I think the footage looks better with the black bars on the side despite the shrunken screen. There are other codes that could've been entered but I didn't use those since they're just straight up cheats and debug tools.
Hard mode removes all of the inputs messages and takes away some of the visual highlights. Some of the edits are kind of rough where you can still tell where the visual highlight was, while some other visual highlights weren't removed likely due to budget reasons. At the end of Hard mode and after the credits (with an option to watch all of the footage without the border), a diploma for the "Master of the Ninja Arts" allows for a 10 letter name to be entered. The last input is after entering a name into the diploma screen.

Suggested screenshot

Frame 46530

nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Sorry for the delay on this. From what I'm seeing, there is nothing that stand out of obvious. I'm not familiar with this game like I am Dragon's Lair, but I certainly like these laser disc games. If it was feasible (If I remember from these other similar games), that the control of routing would be the only thing that would improve this; however, I don't think that is the case here. Great job!
Accepting.

despoa: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #9251: Darkman425's SegaCD Revenge of the Ninja in 20:19.92
Dimon12321
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Posts: 1217
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A weak "Yes" vote because, even though the footage quality is worse than in Time Gal, it's built into one continues story. That "Action!" signalling is bothers a little, though.
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [6187] SegaCD Revenge of the Ninja by Darkman425 in 20:19.92