IGN Event Reveals A New Ninja Five-O Release – But Is It A Reissue Or A Remake?

IGN has revealed a surprising new upcoming release a day early.

As shared by Gematsu, the IGN schedule for IGN Fan Fest 2024 tomorrow includes a listing for Ninja Five-O. IGN will be uploading a new trailer for the game on their official YouTube channel.

To put that in perspective, IGN reviewed Ninja Five-O when it originally released on the Game Boy Advance all the way back in 2003. Scoring it an 8.5 out of 10, then IGN writer Craig Harris describes it as “an amalgamation of existing old-school game ideas, it’s a combination that really works.”

Ninja games in the 1980s and 1990s have the ring of iconic franchises Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi, and a spate of lesser known classics like Shadow of the Ninja, Ninja Spirit, and Hagane: The Final Conflict. There were certainly other kinds of ninja themed video games, but ninjas seemed to fit the 2D side scroller platformer mold to a tee.

That’s the reason why, when one thinks of the spate of 2D side scroller games today, we also got a lot of ninja games. The Messenger, Mark of the Ninja, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider, and Trek to Yomi, are all throwback titles that hearken, and sometimes, build on, the gameplay elements of those classic games.

Ninja Five-O exists in a strange forgotten period in between all of that. On the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo was able to build an appetite for rereleases of games originally published on the Super NES or Sega Genesis, or new games that were throwbacks to that era. While the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube were ushering in a particularly productive era of 3D gaming, the Game Boy Advance was a refuge for 2D gaming with sprite graphics.

As described in the IGN review, Ninja Five-O has you playing Joe Osugi, a ninja / detective taking out a terrorist group using ancient ninja weapons. Like Bionic Commando, Joe uses a grappling hook. But unlike Bionic Commando, the hook doesn’t conveniently raise you one level at a time; Joe has to swing with the hook, being mindful of physics to successfully land those jumps.

Like Revenge of Shinobi, Joe can use unlimited shuriken that can be leveled up. Like Shadow Dancer, Joe’s melee sword attacks are actually more effective than shuriken throws and worth the risk.

However, unlike all these classic games, Ninja Five-O has a stealth element preceding Mark of the Ninja for nearly a decade. In this game it’s much simpler: stay away from a terrorist’s direct line of sight by kneeling and/or hiding when they turn towards you. The real appeal of Ninja Five-O is solving the puzzle like design of its intricate levels, filled with macguffins, terrorists, hostages to rescue, and lots of tricky passages to navigate.

Given how Konami has handled previous releases, one wonders how much work they could have put into this new release. Will this just be a plain emulation layer with save states and graphical effects, but not much else? Will this have that nifty modern/classic game toggle that some rereleases of older games have? Or did Konami find it worthwhile to make a full remake, and maybe bundle the original alongside it? We seemingly don’t have to wait that long to find out.