Ninja Five-O

Man, it pains me to put a negative review for this game. So the developers remastered this game's banger soundtrack for this port, which I would like to believe was to compensate for the GBA's audio hardware limitations. The problem is that they did a really. really bad job at it, and they broke the game along the way. First, the treble is now so loud that it completely drowns out the rest of the music, and the softer instrumentation for the main melody aggravates the problem. All you can hear is a rapid and irritating "CHIKA-CHIKA-CHIKA-CHIKA-CHIKA-CHIKA-CHIKA-CHIKA" almost all the time while playing. It doesn't matter if you set High Quality Sound to On or Off, you're stuck with it, with Off being the least worst offender. What baffles me is that you can literally listen to both the original and remastered soundtrack in the game's menu. Why isn't there an option to actually use said original music in-game as well? But somehow that's not even the worst part with this remastered so...

Finally a hidden gem is given the attention it deserves. It's not revolutionary in the slightest, and there are quite a few shortcomings (it would be nice if there were more musical variation, for example), but this is a very solid and underappreciated action platformer in the Shinobi/Shadow Dancer mould. The grappling hook mechanic is very finely tuned and requires mastery if you're going to get anywhere in the Hard or Time Trial modes. The price is a bit steep, but it's a bargain compared to trying to source an original copy on the second-hand market. Well worth it for retro action fans.