Naruto: Ultimate Ninja
Ninja fight all the time. That's real Ultimate power.
Published: June 30, 2006
All of these basic moves are available in the game's three main modes; Scenario (think story mode, except light on actual interesting stories), Free Battle (yes, I'm sure it's a stretch to figure that one out) and the most interesting of the bunch, Mission, which (unsurprisingly, given the name) saddles you with varying objectives beyond just beating the snot out of a guy, and they can be downright difficult -- mainly because they'll often gift you with an objective or move that isn't really explained in the in-game documentation. Consulting the manual here is a good thing.
By completing fights (and this is where Mission Mode really comes in handy), you'll earn cash, that you can then use in the game's micro-mode where you pluck capsules from their resting place with a claw. Yes, it's just like those claw games you see at Denny's that nobody plays because they're a total rip-off, and not wanting to betray the nature of the device, CyberConnect 2 included capsules that are empty. That's right, you pay to get ripped off. Nice. The goods that are inside are novel like character animations, music, or bonus characters. It's likely that this will appease fans of the show, but since I'm still not one of them, it was all kind of pointless for me.
The one thing that the game really does have going for it is the visuals, though. There's some slick animation in place here, and it's more than just shared moves across multiple characters. The suite of movesets is damned impressive; just because you use the same combos with two different characters doesn't mean they'll react the same way, and it's a nice touch.
By far the nicest examples of the game's sort of manga-shaded look (populated by things like hashed lines instead of solid shadow and lots and lots of speed/reaction lines) are in the super moves, but then they also start to drag a little. Adding the interactivity of the button presses to things helps (and if you mess up, the animations can branch to reflect this), but you're still going to be seeing things quite a bit.
The audio follows suit. The title screen character is random on each boot up, and chimes in with a decent amount of voice clips for menu selections, and they're all provided by the English dub voice actors from the TV series. Aurally, everything else is the standard stuff you'd expect from fighting games; lots of grunts and yelps and announced moves, and the music a sort of high-energy mélange of taiko drums and a little koto, and it's all nicely done, if forgettable once the power button is pressed.
Ultimate Ninja succeeds were nearly every other licensed game fails; it presents the characters and source material with enough love and attention to detail to keep it from feeling rushed or like another cash-in attempt to maximize a series' popularity. It also manages to be a solid (if basic) fighting game that's incredibly frantic, nicely balanced and yet different from character to character that you want to try them all out just to see what is different. It's not going to enter into any fighting game tournaments or anything, but as a casual, fast-paced brawler, it does the trick quite nicely.
Fans of the show are obviously the target here, but that someone with no knowledge of things (or even a desire to learn more; I was turned off fairly quickly after just a few episodes) can still have a good time and appreciate what was done says plenty about how enjoyable the game is on its own merits -- license or not. And that, folks, is how all licensed games should be designed.