Every move Joe has, and when to actually use it
Three buttons run the whole game: one attacks, one jumps, one casts ninjitsu. The attack button is smart about range, throwing a shuriken from far off and swinging a blade up close, so you never pick the wrong tool. Everything that makes Joe dangerous is stacked on top of those three inputs, and the game explains none of it.
Press Space again at the peak of a jump for a somersault that carries you higher, and if you do it against a wall while holding into it, then jump away, Joe climbs straight up surfaces he has no business climbing. In mid-air, press +K for a dive kick that drops fast and lands clean from a safe angle, though the bounce afterward can spit you out somewhere you didn't want to be.
Learn the dash slash before anything else. Double-tap a direction to break into a run, then attack: Joe lunges through whatever's in front of him and can't be touched for the length of the move. That brief invincibility also carries him across small pits, so it doubles as an escape hatch. The cost is the recovery. Whiff it and you're locked in place long enough for anything nearby to make you pay, so throw it only when you mean it. And when a room closes in on you, hold K to guard, which swats away every projectile in front of you but does nothing against an enemy running straight into your body.
The four ninjitsu, and the one worth hoarding
You get one ninjitsu cast per life, picked from the pause menu, unless you turn up an extra scroll in a hidden nook or pry one off a tough boss. That scarcity is the whole game: burn your cast clearing a room you'd have survived anyway and it isn't there when something actually threatens to kill you.
Ikazuchi wraps Joe in a shield that soaks four hits before it fades, the safe call for a scrolling stretch that keeps chewing you up. Kariu lights the screen and torches anything standing near you, ideal when a room floods with weak bodies. Fushin trails ghost images behind Joe and flings him far higher than a normal somersault, less a weapon than a key for ledges and secrets you can't otherwise reach. Then there's Mijin, which blows Joe up for one life but clears the whole screen, refills your entire health bar, and drops the scroll right back in your hand. Timed against a boss it borders on unfair, which is precisely why you sit on it instead of spending it early.
The game also pays you to show restraint: finish a round without casting anything and it hands over a fat score bonus. So every level poses the same quiet question: hold the scroll for points, or cash it just to stay alive.
Surviving the air fortress
This is the level that earns the game its reputation, and the climb punishes you long before the boss does. The first half hands you poles to swing from and cannons that flood whole lanes with energy. The laser gates and the big guns each take six plain shurikens to break, or you can time a clean run straight past them, and the drones that drop from above die in one hit but love to appear mid-jump. The second half has no enemies at all, which somehow makes it worse: electrified floors and ceilings, sinking pillars, falling platforms, and a wall that keeps closing until wall-jumping up the shrinking gap is your only way out. Every somersault and wall climb you drilled earlier gets cashed in right here.
How do you beat the Shadow Master?
He fights by copying you. In his first phase he flings three shurikens at once, blinks in for a sword slash, or leaps clear across the screen dropping a shuriken burst, all your own moves turned back on you. Do not trade blows up close. Keep your distance, answer with shurikens, and jump-kick him when he crowds you. Once he freezes into a powering-up pose the second phase opens: a slow green energy ball you can read a mile off, sudden jump kicks, fast blasts, a shout that knocks you clean out of the air, and a full-screen wave if he starts to hover. This is where the scroll you hoarded pays off. Time a Mijin for the moment his health bar goes stubborn and phase two caves, since one cast can swing the entire fight. The whole game runs online right here, which is the only humane way to learn it: die, retry, die again, until the timing finally sticks.
Two cheats hiding in the Options menu
Neither of these is a button code you punch in at the title screen. Both are sequences you set up on the Options screen before the game starts, and both hold for the entire run. One of them takes the fear out of the game completely, so keep it in reserve for the day the air fortress finally breaks your patience.
Invincibility
Switch this on and Joe simply stops taking damage, like a permanent Ikazuchi shield from the ninjitsu list that never wears off. It's the bluntest way past the final round, and about the only time I'd bother switching it on, since a game you can't lose stops being much of a game.
- Open the Options menu
- Select the Music option
- Press K to play these tracks in this exact order: He Runs → Japonesque → Shinobi Walk → Sakura → Getufu
Get the order right and the last track never plays. There's no message and no flash on screen, but from that point Joe walks through enemy fire untouched.
Unlimited Shurikins
The default shuriken stock is generous but still runs dry; this removes the ceiling so you never do. It turns the shuriken from something you ration into something you spam, which takes the teeth out of the stretches that swarm you with weak enemies.
- Open the Options menu
- Set the starting Shurikins count to 00
- Change the Sound Effects (S.E.) setting to Shurikin
- Move back to the Shurikins count and leave the cursor on it until the 00 flips to the infinity symbol (∞)
Once the ∞ appears, you're stocked for the rest of the run.