The Revenge of Shinobi/Gameplay

Joe Musashi
You play as a Joe Musashi, a ninja master. The evil Neo Zeed organization has destroyed your master's dojo and stolen your girlfriend. Now it's up to you to get her back and save the world from domination at the hands of a ruthless ninja clan.

Joe has a life gauge, which is diminished each time he takes damage from an enemy weapon. It can be replenished by items. Touching an enemy but not a weapon knocks Joe back. If Joe loses his entire life gauge, he loses a life. Extra lives can be found in the rounds and are also given for every 50,000 points accumulated. If he loses all of his lives, the game ends, but it can be continued. The game starts with three continues.

A key move in The Revenge of Shinobi is the somersault, which maximizes Musashi's jumping height and enables him to throw eight shuriken at once in mid-air. Additionally, some stages consist of multiple layers, such as the first scene of the ../The Military Base/ and the freeway in ../Area Code 818/. Switching between layer (outdoor/indoor, or on-the-highway/next-to-it) is also done with the somersault move.

The player can choose between four difficulty levels (Easy, Normal, Hard, and Hardest). As difficulty increases, amount of starting lives decreases from 10 to 1. Musashi takes twice as much damage on Hardest. From the options menu, the player can also choose the amount of starting shuriken from 0 to 90 (though there is a trick to enable infinite shurikens).

Ninjutsu techniques
Besides his regular assortment of moves and attacks, Musashi has the ability to perform four special ninjutsu techniques. Only one can be used in each level, unless an additional bonus is picked up or the ninjutsu of Mijin was used to reset your life total.