The Ninja Warriors

The Ninja Warriors is a beat 'em up arcade game, which was released by Taito Corporation in 1987 and licensed to Romstar for U.S. manufacture and distribution; it runs on its own dedicated hardware (two Motorola 68000s running at 8 MHz, with a Zilog Z80 running at 4 MHz, and a Yamaha YM-2610 running at 8 MHz for sound). Set in 1993 (which was six years in the future at the time), both players must use an 8-way joystick to take control of a pair of android ninjas (who are the eponymous "Ninja Warriors", and Player 1's is red-suited while Player 2's is blue-suited) with two buttons to make them stab the game's enemies with their daggers and throw shurikens at them (however, they only have a limited supply of shurikens between them which are shown at the bottom of the screen so they must use them sparingly) - and they are on a mission to destroy an evil dictator named "Bangler" who has not only seized power in the fictional country of El Cabar (where the game takes place), but is also a ruthless murderer who thinks nothing of individual rights for free people, so the country's morale has quickly deteriorated and its deposed President has contacted his friends in the Orient for assistance.

This is the first game in the The Ninja Warriors series; it was later followed up by two direct-to-console sequels: Ninja Warriors (SNES, 1994) which was originally released in Japan under the name of "The Ninja Warriors Again", and 25 years later, The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors (Nintendo Switch, 2019) which had originally been released in Japan under the title of "The Ninja Warriors Once Again".