The Revenge of Shinobi/Versions
Because of copyright issues regarding certain boss characters (many of which were based on cultural icons) there were at least three versions of the game in North America.
- Revision list
- 1.00: Bosses clearly resembling The Terminator, Batman, Godzilla, and Spider-Man are present. There are also two endings depending whether or not the player saves Naoko.
- 1.01: Batman is replaced by a bat-like man but The Terminator, Godzilla and Spider-Man remain unmodified.
- 1.02: Godzilla is replaced by a skeletal dinosaur and Batman is still replaced by a bat-like man but The Terminator and Spider-Man are still present. This time Spider-Man is acknowledged by a copyright screen. Enemy soldiers with flamethrowers also changed to bald men with headbands from likeness of Rambo.
- 1.03: In 2009, The Revenge of Shinobi was released for the Wii Virtual Console. While this version remains identical to version 1.02, the Spider-Man boss character was re-colored pink due to Sega's licensing of Spider-Man having been expired. However, the boss behaves with the same mannerisms as Spider-Man.
Use of the boss Spider-Man was licensed (since Sega was developing The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin at the time), but the characters resembling The Terminator, Batman and Godzilla are not; they are deemed to be merely look-alikes. This explains why Spider-Man simply appears to leave battle, instead of being destroyed and defeated like the other bosses of the game.
The Revenge of Shinobi has never been included on Sega collections for other systems, such as Sega Genesis Collection and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, possibly due to copyright restrictions. Other games from the series are included instead. However, a version of the game was available on the Sega Classics Arcade Collection compilation CD. These were never sold separately, but were provided as a bonus along with other titles, or the Mega CD console itself.
