Kasumi Ninja (Jaguar) review "There's only so many times you can say "That's not good""

You’ve probably never heard of Kasumi Ninja and there are reasons for that.
First off, it was released for Atari’s 64 BIT MULTIMEDIA ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM! or the Atari Jaguar. A console no one owned and no one even remembers. A hastily thrown together mess that supposedly could piledrive its 16-bit competitors into ground. It had two 32 bit processors leeching off each other, which when you DO THE MATH!! adds up to 64! Of course, these claims were just dishonest marketing tools set to trick consumers into a “bigger means better” trap for those excited for the upcoming 32-bit renaissance.
Secondly, Kasumi Ninja is a blatant Mortal Kombat rip-off. Digitised sprites, blood and guts, fatalities and palette swapped ninjas are all here to drag you in. However, something is amiss almost instantly as you start.
Do you enjoy having a nice selection of varied fighters to pick from? Well, you have two. Both are generic ninja characters that look somewhat familiar to Sub-Zero and Scorpion, again a cheap attempt to lure unsuspecting players into thinking this could be something worthwhile.
Don’t worry, there are more. But you have to unlock them as you go by defeating them as you go. Great start, right? It actually gets worse. You don’t even have a CHARACTER SELECT SCREEN. To pick your chosen warrior, you have to go through an awkward and sluggish first person mode to walk to a statue representing the character you want and then you can actually start. You can also only pick from the two ninjas I mentioned and the rest have to be defeated to be unlocked. Good luck with that.
After this unnecessarily tenuous process, you begin your first match. Your opponent is Chagi, another interesting character. When you look closer at his appearance, mannerisms and moves, it could be Liu Kang but in the time you spent thinking about this, the relentless CPU and unresponsive controls have already turned you into a bloody pulp. Chagi has a fireball projectile and a flying kick in his arsenal. You have a throw attack and the strong kick button. Again, Good luck with that.
If you are successful in spamming your strong kick enough to claim victory. You can now unlock a better character to progress further. Other characters include an overweight Native American who can create earthquakes with her weight, an Amazonian that flies across the screen like M. Bison and a Scotsman who lifts up his kilt to fire projectiles at you. Please re-read that sentence again because I had to.
Some of these characters have some interesting traits but since the core mechanics are so broken and rusty and their accessibility is hidden behind attaining victory, its unlikely you’ll get to experience them. There is quite an eclectic mix of fighters and the developers even decided to give them a backstory for each one but the sluggish grind it takes to even just play as them makes it not even worth your time.
The game’s obvious selling point is its violence but guess what? Even that is hidden behind a wall. You have to enter a code to unlock the blood and guts and when you do you can actually set the amount of blood you want! Why would you even want this option? Surely the whole point of these games is to see as much gore and violence as possible? You can also perform fatalities too but as I keep saying Good. Luck. With. That. because you probably won’t be winning any matches to get to that point anyway.
This has got to be one of the most shameless cash in and rip offs of all time. Its only remarkable quality is the character that shoots fire from his genitalia. Yes, you unfortunately read that correctly.

Community review by Vorty (February 17, 2023) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.