Ninja Cop

Super Lazuli

this is seriously the greatest premise for a game ever. And yes, it's a real game. Released for the GBA all the way back in 2003.

 

The premise is simple. You are a ninja. Who is also a cop.

You are therefore, a ninja cop. Your abilities include ninja sword-slashing, ninja star-throwing, ninja flamboyant outfit acquiring, ninja innocent hostage killing and not giving a shit, and ninja frog-stabbing.

Gameplay wise, it's a pretty standard beat-em-up/platformer. You can jump, crouch, throw ninja stars (which can be upgraded via powerup to fireballs and ninja lasers) and you can swing from things with your fancy ninja chain. It's also not really that hard. I'm about halfway through it and only got it a few hours ago.

But the point remains.

you are....ninja cop. 

MadassAlex

I think one of the amazing things about handhelds is that they're an outlet for games and concepts that could never otherwise see the light of day. Something like "Ninja Cop" would seem perfectly natural on the NES, but game concepts had become more sophisticated as early as the early/mid 90s. Perhaps the modern equivalent would be casual gaming, in which a game's narrative concept exists only to justify a very small amount of game mechanics. 

Games are pretty amazing. Even moreso in a modern context. Video games aren't far removed from traditional games, but it's only now that there's an entire industry built around creating new ones. That's kind of crazy -- we have the same games for hundreds if not thousands of years, and suddenly, we have thousands of new games in the space of a few decades. 

As for the concept of "Ninja Cop", I think it would be kind of cool to have a ninja RPG set in feudal Japan wherein the player has to enforce the law. Kind of like feudal GTA from the other perspective.