Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider Review: ’90s Ninja Action is Back With a Vengeance

The fine folks at JoyMasher are no strangers to creating new games that would feel right at home on retro hardware. Best known for Blazing Chrome, 2019’s pixel-perfect love letter to Konami’s Contra series, the team’s latest project, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider, trades that game’s heavy artillery for razor-sharp swords and lethal ninja magic in the spirit of such classic ninja action titles such as Shinobi, Hagane: The Final Conflict, and Ninja Gaiden.

You play as the titular protagonist Moonrider, a Guardian created to serve an evil authoritarian regime which, after an incident, turns against his tyrannical former masters. Moonrider’s quest for revenge takes him across eight stages teeming with murderous ninjas, high-tech war machines, and grotesque meat-and-metal abominations throughout various cool futuristic settings.

Divine Inspiration

From its gritty 16-bit aesthetic to its pumping chiptune soundtrack, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider immediately evokes the feeling of playing a long-lost Genesis game. This is perhaps unsurprising, as JoyMasher’s latest offering shares quite a bit of common DNA with Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master. From the way Moonrider can effortlessly wall jump to traverse narrow shafts to the lethal running slash you can perform to cleave your enemies in two, it’s easy to picture that series’ protagonist Joe Higashi beneath Moonrider’s shiny steel armor. The similarities don’t end there, however. You can even perform his signature downward jump kick to pogo off the skulls of your hapless opponents. Sadly, Moonrider doesn’t get Joe’s totally rad rocket-powered surfboard. But he does get a tricked-out motorcycle equipped with an energy cannon, so there’s that.

While classic ninja action titles like Shinobi and Hagane: The Final Conflict are the major influences behind Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider, there’s also a bit of Mega Man sprinkled in for good measure. Each stage ends with an encounter against one of your one-time allies, the Guardians. And, once you beat them, you’ll obtain one of their unique abilities. These powerful skills let you do things like conjure a giant tentacle to harpoon your foes, hurl flaming boomerangs, or even unleash a devastating cascade of lasers that fills the screen. Needless to say, they can save your skin when the going gets tough. You can’t go nuts with them, though, as each use requires a sizable chunk of your special gauge. Thankfully, health and energy pick-ups are frequent enough that you can still experiment with the various abilities the game puts at your chromed fingertips.

Further fleshing out Moonrider’s gameplay are special skill modules. Hidden within each stage, they offer several perks and modifiers to spice things up or give you an edge in battle. For example, the Glass Cannon module makes you incredibly powerful at the cost of one-hit deaths. Meanwhile, the Detective module will help you spot hidden areas – an ability that’s especially handy when seeking out secret extra lives or additional skill modules. You can equip two modules at any given time. My go-to loadout granted me extra armor and made my attacks slightly more potent with every enemy I killed, making me a well-balanced cyber assassin. Still, I can easily see myself coming back to the game over and over again to test myself with different combinations.

Sci-Fi Slicing & Dicing in a Dystopian World

Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider delivers a compelling mix of precision platforming and high-energy combat with stages and enemy layouts designed to take full advantage of your various abilities. You’ll feel like an indomitable ninja badass as your missions have you leaping across a sea of enemy airships as you hack down scores of cybernetic horrors or battle massive monsters that look straight out of H.R. Giger’s wildest dreams.

Speaking of monsters, the mini-bosses you’ll encounter in each stage were some of my favorite moments. They’re usually against some giant bio-mechanical menace or other, featuring fun-to-learn patterns that will test your mecha ninja mettle. My favorite of the bunch is the stage 1 mini-boss you can see below, a clear homage to Contra III: The Alien Wars’ Big Fuzz.

If I have one complaint about the bosses, it’s the Guardians themselves. Don’t get me wrong: their designs, heavily inspired by the work of prolific character designer Keita Amemiya (who created the characters for Hagane: The Final Conflict, to which Moonrider owes much of its inspiration), look fantastic. But, sadly, they’re mostly pushovers. Despite having some pretty cool attack patterns, they go down far too easily. I defeated most of them in seconds by just getting in close and wailing away with my sword until they died in some spectacularly gory fashion.

Honestly, had I not played Blazing Chrome first, which features some superbly designed and satisfyingly challenging bosses, this might not have disappointed me as much as it does. However, I can’t help but wish Moonrider’s big baddies had a bit more bite.

Speaking of Blazing Chrome, which featured an excellent nod to Space Harrier with its jetpack stage, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider also serves up a dose of arcade nostalgia. There are a pair of scenes that channel Sega’s Super Scaler hit Hang-On as you speed through the city on your motorcycle. Of course, Hang-On didn’t allow you to blast heavily-armed goons into twitching gristle with plasma cannons but don’t sweat the details. All you need to know is that these stages are fantastic and do a great job keeping the action fresh throughout the campaign.

Pixel-Perfect Presentation

Like JoyMasher’s previous releases, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider‘s presentation is impeccable and looks like a genuine product of the 16-bit era. There are no next-gen tricks to be found here, just masterful sprite work and scaling effects that look like they were designed around the Genesis’ hardware limitations. With the exception of sound quality, Moonrider very much looks and feels like a game that’d sacrifice very little if it were to be ported to the console. And while I admit that sounds like a weird way to praise a game from 2023, it’s the kind of stuff retro-minded players will undoubtedly appreciate immensely.

Things fare just as well on the aural front. Each stage features pumping chiptune melodies that fit the on-screen action like a glove and will remain in your head long after you put your controller down; Hell, I’m humming the Asura’s Fleet BGM as I type this review. Also worth noting are the digitized voice samples for the Guardians, which add a nice bit of dramatic flair to each showdown.

A Must-Play Love Letter To ’90s Ninja Action Games

From its stunning sprite work to its masterful level designs that make full use of your ninja abilities, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider will keep you glued to your controller until the end credits roll. My only real complaint aside from the relatively easy bosses is that it’s such a short burn. With just eight levels available, skilled players will make their way through the game in just a couple of hours. Still, completionists should be able to squeeze out a few more by unlocking all of the hidden upgrades in each map.

When all is said and done, if you’re a fan of games like Shinobi, Hagane: The Final Conflict, or Ninja Gaiden, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider is a must-play love letter to the ninja action games of the ’90s.

Final Verdict: 4.5/5

Available on: PC (Reviewed), PS5, PS4, Switch; Publisher: The Arcade Crew, Dotemu ; Developer: JoyMasher; Players: 1 Released: January 12th, 2023; ESRB: T for Teen; MSRP: $16.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of  Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider provided by the publisher.