Mention Shinobi to any old-school gamer, and they'll generally respond with a smile and wistful sigh. Mention Bionic Commando, and they'll probably jump up and down, giggling with glee. Now, try telling them about a game that's "Shinobi meets Bionic Commando" and watch their reaction. Tell them that this game does in fact exist, and that it's a Gameboy Advance gamed called Ninja Five-O. Just make sure to bring a box of tissues when you do this.

Designed by Hudson and released by Konami in mid-2003, Ninja Five-O went entirely unnoticed by pretty much everyone and disappeared from the store shelves almost immediately. It was released also in Europe and Japan under the slightly better name Ninja Cop (complete with slightly better cover art.)

Various bad guys are committing crimes all over town, and taking hostages! The police are scared shitless and all of the ninjas are busy crying to the their mamas. As Joe Osugi, specialized anti-terrorist ninja, you're the only man for the job. In the beginning, you can choose from three stages (each with three sublevels and a boss), with more opening up when you complete those. You make your way through classic terrorist situations like banks, airports, harbors, caves, and finally the super secret base.

Instead of being a strictly linear affair, Ninja Five-O puts you in a series of gigantic, interlocked rooms. In each level, not only do you need to rescue all of the hostages but also find the colored keys to unlock the various doors in each level. Don't worry about going on long hunts to find these things - despite the nature of the game, you won't get lost or end up going in circles, and there's always plenty of action.

Like most ninjas, Joe is equipped with an unlimited supply of shurikens. Finding power ups will let him shoot fire (!!) and lasers (!?!), but getting hit will decrease your weapon level. You also have a sword - used with the R button - which lets you slice through enemy defenses. Toss in two kinds of ninja magic - one to become invulnerable and one to kill all of the enemies on screen - and you've got a pretty complete arsenal. Hell, they even added in a pair of binoculars that lets you scope the surrounding areas for bad guys. But the coolness doesn't stop there.

Joe's most useful item is a grappling hook that lets you swing from platforms to platform. It actually feels quite a bit like the grappling laser from Super Metroid, in that you can latch on hooks and swing around and around until the dizziness forces you to stop screwing around and play the game properly. You can't use it to climb through ceilings like you could in Bionic Commando - rather, you have to go to an edge of the platform and flip around. It takes a little bit of getting used to, as it's easy to misjugde what direction you'll fly in when you let go, but once you get the hang of it it's insanely fun. Enemies are rarely placed in a place where it's easy to kill them, as they like to hind behind crates or attack from an unreachable platform. Flying through the air, leaping up behind these goons and silencing them with a spinning sword flip - these are the joys of Ninja Five-O.

For the most part, you've seen better looking Gameboy Advance games, although the animation is very well done. And while there's only a few songs in the entire game, the main theme that plays in the first few levels is quite catchy. But at this point, saying things like "Real gamers know graphics don't mean anything, it's the gameplay" is pretty much cliche.

Like any decent action game, there's fair level of challenge beyond the first stage. As you progress through the levels, you'll need to not only find the best way to approach enemies without getting slashed, roasted or otherwise slaughtered, but also complete a large variety of timing based challenges including leaping off walls, crawling through ducts, jumping over spiked platforms, and sliding past flamethrowers. The bosses are all specialized with slightly ridiculous magic - the toad boss is especially silly - and require quite a bit of strategy to defeat Joe can usually only take a few hits before giving up the ninja ghost and there aren't any midlevel checkpoints, so to practice for a bit first. Still, it never reaches the upper levels of frustration of a Ninja Gaiden or Battletoads, so you probably don't need to worry for safety of your Gameboy or controller.

Yeah, yeah, technically these are the age-old conventions we've seen thousands of times before. But we haven't seen them for quite some time, and even then, rarely were they executed so well. Despite the fair number of levels - fifteen total - after you finish it all you can think about is how you wish more games were like it. If Ninja Five-O had come out during the 16-bit era, it undoubtedly would've won Game of the Year awards all over the place. Joe Osugi would've appeared on magazine covers, and nearly-naked women would hawk the game in television commercials. Unfortunately, in the usual market where Nickelodeon games will sell better than most titles of quality, Ninja Five-O remains one of the most overlooked titles in the GBA library.

Yup, the DS has a GBA slot but you can't play GB games on it.