Okay, first I will get my big gripe with this one out of the way. It's compressed in a freaking LZH file which is only popular in Japan. And even after you extract it with a tool like WinRAR, it turns out the game is already compressed in a WinRAR self extracting file. Whats the point of compressing it twice?!


Well anyway, Ninja Hattori 3rdStrike DASH is a charming little Japanese fighting game that appears to be based on Street Fighter (though I can only recognise Ken, Ryu and Dhaslim). The pixel art is simplistic and the characters are very cute with their oversized heads. The mission of the game is simple: You have to fight the rest of the fighters in the game one by one in two round bouts.


The game extensively makes use of special moves. I always found special moves in fighting games to be awkward but in this one they're actually refreshingly easy to pull off. I'm not a Street Fighter expert but I know a couple of the special moves for Ken and Ryu, which are:

Fireball - down, forward, punch
Spin kick - down, backwards, kick

In the game each player has a super power bar. Once they've filled it up they can unleash super moves, such as Ryu's super fireball which is done the same way as a regular fireball but with both punch buttons pressed simultaneously. The manual has a list of all possible super moves but, unfortunately, it's all in Japanese.


The single player game has no continues if you lose but fortunately it isn't too difficult. It's actually quite fun and i'll definitely spend some more time in the future playing it. If you're a casual or hardcore fighting game fan you should find this great fun for a few hours, and don't let the LHZ file or Japanese text put you off. 8.5/10

You can download it here