Buddy of mine just showed me a new game for the PS2 where one plays a ninja. There are ‘ninja resurrect’ items (extra lives) that, when activated, replace your body with a log and get you back in play. I’d seen this in another game somewhere long ago (arcade game, don’t remember which one), and I don’t understand the significance of it? Is there some type of lore about ninja turning to wood? or is it just a ‘hey, you thought you killed the ninja, but it was really a wooden decoy’ thing?
The game is Tenchu: The Wrath of Heaven. This is the third installment in the Tenchu series of games. All of them are “sneak and kill” type games in a midevil-era Japanese setting. I did a (very brief and incomplete reviewhere.
As for the ninja resurrection “log” thing, I tried a lot of Googling and I can’t find anything specifically about it. I think you may have something with the “you killed a decoy, ha-ha!” theory. It may also just have been the game designers desiring a way to allow people to have a “continue” for some of the harder levels. (As for why the picked “ninja log” as your continue item, you’ve got me…)
FWIW, in the game you are only allowed to take one “log” with you when you start a mission, so in theory you only get one continue. Once in a while if you’re sharp-eyed you can find another log in a little red paper wrapped package somewhere in the level, so on some levels you can get two continues if you’re smart. It’s a good balance I think, since they seemed to make some of the bosses pretty damn hard.
-Ben
Well, if it’s any help, the technical name of it is a “Ninja Rebirth” item. Maybe all Ninjas are secretly wood elves or something.
To anybody else whose played the game: isn’t it disturbing that guards eat any rice ball they come across? “Oh! A delicious rice ball that’s mysteriously appeared. Yummy! Arghh the posion!”
The idea is also used in the manga/anime Naruto - Kakashi-sensei is a master of the Replacement Technique, and several times he appears to take damage that should kill him (4 throwing knifes stuck in his head, throat and torso; chainsawed, essentially…), only to have actually switched places with a log.
I’d thought that it was created for Naruto, but now it looks like it may be a pre-existing cliche.
Sengoku! That’s where I’ve seen it before! The Neo-Geo game, one of the first boss-monsters, when you do enough damage to him he ‘turns’ into a log, then vanishes and re-appears elsewhere. From the sound of things, it seems as though it’s the replacement thing.
In the ‘Samurai Showdown’ games, several of the ‘Ninja’ type characters have moves in which there is a puff of smoke, revealing a log, and the real guy drops down from behind the opponent.