Genre: PlatformerCompanies: Conspiracy Entertainment, Data Design Interactive
Platform played: Nintendo Wii
Also available on: PC, Playstation 2
Release date: 7/13/2005 (PS2); 7/23/2005 (PC); 10/3/2007 (Wii)
Retail price: $15
The Urban Dictionary defines shovelware as “Software that is hastily made, without proper testing, and ‘shoveled’ down consumers throats in order to make some quick cash.” If NinjaBread Man by Data Design Interactive could be found in the Urban Dictionary it would say “See Shovelware”.
Data Design Interactive was a United Kingdom-based developer that mostly stuck to making licensed games for Tonka, Kawasaki and Nickelodeon, at least until the GODS came into the picture. The ‘Game Orientated Development System’ is the be-all end-all shovelware game engine that Data Design came up with the a few years back.
They reuse music, animations, menus and even characters from game to game. They use it for racing games like Action Girlz Racing, to adventure games like Rock and Roll Adventures. They even rip off of established franchises like Crazy Taxi with London Taxi: Rushhour and Super Monkey Ball with Myth Makers: Orbs of Doom. No genre is safe from the wrath of the GODS. Either their plan was to take advantage of casual gamers or they’re really a joint Sony-Microsoft operation that set out to destroy Nintendo once and for all. For the purposes of this review we will assume Sony and Microsoft have no stake in this…
But I think we all know the truth.
What poor usage of a cool character
One of the games to come out of this cookie-cutter process was NinjaBread Man. The main character is pretty cool — if I could find a poster of the box art I’d put it up in my game room. The hand drawn artwork on the cover is one of the most display worthy on the Wii but the game itself is a completely broken mess. You swing the Wii remote to attack and shake the nunchuck to jump but the controls only work about half of the time. Expect to walk into mines, miss jumps and get hit by many attacks from evil cupcakes and annoying bees. The graphics are Nintendo 64 quality at best and the entire game can be finished in about 45 minutes.
After you finish each level you unlock time trials and other challenges, but the real challenge is convincing yourself to endure the pain all over again just to beat your own time. After completing the game’s one training level and three regular stages (that somehow feel like the longest game in history) you are treated to… nothing. Nada. Zilch. No ‘thank you’, no ‘good job’, not even a “ha ha you actually finished this pile of crap??” Just credits and then right back to the main menu.
The concept and box art had me sold on this game months before it came out, and I hate to admit it but I did pre-order it. I went into NinjaBread Man hoping for a fun adventure but instead I got stuck with an overpriced shovelware title from a developer that has gone on to infamy around the internet as a modern day snake oil salesman. They’re an entity that could single handedly cause an industry crash not seen since the Atari days. But sometimes that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
