In Real Life

This weekend’s post about the Wii Virtual Console version of Revenge of Shinobi swapping a bubblegum pink “Spider-Man” for the copyright offending blue and red version in the Genesis original reminded me of the changes made to the XBLA Shinobi.

The arcade original version of Sega’s Shinobi once featured a not-so-subtle homage to old webhead, a blue and red ninja that scaled down walls in only a handful of stages. That may have been a little too close to Marvel’s Spider-Man for the Sega legal team, especially after already having changed the rips of “Batman,” “Spider-Man” and the “Terminator” in Revenge of Shinobi.

So they went with something more toned down. The original version is below.

Yes, that’s the same screen shot, but I altered the first image in this post to be more inline with what the Xbox Live Arcade version looks like. That blue and red Spider-ninja is how it was originally presented in 1987.

Also missing from the Xbox Live Arcade version of Shinobi are these Marilyn Monroe posters.

Shame about that, as they add a bit more atmosphere to the level and break up all the NINJA posters we now see. But that’s litigation for ya!