My everlasting memory of Tenchu is always about the original game and especially its phenomenal soundtrack. I never bothered with Tenchu 2 and only acknowledged the later sequels with the passing thought “oh wow, they’re still making Tenchu games, good for them!”. So digging into the series for memory card icons has been an illuminating experience over the past week. I never knew about the re-released content in Shinobi-Gaisen or that it started a short-lived, user-created content trend among fans.
To quickly recap, Shinobi-Gaisen was a Japan-exclusive re-release of the first game with some updated mission layouts and extra content that was added for the Western releases. But most notably was the addition of a Mission Editor mode allowing players to plot out their own stealth/action campaigns. It’s a simple grid-based tool with a few scripted gameplay types — don’t be spotted, escort the princess, etc. — but it apparently took off with fans of the game. In researching the games I found a massive Japanese fan site dedicated to the entire Tenchu series which includes loads of these user created levels.
All these fan creations inspired developer Acquire to run a contest that would result in the next title in the series, Rittai Ninja Katsugeki Tenchu: Shinobi-Hyakusen, or basically “Our 100 favorite levels that fans made”. They strung the stages together with a small overworld map and rewarded players with bonus content like making-of and behind-the-scenes videos. It’s a neat love letter to the fans, rewarding their creativity with insight into what was already a popular game. I haven’t had a chance to see any of this bonus content myself but I hope to get back to it one day.
Acquire then released Tenchu 2 which would be the final game in the series on the original PlayStation. Everything about the game got an upgrade including its Mission Editor mode. This was also the first time that Western players got a chance to make their own missions and it was an equally big hit with fans, at least across Europe. In digging things up I found not one, but two different archives with hundreds of levels created by UK and European players of Tenchu 2.
It doesn’t appear that Acquire or Activision (who was handling the Western releases at this time) ran a similar “Top 100” contest but the feature was clearly a big hit all around the world at the time. In fact, Activision went so far as to endorse gray market game save devices right on the box of Tenchu 2, suggesting that players create and trade their creations “over the internet”.
That’s where our time with Tenchu ends here on the original PlayStation. The series would soon be taken over by From Software (yes, that From Software) and would see new releases almost every year until 2008. I don’t think it ever hit the same level of popularity that it saw on PSone but a decade-long run across a dozen different titles is nothing to sneeze at.
Left to right: Tenchu, Shinobi-Gaisen, Shinobi-Hyakusen, Tenchu 2 (system), Tenchu 2 (Mission Editor)
The last thing I wanted to point out from our side of things is the consistency in memory card icons from title to title, at least in Japan. The “Flaming Kanji” look is always striking and Acquire stuck with it across all four releases. You don’t really see these images side by side here on the site so I wanted to make a special gallery to show that off. Check out all of the titles in the Tenchu series on its Featured Franchise page. There’s a little something interesting about each one of them.
Leave us a comment about your thoughts on Tenchu. Played them all? Did you ever make any missions of your own? Let us know!
