Shinobi (series)/YMMV

"Hotsuma: "Akagane... Shirogane... not you too!""
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: The PlayStation 2 Shinobi has "Call," one of the best final boss themes ever written.
 * Revenge has "Terrible Beat."
 * 3 has quite a few, especially Mandara and The Shadow Master's theme.
 * "Sakura" has to be mentioned; it practically makes the ending cutscene.
 * Any of the stage music in the PS2 Shinobi could qualify for this, especially "Transfiguration" and "Cool Shrine".
 * Let's just cap it off and say that since ...Mr. Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage and Etrian Odyssey) was behind the music for most of the franchise... this trope is everywhere in this series.
 * The PAL version of Shinobi X/Legions has some pretty awesome new music composed by Richard Jacques, who also did the music for the Saturn port of Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island. This version is considered by many to be superior since it sticks truer to Koshiro's style. Compare the original version of stage 1 to Jacques' version.
 * Ending Fatigue: Shinobi X seems to suffer from this... especially with the lift...
 * Game Breaker: The Art of Mijin. The explosion, while costing you a life, also restores your health meter, takes out nearby enemies, and deals a crapton of damage to bosses. More importantly, it respawns you in place instead of at the last checkpoint, preventing you from losing a large amount of progress. It also gives you another use of your special moves, so you could just use it over and over (until your lives run out, at least).
 * Goddamn Bats: Many of the "minienemies" that appears in the Ps2 game have shades of this. Also, in earlier games, the ninja who were airborne had a rather nasty ability to wreck your jumps with very well placed shuriken.
 * Good Bad Bugs: In the Master System version of Shinobi, the Mongol at the beginning of level 3-1 on the second floor can be killed with your nunchaku... by striking the left side of the screen.
 * I Am Not Shazam: Shinobi is a synonym for a "ninja" (specifically of its first kanji) and not the name of a particular character.
 * Both the Ninja Master and the Shadow Master are frequently called "Neo Zeed", which is the name of the criminal organization they are in charge of.
 * Signature Song:
 * Revenge — "Terrible Beat".
 * Shinobi III — "Whirlwind".
 * So Bad It's Good: The cutscenes in Shinobi X/Legions.
 * That One Boss: In the PS2 Shinobi, chances are it's Hiruko. Using "TATE" attack is essential to killing him because your normal attacks barely scratch him. You have a very short window to attack him because you can't hurt him when he attacks and he teleports around the arena and any missed "TATE" combos when hitting him are lost with no chances for anything other than normal hits. On top of this the only enemies you can get a "TATE" on are these talismans he that don't have features to differentiated the front or back from making it hard to tell which side you should even attack to set up the "TATE", and they fire projectiles at you which can interrupt it, and when he summons large numbers of them you can get pummeled with projectiles on top of Hiruko teleporting in close to attack you with his fans. Most of his attacks aren't very hard to dodge if you are focused on him, if you are trying to build up a combo you can easily get hit from attack coming from off-screen.
 * What an Idiot!:.
 * The Woobie: The first two Oboro's revenant you meet are, respectively a chubby boy and a cute little girl. Who just after appearing they Pray Hotsuma to kill them. Poor Hotsuma...