Ah, Shinobi. Theres the ps2 game available on psn. Do you have any experience with that version? Looks pretty intense from the videos on YT.
Shinobi on PS2 would be an excellent contender if not for the lackluster (even at the time) technical presentation. You can feel the devs became more confident with the PS2 hardware as the game goes on, the later stages have clearly better design, textures and effects than the first ones.
Still, it has a incredibly interesting combat system and a more platform-centric approach to combat.
To give you an idea of the gameplay: your sword depletes your life constantly, when you're not killing enemies. When you do, however, the sword becomes stronger and stronger to the point of one-shotting every enemy you touch (with a cool goemon-like freeze animation). The skill is to keep the killing streak alive even during boss fights, to be able to one-shot them too.
I think it's even more difficult than Ninja Gaiden, much less polished, but more interesting at times.
I still have to play Nightshade, though.
I have read/watched the best place to play the NG games is on the og xbox (NG Black is it?) and the 360 versions for reasons - Performance/content and the color pallete, of all things. May have been a Digital Foundry video or something.
Proper deep games with something to sink your teeth into. Im finding that the older i get the more of a challenge I need. Didnt have the patients when I was younger.
If you can, Xbox/X360/XOne (with backwards compatibility) is the way to go
