Ninja Kid on NES is one of those weird little action games that keeps you guessing. You start on this overworld map with these arches—each one leads to a different side-scroller stage, and the shape of the arch actually tells you what kind of level you're jumping into. Clever, right?

Here's the fun part: after clearing a stage, you get two doors. One just dumps you back to the map, but the other? That’s the good one—it takes you to a vertical tower with a mini-boss waiting at the top. Of course, the game doesn’t tell you which door is which, but sometimes you’ll grab a random power-up that reveals the right path. Sneaky.

Oh, and stuff just rains from the sky mid-mission—scrolls, whistles, speed boosts. Grab a scroll, haul it to the hut in the middle of the map, and boom, you unlock the boss fight. And those whistles? If you crouch in the corner during the boss, you can summon a little helper. Feels like half the game is figuring out what all these random pickups actually do.

It’s janky, unpredictable, and honestly kind of charming because of it.