Kasumi Ninja came out in 1994 for the Atari Jaguar and was published by Atari Corporation itself. It is a side-view fighting game with digitised characters, precisely the kind of product made in the shadow of Mortal Kombat's success in the first half of the nineties: real actors captured into sprites, showy finishing moves and an emphasis on violence.\n\nThe Jaguar badly needed strong titles after launch, since its library was thin and the console sold slowly. Kasumi Ninja was meant to be one answer, but the press received it poorly - criticising stiff controls, unbalanced characters and an attempt to shock that outran what the game offered mechanically. It survives largely as a well-known example of why the Jaguar failed.\n\nOn paper the hardware promised more than the competition, but its architecture of several specialised chips was difficult to program and few teams extracted what it could do. Digitised graphics were already ageing in 1994 as well; the arriving three-dimensional fighters pushed them aside within a year or two.\n\nToday the game's value is historical. Collectors of Atari Jaguar software and anyone studying the digitised-fighter wave will find a representative example here; anyone simply looking for a good nineties fighting game has better options elsewhere in the catalogue.\n\nOn OldGame.cz the title has a profile with screenshots and release details.

One more note on the platform. The Atari Jaguar sold for only a few years and its library stayed small, so its worthwhile titles number in the dozens rather than the hundreds. For collectors and archivists that is an advantage today: the console's entire catalogue can be worked through and compared, which is simply not feasible on larger platforms.