It's a long held piece of recieved wisdom, perpetuated by idiots, that the Saturn couldn't do 3D graphics, despite the existence of games like NiGHTs, Panzer Dragoon, Quake, Burning Rangers, and a whole bunch more. Ninpen Manmaru is one to count among that bunch more, being a proper, fully 3D platform game that looks great, easily the rival of any of its bigger budgeted Playstation contemporaries.
It's based on an anime that appears to be for small children, which does explain some of the game's design choices, like how there's no combat (even though your character is a ninja penguin with a sword strapped to their back). Enemies in the stages are really just mobile obstacles for you to avoid, and though there are bosses, they're confrontations, rather than fights. Instead, the game's purely about platforming, with the sole aim being to get to the end of each stage within the time limit, and without getting killed by traps or enemies.
The game's big problem, though, is the controls. They're just really sloppy! Your penguin will sometimes land on a tiny platform, then start running immediately after landing, sending him down into the lava below, and sentencing you to another long wait for the platform to come back within reach. In fact, that's the game's other big problem: how much time is spent waiting for moving platforms to get into the right position for you to jump on or off them. I know it's a longstanding platformer tradition, but for some reason, it really grates in this game, right from the start. Maybe I just don't play as many platformers as I once did, and I'm no longer used to the genre's quirks, I don't know, maybe it's just jarring considering how fast your movement is the rest of the time, and it breaks the game's flow. (As an aside, if this game were on any other console, you could mistake it for an attack on SEGA, since the excuse often given for the lack of a proper 3D Sonic game on the Saturn is that the Dreamcast was the first console capable of loading large enough 3D stages for Sonic to run around in, and Ninpen Manmaru is a 3D mascot platformer about a fast-moving blue animal navigating stages as quickly as possible.)
Going back to the subject of bosses, the confrontations being non-violent allows them a little bit of variety, as they take the form of various contests, such as collecting most of the coins in a small area while your opponent does the same, running away from a foe who seems to be trying to eat you until the time runs out, and so on. I haven't played particularly far into the game, as despite being aimed at apparently primary school children, the difficulty curve becomes incredibly steep after the first set of stages, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a regular old race as a boss stage at some point in the game, either.
In summary, Ninpen Manmaru is a decent enough game, that's techinically impressive for any home console of the time, let alone the Saturn. However, if you want to play it, be warned that legitimate copies fetch absurd prices, ranging from around seventy pounds, to ten times that amount. I'm not sure how those prices are justified, either, as the amount of copies on sale on ebay alone show that it can't be a particularly rare game. But I'm sure you can think of some other way of playing it if you really want to.
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