Air Date: December 30, 2015
In this video I dust off my original Nintendo console and play through the wrath of the black manta from start to finish without losing a single life in the process. Through this long play I try to grab the character dressed in red as many times as possible so that the black manta can extract information to tell the games evolving story. I even let the dialog play with the children that you rescue and try to find as many of the secret places as possible. It is conceivable that I missed a couple along the way, but these were the ones that I located by myself through my many playthroughs as a kid.
Before I discuss strategy, I want to offer the time stamps for the various stages of the game:
Stage 1 New York: 2:38
Stage 2 Japan: 14:48
Stage 3 Rio de Janiero: 26:08
Stage 4 New York: 37:01
Stage 5 Head Quarters: 49:45
Stage one, New York, is more or less to get your bearings on the controls of the game and the boss tiny is about as easy as they come. At least until you get the art of invisibility in your arsenal. When you arrive at Tiny, he stands still for a couple seconds allowing you to charge up you power meter and cast shadow. This will allow you to casually hit tiny with your clone instead of having to hold up when you jump to tag him in the head with your shuriken. After a couple shadow form iterations you should be able to deplete his life with ease if you time your attacks in between his jumps.
At the beginning of stage 2, Japan, you will need to equip the art of the fire wheel encase to haven't already, in order to gather a kite from the flying ninja. You will note that I normally roll with the art of invisibility with the exception of these flying spots and the last battle. By using this art it makes it easier to grab the red guys in the middle of a fire fight and also deal with the agile ninjas. The art of invisibility is awesome but has a glitch. IF you are already invisible and enter a new area via a door your character will still be transparent but you will be able to take hits for some reason. Watch out for this. The boss for stage two is easy to defeat of you stay to the left and charge up your invisibility art while the ninja are building the totem pole. I am normally able to kill all but the last one before the art wears off.
The third area, Rio de Janiero, is pretty straight forward as well as long as you watch out for the initial ascent at the beginning with pits. When you get to the voodoo warrior it is best to just toss away at him from the upper ledges until he closes in on you. Then a well-timed regular jump will allow you character to move to the opposite side. Watch however if he is on the extreme opposite side of the screen because he will shoot fireballs if he floats down to the bottom. He is easily dispatched with your normal throwing stars within a couple passes.
The fourth stage takes you back to New York. My advice is to use the invisibility again rather than dealing with the wrecking balls and timing your jumps. The boss is another candidate for invisibility. You need to position yourself a pace or two away from the smaller robots to hit them with your stars, your sword seems to not deliver damage. After both are dispatched your normally will need to reapply your indivisibly art. The boss can be handled at normal height if you position yourself about a third of the wall from either wall. He will hop about but you will always be positioned to hit with the shuriken.
The last stage is the headquarters for El Toro and his men which means you will be encountering every enemy in the game and a rematch with an already defeated stage boss. This stage isn't too bad with the only new occurrence being the in elevator fighting. This sequences always follow a pattern. My advice is to play defense blocking the enemy projectiles with your own until you get used to the pattern enough to go on the offensive. On the sixth floor you will see a room with four doors. Each of these doors have a boss fight with an already defeated stage boss. I choose to pick another fight with Tiny, upper left.
After you beat the boss of your choice, you need to defeat el Toro. Before the fight I take the time to tool up by selecting the skills I will need for the final battle: Fire Bomb, Spider, Fire ring, Missile. Hit the juke box to begin the fight and stay to the left. El toro can kill you with a single hit and hitting him with the wrong attack refills his life. Taro takes away your hit points if you hit him. Begin by tagging him with the Fire Bomb to turn him around and then land a fire ring attack to his back. At this point he will be facing you again and you need to get to his back to finish the last hits. AT this point it might be worth mentioning that El Toro will shoot fireballs at regular intervals after a few seconds but this can be reset by going to your sub screen and returning. This is useful encase you need time to charge up a ninja art. Kneel a couple paces from the left wall and activate the spider art. El toro will scoot to the left once you reach the right wall, most of the time. If not you might need to move about to maneuver him to the left. Now that his back is turned fire two charged missiles to defeat him. You might want to go to your sub screen to reset his fireballs between each volley.
You might want to go to your sub screen to reset his fireballs between each volley.
The ending plays through after the final battle.