Back in 2012, I bought Mark of the Ninja on Steam and played through the game on an underpowered Toshiba laptop. It seemed like the ideal way to pass the time in my lonely apartment in a remote fishing village in Hokkaido, Japan, and the 20 hours I sunk into it were well worth it. It wasn’t until well after completing the game that I realized my laptop wasn’t able to play the game at full-speed—I had been playing the game in slow-motion the whole time!

And that’s how good Mark of the Ninja is; I could play the entire game with slowdown and it was still riveting.

Perhaps I’m an unusual case though, because I really dig stealth games, and always have. I also love 2D platformers because they’re the best, and ninja stuff in general. (But doesn’t everybody?) So this game was pretty perfectly targeted to my particular tastes.

While I love stealth games and ninjas, I can be rather critical of these elements as well. Ninja stories that are full of magic but not sneaking, for example, turn me off immediately. Luckily Mark of the Ninja combines these elements masterfully, creating a stellar game.

Fast-forward several years and Klei Entertainment has rereleased their ninja classic as Mark of the Ninja: Remastered on Nintendo Switch. Even though it’s still the most-played game in my Steam library, I couldn’t help but pick up the Switch version. And hot damn, it still holds up!

The one aspect of Mark of the Ninja that had me initially unsure was its art style. The visuals in this game look very Cartoon Network-style cartoony, a la Samurai Jack. There are certainly many folks out there who appreciate a high-res cartoon look over an old-school pixelated art style, but I’m not really one of them. (Absolutely nothing beats hand-drawn animation, sure, but I still love me some chunky pixels!) However this game’s art looks really damn good in motion and it won me over pretty quickly.

My only complaint about this game—and I had a similar critique of the sublime Katana Zero—is that the story is Just. So. DARK. I know, I know, it is a stealth game about ninjas carrying out assassinations in the black of night, so darkness is thematically appropriate. However, I still wish the story could have been less bleak and joyless. To be clear, it’s not like I found the narrative to be uninteresting, I just have no desire to experience a melancholy tale of going totally crazy more than once.

And yeah, I don’t know, too many hours playing such a dark game just makes me sad.

To cut to the chase, this is the best 2D stealth game I’ve played. It does everything a ninja game should with such perfect execution, it even rivals Tenchu. Sneaking around is supremely satisfying, and the many options afforded to you through items and unlockable styles/costumes keeps each playthrough potentially unique and interesting.

So if you like ninjas and enjoy 2D platforming, you need to play this one.