Wrath of the Black Manta FAQ/Walkthrough v. 1.0 This FAQ is copyright 2001 by Ezra Poetker(Epoetker.) It may not be distributed publicly without the prior consent of the author, which may be obtained handily at epoetker@hotmail.com. Posting it on your website without my consent is copyright infringement and will result in legal action. Copying it and printing it out for your own personal use will result in absolutely nothing done by me. Distributing it in a magazine...heck...why would anyone want to do that? This game's like 12 years old by now! Only GameFAQS and about.com are authorized to use this FAQ as of this moment. All other rights reserved. Ninjas are cool. Even in the years after the 80s, the height of ninja fame, they were cool enough to be mascots for anything from pizza to cigarettes. (A ninja Joe Camel would have been UNSTOPPABLE, I tell you!) So it pretty much figured that the government would work one or two of them into the WAR ON DRUGS, and boy, did they ever pick the right one! The Black Manta doesn't take crap from bad guys wielding guns-he either tosses a few shurikens their way, busts out his knives on their blue-jumpsuited hides, or interrogates them...then kills them. For the love of God, don't mess with this guy. Anyhoo, it seems that children are disappearing around New York lately, and rather than work with the police and FBI to find the criminal mastermind that started all of this, our hero decides to use this episode to gain enough brownie points with his master to complete his training. It's sort of like Luke Skywalker showing that he can slaughter a whole horde of people to "prove" to Yoda that he's advanced far enough to learn the new hidden Jedi skills. But, unlike most instances of Nintendo Logic, this actually makes a whole lot of sense in context. Police have the fussy little problem of "civil rights laws" that keeps them from blowing criminals off the street, so any police Manta brought with him would have just slowed him down with paperwork. Besides, when they go back to an area Manta's been through and find only a bunch of free children and dead guys in jumpsuits with ninja stars protruding from their chests and throats, there aren't likely to be any major questions. You just clean up the bodies, send the children home, and celebrate the guy who just made police work in that precinct a whole lot easier with doughnuts and beer. A word on Arts: This is probably one of the coolest things about this game, although not strictly necessary until the very end. If you get tired of simply tossing out clouds of shuriken, you can charge up your POW gauge and execute an art of some sort. Note that the type of Art used depends on when you RELEASE the B button, not when you first press it. Arts you start out with and how to activate them: SHADOW: Causes a copy of yourself to appear above you, will basically imatate whatever you do, which in practical terms means you now have a wider field of shuriken-fire. Release the B button while standing still. FIRE WHEEL: Much more useful than it looks, and really strong to boot. Great for bosses. Release the B button while walking left or right. MISSILE: These fireballs are much more powerful than regular ninja stars. Hold UP when you release B. GROUND FIRE: Maybe you can find a use for them in hopping over crates to hit enemies there. I didn't, but you can try. Release B while crouching. Act 1: No, this game did NOT rip off Shinobi or Ninja Gaiden! Honest! After a rousing chat with your master on the situation, you set out to explore the odd back alleys of New York, frequented by gymnasts and former basketball players who can jump as high as you can. The first note you get erroneously tells you that the man in red "knows something." Well, go run into the man in red if you want. Sure, he looks like a criminal-the type you'd find in a 1920's silent film who ties damsels to railroad tracks and can be taken out in one punch by ERROL FLYNN. Dastardly Dan doesn't seem to know anything, so just kill the man and say bye-bye. The note on the other side of the hole(if you didn't fall in already) says that the left wall has a secret door-just shoot it (stand on the pipe, not the floor) and get the POW box on the bottom. It's fairly necessary...you can theoretically make your arts last longer, go faster, or do more damage with this extra extension to your charge gauge. Grab the next red guy and threaten him nicely, and he'll tell you he was involved in the kidnappings but not much else. Once you get to the door with the exit sign, keep going in and killing the guys inside until your life fills up to a healthy eight blocks. Head on up and jump back out on the streets. The next two doors just go to enemy rooms, and the third red guy tells you that his organization is "pretty big" after you tell him to "be a good boy." I kinda figured out the "pretty big" already, Einstein-how many criminal organizations are so big and powerful that they can give identical blue and red jumpsuits to their employees? SO hard to get good info these days...now the next door has a life bar in it(you don't need to fight any guys) and the next red guy promises to talk but fails to deliver. Gut 'im. Drop down the hole and shoot the left wall again(note: you have to get really close and shoot really fast to do this right) and pick up the POW block. Enter the door to get the note that told you to shoot the door. Interrogate the first red guy, he tells you that the reasons for kidnapping the kids are "Business reasons." This leads me to think Donald Trump may be involved in this. The next red guy by the door at the end talks about spies infiltrating the governments of the world. Spies everywhere. I've got it, Watson, the red men are Commies! Enter the door and kill all the people in the room to save the kid, who for some odd reason is encased in a block of ice. WHY? What conceivable purpose is there in putting someone in an ice block? A gag would be just as useful, less time-consuming, and slightly less likely to have chances of killing the person! Still, the kid seems happy enough with his 80s hairstyle, so give a few encouraging words and shoot the right wall that he was talking about. Advance upward and get back to the streets. Get the note in the room, shoot the right wall while standing on top of the doorpost, clear out all the doors in the hidden side street(taking time out to make your name known among the children and to spread a few anti-drug messages)and double back right. The commies know pretty much nothing, and the doors are all uneventful, but for the one that warns: "TINY is in the next room." Heh...walk through the big hole in the wall and meet him. BOSS: Tiny Obviously the name was an evil plot to FOOL the young ninja into thinking it would be an easy fight. Actually, it still is, beacuse with the art of the SHADOW, you can jump up and make Tiny take it on the chin easily. Just avoid the nasty falling bricks. Interlude: You learn the arts of INVISIBILITY and SPIDER, and Raffish Raplh goes and tells his boss (Donald Trump with a mustache, looks like) that they got their butts whooped. The boss, being an intelligent person when it comes to ninjas, decides to go to Japan, where the leagues of ninjas on his side shall SURELY destroy the intrepid, drug-busting Manta! What will happen next? Tune in next week for: Japan: What kind of crappy unskilled assembly-line ninjas carry guns? Changing Arts: Not that you have more than four Arts, you'll probably be wondering how to unlock the new ones. Press SELECT to go to the Art subscreen, hit UP or DOWN to go through the Art positions, and when you come to a position that has more than one Art, hit RIGHT to bring up the little red cursor. Move it UP or DOWN and press A to select which art you want in that position. Yeah, they could have made the selection process just a LITTLE bit more intuitive. If you haven't been practicing your arts yet, now would be a good time. You really can't kill the red guys on carpets with shurikens before they just float away...use the art of the FIRE WHEEL to knock them out quickly. Grab the carpet and get ready to fly the not-so-friendly skies. Again, your shuriken are BAD when it comes to fighting the dudes on carpets, so just charge up your gauge to fire MISSILES at them instead. After finishing the harrowing carpet ride, you drop down, whereupon I suggest you go right first. Use the art of the SPIDER to roll underground and avoid the spiky things falling from the trees, then roll back up to take on the next wave of baddies. The first room can be used to refill your life, and the first red guy shows, unlike most of the other commies, a thorough knowledge of his company's mission statement. The next door contains a Japanese kid who looks remarkably like that American Daniel-san guy from The Karate Kid. In fact, only the bad guys actually LOOK Japanese in this stage(insert anti-Asian comment here). Go left until you hit the wall(next commie has no info for ya) and "shoot low," i.e: Duck and shoot. More POW for me! Go all the way back through the throng of baddies till you get to the place where you fight some REAL ninjas-these guys have knives, know how to teleport, and carry firearms. Worst of all, they take from two to three shuriken hits to kill, which means that they'll probably get close enough to inflict some heavy damage with those knives before you get through here. Before you go down the hole, duck and shoot the bottom wall(you'll have to duck to shoot pretty much every other hidden wall in this game now, so just do that in the future) to find a note that says kids are in the lower rooms. Bleh. Go down, free the kid, and shoot the wall to find another POW block. Advance, find out from Red that Japan is already completely controlled by crime syndicates(like we hadn't already learned from anime that the entire Japanese police force consists of a bunch of freelance heroes like Manta, and most don't even carry guns...) get back up to the surface, learn from the next native-Japanese commie that the boss is "like, a pretty heavy dude, you know?" Head on down, free the kid who, though he says he doesn't know Taro, somehow could identify him as he guy who left a note in the next room(should have killed him...he's probably a double agent...) Next red guy has nothing to say, just go up and shoot the bottom wall to get a life bar. Then go into the first door to get ANOTHER one. Then get ready to face another wave of EVIL ninjas...and after that, the REALLY evil ninjas that turn into totem poles! Boss: Ninja(s) When these guys start dropping in the center, take that moment to stand close and knife them, as it does a heck of a lot more damage than the shurikens. Just dodge the fire that the totem pole spits at you, jump around dodging the last piece when it begins to fly, and try to get close and knife it for a quick and easy win...I beat this battle in about 15-20 seconds, maybe. Interlude: You gain the art of the FIRE BOMB, and learn that the boss's name ISN'T Donald Trump, it's El Toro!( Coincidentally, the same name as my city. ) Toro alludes to "this weapon...", but other than that, this encounter doesn't reveal too much more. Rio de Janiero: Arrgh, matey, I've noticed that the sewers look the same the world over! Make your way up the platforms, using the art of the FIRE BOMB to kill the ninjas before they can descend to your level. Use the FIRE WHEEL to snag another magic carpet, and (glitch heaven!) fly right through the metal post if you want to. MISSILE the wave of baddies, and make your way to the ship, dodging ninjas and refilling your life from the first door, and ignoring the note in the second. Advance to port, and find out from the first door that you're saving Rastafarian minors now-who'da thunk it! Shoot the bottom half of the wall to find a life bar, then go down. Pirate Red don't know nuthin', and even the kid you save doesn't tell you about an hidden doors-fortunately her friend at the last door does, and you get a POW for the trouble of shooting at the right wall. Get on up, find an L bar in the third door and a not in the last one...which leads you to a kid who tells you to shoot the bottom left wall down in the hole for another POW block. The second door has a life block, and RedBeard the Pirate's an idiot, as usual. Head on up and out; and enter the door to face...THE HORRIBLY EASY VOODOO WARRIOR! Boss: Voodoo Warrior Rather than being smart and killing you by, say, sticking pins in a doll, this guy has to get out and make a volcano explode between two skull shaped rocks to give himself the power of flight. If you have trouble on him, there's no way you'll ever beat this game... Interlude: You get the FIRE RAIN, basically a slower version of the FIRE BOMB. Long John Silver goes and tells El Toro that the voodoo warrior was defeated. Classic response: "What? That's...IMPOSSIBLE...no one could do it except...(cue music) THE BLACK MANTA!!!" Yeah. Him and anybody else with half a brain, doofus. That was the weakest boss yet... New York: Aww, crap, now the CIA's in on this too! Yep, you're fighting the U.S. army now, fortunately, in their extensive miltary training, Uncle Sam forgot to teach them how to duck. Or at least, duck low enough to dodge your shurikens. Sad, people. After you pass the wrecking balls, the first door, like, has this, like, totally cool chick that tells you to shoot the wall at the end before the hole. However, the only thing in the door above or in the secret rooms are enemy "traps" and life bar rooms. Head on down, past the first door(enemy room), and apprehend the red guy for perhaps the greatest anti-drug lecture in Nintendo history. Actual quote: "Drugs kill you think you're cool but you're not." Don't laugh...this is what comes of being a ninja with John Brown tendencies when it comes to drugs. Besides, the guy you catch looks like a Dick Tracy villain, and you can lecture him all you want. Leave Muggsy and head on past the doors-they all lead to enemy rooms and aren't worth bothering about unless you need to refill your life for some reason. After you come out on top, the second room has a girl who tells you to shoot the right wall, head on out and do just that. Again, all there are behind these walls are enemies and L bars. Drop down and pick up the note that tells you to use the art of INVISIBILITY when fighting the robots. The first door takes you to a meaningless trap warning, the second to an enemy room, the third to an L bar. The next red guy brags about being bigger than the Mafia (Yeah, if you have the US army on your side, you could probably say that...) just kill him and ignore the next enemy room. There's another one on top, along with another L bar room. The third room, as always, contains another kidnapped kid, who, yet again, tells you to shoot the wall.( How the heck do they always know this, anyway?) Go ahead and do it(the bottom one, BTW) to find another POW, probably your last. Get down, get in the door, and prepare to face... Boss: The Mousers...ahh...the robots... All you really have to do is make absolutely sure you hit them in the pods, with shurikens, not knives, which for once aren't that useful. Use invisibility if you want, but it doesn't seem to always prevent you from getting hit...it's not really INTANGIBILITY, after all. Interlude: You shall soon become a Master Ninja, Manta-san! Have fun listening to El Toro give the usual evil-villain-in-a-tight-spot speech (Quote: "My empire won't be destroyed by a single man!" He at least sees something fishy about a single ninja slaughtering all of his best flunkies.) Tower: Where's the Matrix team when you need 'em? Fun place! The elevator sequences have a transparent behind-the-head view of everyone's favorite Ninja in purple, and you get to turn left or right to hit bad guys firing guns(and you have such deadly precision with your ninja stars that you can HIT THE BULLETS THEY'RE FIRING AT YOU.) On second thought, who needs the Matrix team to storm this building? There are a fairly large number of guys here, but with the arts of LIGHTNING(extremely cool to use) and TELEPORTATION(not really useful, but now you can do it too! Door's an enemy room and Lumps don't know nuttin', just head on up to Floor 2. First door here's an enemy room. Second has an unhelpful kid. Get on up the elevators to Floor 3. Enemy room, a red guy who FINALLY tells you exactly where the Big Bull is, L bar, and a guy who actually threatens YOU by referring to Taro. Fiend! Floor 4: L Bar, Taro's final warning that it will take four arts to beat El Toro, a mysteriously...empty...room...and a choice of 4 rooms when you enter the elevator. They basically lead to a fight with one of the bosses...choose whichever you think is easiest and use LIGHTNING for a quick win. Then...it's a room with a jukebox! Time for some tuneage...just gotta hit the right button with a shuriken and...aw crud, it's Toro and Taro. Still, this fight is simple enough. Dodge the odd projectile Toro spits at you, use the FIRE BOMB for your first hit, the FIRE RING for your second hit, the SPIDER to get behind him, and then squeeze off two MISSILES at his back for the coup de grace. If you use the wrong Art, Toro'll regain all his hit points, and if you hit Taro, Toro will regain his hit points AND you'll be automatically hurt. So be careful and wait for the explosion and flash when you defeat him. A winner is you! All your kidnapped children are belong to us! I won't reveal the ending. It sucks anyway. Thanks to... Masvega, for kindly NOT MAKING his own FAQ when I called dibs on it. J Dog, if I could ever find him again... CJayC, for hosting this FAQ. Al Amaloo, for asking nicely before he uses someone else's toys. PUhler, for standing up to the Xenogears intifada like no one's business. Jesus, for standing up to the Pharisees, them that had Manta's philosophy but not his outfit. Comments to epoetker@hotmail.com. All other rights reserved.