Ninja Gaiden Shadow DX is bringing full color to the classic Game Boy Ninja Adventure
Retro gamers still playing Game Boy titles on the FPGA-based Analogue Pocket or rocking it old-school with the original Game Boy Color have something new to look forward to. Homebrew developer Marc Max, also known as marc_robledo, is working on an unofficial Ninja Gaiden Shadow “DX” upgrade to breathe new life into the monochromatic game by colorizing it, similar to official DX releases Nintendo did back in the day.
Marc Max made this announcement online and hyped up fans by showing a colorized title screen, the first sneak peek into the colorized Ninja Gaiden Shadow DX. He then followed up with a teaser trailer, exclusive to his Patreon supporters, to further build hype for the project.
Furthermore, Marc teased that “the year of the ninja isn’t over yet.” We recently received Ninja Gaiden 4, which returned to the limelight with dual protagonists and some incredible button-mashing gameplay, but fell short in the plot and split-screen time between Yakuma and Ryu.
Speculation suggests his cryptic remarks mean that the Ninja Gaiden Shadow DX upgrade will be released towards the tail-end of 2025. He further shared a preview teaser trailer following this update, indicating that the project is near completion.
Marc Max has rolled out DX upgrades previously and is no stranger to such overhauls. He’s already given older titles the DX treatment, like Mole Mania and Mega Man 4, adding color to the black-and-white games while introducing smoother performance tweaks and quality-of-life improvements to make games feel newer on modern hardware or emulators.
He’s not the only developer who’s working on Game Boy DX upgrades. Recently, Brand Newman released a Tiny Toons Adventures DX upgrade, which meticulously pigmented the black and white sprites and background clipart from Tiny Toons: Bab’s Big Break.
Ninja Gaiden Shadow was released in 1991 for the Game Boy and was developed by Natsume under the endorsement of publisher Tecmo. The game served as a prequel to the NES Ninja Gaiden Trilogy and followed the story of Ryu Hayabusa, with incredibly tough opponents and platforming sections.
Another interesting point that’s come to light in a 1991 issue of Nintendo Power is that Ninja Gaiden Shadow originally started as a handheld version of the NES game Shadow of Ninja before it was rehashed to fit into the Ninja Gaiden universe.
As for Marc Max’s Ninja Gaiden Shadow DX upgrade, an exact release date hasn’t been confirmed, but recent previews give hope that the game will release pretty soon.
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