Ninja Hayate (忍者ハヤテ) is a 1984 laserdisc video game first developed and released by Taito and Malone Films for arcades in Japan. The game tells the story of a skilled and daring teenage ninja named Hayate, infiltrating an evil castle in an attempt to rescue a princess he loves. Hayate must survive a collection of deathtraps and defeat a variety of mythological creatures and other adversaries on his quest to save the princess and destroy the castle.
The game draws players to guide Hayate through 15 different stages that take place in feudal Japan-based areas. Ninja Hayate contains traps and creatures that requires players to dodge or attack them at specific moments, by watching for the warning buzzer (like in Dragon's Lair) in addition to flashing objects (e.g. arrows, buttons, light, etc.). If a player makes a mistake, one life decreases, and when players run out of lives, the game ends. There are three difficulty levels.
Ninja Hayate was animated by Toei Animation. The game flashes the buttons that need to be pressed directly on the screen. Sometimes it also flashes multiple possible button presses on screen, indicating different paths that the player can take. Some traps are randomly generated, so that the game is not identical every playthrough.
The Sega CD version was published by Renovation Products, Telenet Japan's North American subsidiary, under the name Revenge of the Ninja. The arcade version only had music during the opening and ending scenes, but the Sega CD version features newly composed music throughout. Renovation sent "Master of the Ninja Arts" diplomas to players who mailed them photographic proof that they had beaten the game on hard mode.
Source: Wikipedia, "Ninja Hayate", available under the CC-BY-SA License.