April’s box art thread begins here with Jaleco and UPL’s Ninja-Kun: Majou no Bouken. While this game never made its way to the U.S., the arcade sequel was released here as Ninja-Kid. So this one’s title, I guess, could be translated as “Ninja-Kid: Adventure of the Devil Castle.” 
If the “Majou/Devil Castle” part of the name calls to mind Castlevania, well, don’t get your hopes up. This is a simpler, less interesting game—not quite a single-screen arcade title, but close. You play as a little ninja who has to leap up and down a mountainside.
As you ascend and descend, you fling shuriken at enemy ninja until you defeat them all, then move along to the next stage. And that’s basically it. This game would eventually mutate through its sequels into Ninja Jajamaru-kun, for whatever that’s worth.
The box art is sort of charming, in a dumpy kind of way, but any of appeal is instantly lost the moment you flip it over and find that, like all Jaleco Famicom game boxes, the back side was printed upside-down.
Taito’s second release for Famicom was Chack’n Pop, which neatly bridges the distance between their original arcade hit conversion (Space Invaders) and the NES game that would prove to be their most enduring legacy on the platform (Bubble Bobble).
Chack’n Pop isn’t well known in the U.S., but you could honestly think of it as “Bubble Bobble Zero.” It has the same general vibe and style of that entire corner of Taito’s catalogue, with single-screen layouts and even enemies that would carry over directly into Bubble Bobble.
And, clearly, it has a generally cute vibe (as you can see from the box art). At the same time, Taito was still kinda figuring things out here; Chack’n Pop can be a little fussy and over-complicated. It’s nowhere near as streamlined or intuitive as Bubble Bobble!
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