Their mission is to fight their way into the enemy home fortress, the Ninja Tower (ニンジャタワー, "Ninjatawa"), which has emerged from the ocean in the center of New York City, to once and for all defeat the Shadow Family and its leader, the long thought-dead demon sorcerer Genyousai.

[3] The original soundtrack for both Ninja Combat and The Super Spy, along with the arranged versions by SNK Sound Team and KONNY, was published by Pony Canyon and Scitron on November 21, 1990.

[18][19][20][21][22] Electronic Gaming Monthly's four reviewers commended the audiovisual presentation and playable characters having their own fighting style but criticized the Neo Geo AES version for using unlimited continues, short length, easy difficulty and repetitive gameplay.

[10] However, ACE's Tony Dillon argued with this sentiment by claiming on his review that the unlimited continue feature was a hardware design flaw on the first batch of AES systems.

[5] French magazine Joystick regarded Ninja Combat as one of the best beat 'em ups on consoles and comparing it with Double Dragon and Final Fight, praising the audio and visuals as well as the sprite animations and controls highly but criticized the overall short length.

[8][9] Superjuegos' Alberto Pascual praised the game's ability to recruit defeated minibosses as playable characters and two-player mode but felt mixed in regards to the originality on-display.

[11] Computer and Video Games Mean Machines compared the title with Shadow Warriors, commending the audiovisual presentation but criticized the gameplay for being dull and boring to play, easy difficulty and short length.

[25] IGN's Lucas M. Thomas called it "a profoundly unappealing gameplay experience," opining that "anything potentially innovative or interesting about Ninja Combat gets totally defeated by its terribly stiff control and overly difficult programming.