The player controls ninja Joe Musashi, to stop the Zeed terrorist organization from kidnapping students of his clan.

The controls of Shinobi consist of an eight-way joystick and three action buttons for attacking, jumping, and using ninjutsu techniques called "ninja magic".

At the start of each mission, the player is shown the objective, with a file containing a photograph of the enemy boss and a map display pinpointing the location of the next stage.

Hostage rescue is now an optional task but provides upgrades to the close and long-range weapons, and restores or expands the health gauge.

The Master System version is one of the first five games approved from the deal by Sega in order to be converted for the Atari Jaguar, but it was never released.

[9][10] In 1989, conversions of Shinobi were released for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum.

All five were developed by The Sales Curve and published by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe and by Sega in North America except the Amstrad and Spectrum versions.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Shinobi in its December 15, 1987, issue as the most successful table arcade unit of the month.

She praised the "clean colourful graphics" with large "well defined" sprites, and the action gameplay for being fast-paced and challenging, concluding that the game is "well worth playing".

[11] Nick Kelly of Commodore User rated it 8 out of 10, also noting similarities to Rolling Thunder but said Shinobi looks good, "plays brilliantly", and "combines several kinds of shoot'em and beat'em up action in one well-thought-out, well-executed game.

"[17] Sinclair User also compared it to Rolling Thunder and other martial arts games, but considers Shinobi "sufficiently different to be familiar without being boring.

[27] Zach Gass of Screen Rant included Shinobi and its sequels in his list of ten "awesome" hack-and-slash games in 2020.

[28] According to Den of Geek, "Shinobi is arguably the most ‘important’ and influential ninja game, as well as kicking off the genre’s longest running franchise.