Ninja Gladiator

"Finish him! ...Friendship?!"

Ninja Gladiator is Flippy-Floppy Industries' popular fighting game series that has been around since 1987. Bumblebee enjoys it a little bit too much. The game includes a four-armed insectoid and a ninja clad all in black. In the background of at least one stage is the face of the TORQ III computer.

Fiction

Animated cartoon

The plot was that, in the year 2021, Brandon "Big Boss" Babel freed five of the monstrous Inhumanoids from below the surface of the Earth.... and only the Ninja Gladiators were able to face these monsters! The AllSpark Almanac II

Bumblebee neglected monitor duty to play Ninja Gladiator, despite being admonished by Optimus Prime. This may have been a mistake, since his negligence allowed Wasp to get the drop on him. The rogue Autobot proceeded to switch places with Bumblebee in an attempt to exact vengeance. Bulkhead later proposed using the game to prove Bumblebee's identity, since his mega-cycles of practice made him virtually unbeatable. Wasp thought so too, and bolted rather than face the challenge. Where Is Thy Sting?

Wings Universe

Wheeljack traded what he claimed were future Autobot plans for a canister of Forestonite. In reality the disk contained a copy of Ninja Gladiator for the Magnographix 16. Generation 2: Redux

Characters

Some of the known characters of Ninja Gladiator, minus Robik (who is pictured below in the Notes section).

• 
  Big Boss
• 
  Brett
• 
  Feisty Felina
• 
  HGBG
• 
  Miles Mayhem
• 
  the Old Soldier
• 
  Slaughter Steelgrave

Notes

"When I opened the book, you know, I didn't know what I was going to find..."

• The four-armed insect is modeled after Antron from the Micronauts.
• Derrick Wyatt confirmed the ninja as Snake-Eyes on his Twitter account. [1][2]
• Playable characters in the 1987 version of the game include:
  • Old Soldier, patterned after Hudson from Gargoyles.
  • Big Boss from C.O.P.S., the Hasbro cartoon.
  • Felina, a nod to Felina Feral from SWAT Kats.
  • Slaughter Steelgrave from Tomy's Starriors.
  • Robik, based on Gizmo from Superbook.
  • Miles Mayhem, the leader of V.E.N.O.M. in M.A.S.K..
  • Brett, modeled on Turbo Teen.
  • HGBG, based on the Hideous giant brain guy from the UK Transformers comic.
• The Inhumanoid on the game's box cover, identified as Ssslither, is the monster that was summoned from a pit beneath Destro's ancestral castle in the G.I. Joe episode "Sins of our Fathers."
• "Dr. Emmett Benton," mentioned on the back of the game box, was the late father of Jerrica Benton. (Though for a man with that name to be around in 2021 suggests that that's either his grandson, or that he never actually died—which is truly outrageous.)