Looks like a blatent Shinobi rip, Which could be fun...
However, for the love of God... please take that horrible blinding flash bomb out of the street lamps!
Please see Real sources of actual lamps, to compare brightness and effect.. rather than copy other peoples ignorant flash-bomb bloom.
I look forward to trying it... but if theres flash bomb lighting effects in there... you will have to count me out.
See my recent gripe example post here:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,149436.0.html---
Also, a few other suggestions graphically:
If a building bricks in its windows.. it usually does not do so in an alternating fashion like you show. Maybe they might close off a lower level floor window set.. and keep the upper levels with glass.
Also the pillar deco that is next to the bricked windows, should be further out from them... meaning.. there should be a shadow on the bricking, that shows that the bricking is set deeper into the windowframe. (similar to your blue door shadow)
The glass explosion is a bit over-kill. Maybe 1/4th as many pieces needed. And try to animate them just as you would a real piece of glass fracturing. From the center outwards.
Note about glass: If its plate glass (older buildings).. those Ninjas are getting sent to the ER. Plate glass tends to break into larger chuncks of razor sharp pieces. If its Tempered glass, typical on new buildings... tempered glass explodes instantly into uniform sized pieces about a quarter of an inch squared. You can see this by looking up pinball glass shattering videos.
Furthermore, there probably are slow-mo captures of glass breaking... to get nice animation captures and or ideas on how it really looks.
Crates do not quite look right. No joinery realism. But more so... the wood grain should not be the same for the diagonal brace... because its a completely different piece of wood, and at a completely different angle.
The Hero's Tats... look more like veins. It doesnt quite work.
You probably should adjust the baddies to be behind the hero.. and or make their blades separate, so that when they hit the player... it looks like it passes through them.
The baddie crouching on the crates... should not be allowed to be half-on the crate like that. One of his supporting feet are in mid air... and as a result... hes overlapping the baddie behind him.
The Neon could use a little tweaking. More hot orange in the center of the red... and more diffused glow spreading to the background.
The yellow neon appears too fat.. and needs shading. Unless its thin neon, outlining a thick backer board reflector. In that case, you still need the outlines to show. Also, the lady is too large a piece to sit there without any structural supports. One good wind gust, and she would shatter to pieces. Neon also tends to be one continious long tube of glass. Certain parts are coiled up and or painted black to hide the connections. Or the connections are hid behind a backer board (less often than the former)
All these are fairly minor, and can be overlooked ... except for the lamps.
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Edit2:
I dont really care for the Hero at all. He looks completely out of place in the "80s", and in against Ninjas with swords.
IMO, Shinobi is a lot more on-par... a Ninja against a bunch of other Ninjas. Although, I always felt Joe should have been in full garb, in all of his adventures.
Finally, I dont think anyone would hold a star like that. They would probably be on a belt clip, and flung from the hip outwards horizontally in rapidfire succession. And or held in the one hand in a stack, and whipped out the same way.