The Ninja Warriors is a one or two player side-scrolling beat-em-up. The Taito coin-op featured three monitor screens side by side, while the Amiga version was developed in letterbox format in order to show as much of the wide screen background graphics as possible.

The player(s) control robot Ninjas, which battle their way through the levels using Shuriken and knives. As the Ninja's take damage their classic Ninja garb is torn away to reveal robotic limbs, torso or head. When the damage reaches a critical level the Ninja Robot explodes scattering mechanical body parts.

As with The Sales Curve's later title SWIV, The Ninja Warriors uses the company's Dynamic Loading System to load sprites, sound and background graphics from disk on the fly.