“The Finest Hour,” “The War to End All Wars,” “Super Nazi Death Time”—whatever you call it, World War II was a major turning point in modern history, and a huge boon to publishers in need of video game ideas. As surely as it’s never not offensive to shoot a Nazi in the face, we will likely never see an end to games based on this global conflict (at least, not until games based on the Canadian-American War hit shelves sometime in the next 40 years…believe me, it’s coming!). As with any video game sub-genre, these WWII titles have lots of things in common, from weapons and enemies to vehicles and campaigns. My favorite WWII game convention, though, has to be the ninjas. I’m not really sure where it started, but ever since some bored programmer thought it would be funny to add a little black-clad revisionist history to whatever French battle strategy sim he was working on, ninjas are as big a part of World War II games as tanks, POWs, and Jerry.

My top five favorite WWII games with ninjas, after the break:

5) 1942 : Capcom’s classic arcade shooter had more than waves of enemy planes and the ability to roll your plane as a defensive maneuver. It also had ninjas. What? You don’t believe me? Just because you never fought them doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Look at the screenshot below. The arrow shows where they’re hiding. Sneaky bastards.

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4) Call of Duty 2 : The sequel to the smash hit PC shooter was also the first in the series to include ninjas. In fact, they appear in three of the four campaigns. They were originally planned to be in the North African campaign, but were left out at the last minute because all of the programmers working on that section thought someone else had added them—which is understandable, considering how hard it is to see ninjas in the first place.

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3) Battlefield 1942 : This game harnessed all the power of your PC to put tons of ninjas onscreen at once—then hid all of them. An impressive technological achievement if nothing else.

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2) Medal of Honor: Airborne : Parachuting behind enemy lines is exciting in any game. In this game, it was made all the more exciting by never knowing whether you were going to land smack dab in the middle of a pack of ravenous ninjas. That no one has yet done that is pure luck. It will happen someday.

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1) Silent Service : Submarines are all about stealth and surprise—just like ninjas. They’re also usually grey—not like ninjas. That’s probably why you could see the subs in this ’80s PC sim way better than you could the ninjas.

With a genre this popular, I’m sure you must have some favorites as well. Add your picks the comments below!