I'm starting to think that Hamster now at least owns Jaleco's IPs.
Look at their VC page of Jaleco's Connection:
http://www.hamster.co.jp/products/soft.cgi?3ds&130116
(Edit: Same for the original Ninja NES game:
http://www.hamster.co.jp/products/soft.cgi?3ds&121031)
It just has Hamster in the copyright.
Seemingly the JP Wikipedia page (can't find an actual source), and trying to understand Google Translate, but also it says this in the English Wii VC page (sources, please folks?!?), that Jaleco gave them the rights to release their games on the VC.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ジャレコ
Thing is, this is much deeper than that if Hamster's reviving one of their IPs, what will ultimately be telling is the copyright of this new game.
So what I theorize is, Jaleco MIGHT still exist, but perhaps have decided to finally step aside from at least the consumer industry, since their owner Game Yarou is an online/browser/something game company, and I think Jaleco focused on that and maybe mobile stuff for the past few years.
So maybe their like "fine, we give, we'll just give up our catalog to someone who can make some use of it", hence Hamster comes into play and this game is their first revival.
All speculation, but that's what I'm seeing this as. It is weird at least that Jaleco's been quiet since 2011, only other possibility is that Hamster bought Jaleco off of Game Yarou, we just didn't know of it (the Game Yarou purchase was public, Gamasutra reported it).
What do you guys think is up?