Ninja Gaiden

released on Dec 09, 1988

A port of Ninja Gaiden

Experience the original adventure of Ryu Hayabusa, the shadow warrior, in this acclaimed and challenging action-platformer from the NES era!


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Played on Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online, as well as FCE Ultra GX using my modded Wii. I see a very polished game here, and one that could be really fun after enough practice. However, the rapidly respawning enemies that hit you at just the right spot to screw you over, I can't find the patience to deal with those for an entire game. On account of a massive skill issue, I will not be returning to Ninja Gaiden.

For my entire life, i've never fully gave Ninja Gaiden a try. One time, I got up to Act 4, said "nah" and stopped playing. Just a few months ago, I tried the Special edition on NSO, got destroyed by the masked devil, then tried 6-1 and ALSO got destroyed (for some reason, my dumbass was trying to outrun the enemies, so no shit I couldn't do it) then said "nah" and once again quit. Recently, i've been playing some games people would label 'NES hard' like Castlevania, Mega Man 1, Ghosts n Goblins etc. I always saw Ninja Gaiden mentioned when people talked about hard games, so I thought, why not just put an effort in? If it gets too hard and I lose motivation, I could just use save states (which I didn't end up needing to use).
Now, after finishing it a few minutes ago, I want to beat the shit out of my old self.

I ADORE this game. The controls, the music, the special weapons, the level design, its all nearly flawless. Alot of peoples main problem however, was the difficultly.

Now, i'm not gonna try to say this game isn't hard, since I would be disrespecting my 7 hours of playtime, but what I can say is that 5 of those hours were in Act 6, which is really where the complaints of difficulty come from.

The game does start showing signs of bullshit at Act 5, but really shows its insides at Act 6, which is ridiculously hard, on your first few tries atleast. If you don't know, dying on any of the last 3 bosses sends you back to the start of 6-1, and makes you do the whole act over. Its one of the most infamous fuck you's in all of gaming.

However, I don't hate that feature as much as others. The first time, it was soul crushing, but over time, I practiced Act 6, every-time i would note something new to do on a boss or enemy. Using that special weapon there, or jumping over an enemy instead of attacking, it became like nirvana.

Obviously, there are still bullshit like Jaquio, which is one of the hardest bosses on the entire system, but he can be by-passed with spin-slash, one more thing, if you killed one of the last three bosses, but die to the next, you don't have to re-fight it.

The game is extremely generous overall, when you game over, you're sent back to the start of the stage instead of the act, plus spin-slash can kill nearly all bosses with one use.

I just love this game, I even love the flaws.
One of the games that shows that the NES isn't just an outdated machine.

just a note, while searching up how to kill jaquio, i found a post on a forum saying "how do i kill myself painlessly?" and honestly bro? until i got the spin-slash, same.

For a game/series notorious for its difficulty, it's striking that the original Ninja Gaiden doesn't really get difficult until the tail end. Like it's never easy, but it doesn't get really hard until Stage 5-2/5-3 or so. Of course, the game then gets downright dickish with 6-2 and completely cruel with 6-4, so the game's reputation is well-earned. I just think it's neat that the player is most of the way into the game before the gloves come off. Gives the sense that you can do it, you've already come this far, you just have to rise to the occasion.

(For the record, the only time I called B.S. is having to restart a loop after botching a run on the final boss. Though, I think it's an interesting concession that the game remembers what phase you were on with the final boss between loops. My solution was to savestate at the end of 6-3, reload saves until I cleared a phase, then redo the loop, saving again at the end of 6-3. You can insist I did not beat the god damn game if you must, but that seemed the fairest compromise that still let me feel some of the intended effect.)

Nah, Ninja Gaiden represents probably the closest you could come to a spectacle platformer on the NES. In a lot of ways, Ninja Gaiden feels like a counterpart to the original Castlevania: same brutality, same subweapon system, same love of mean flying enemies, same way of encouraging the player to try again with endless continues. The main difference of course being that Ninja Gaiden is a FAST game, with Ryu Hayabusa being ridiculously agile in sharp contrast to Simon Belmont's plodding slowness.

But while Castlevania merely wears its love for movies on its sleeve, Ninja Gaiden is an early adopter of video game cutscenes. It's not the first - Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man predate it, of course. But you have to love how proud TECMO was of what they were doing, judging by the manual boasting of the game's unique "Cinema Display" system. Plus you gotta love stuff like Ryu dismissing Irene with "Just a girl. Get out of here!", only for Irene to immediately tranq him.

There's a lot of great tonality and presentation to Ninja Gaiden, too. A lot of it is genre work familiar to ninja movies - though, again, seeing any of that in this era is pretty cool - but there's a good amount baked into the cadence of the gameplay. The sheer focus on game world continuity through its level design - how every level starting with Stage 4-1 flows into the next, down to it all being visible in that one shot of Ryu looking at the far-off mountain - is cool.

Plus, there's the striking choice of the game's main theme - "Unbreakable Determination" - first appearing in Stage 4-2, long after most games introduce and iterate upon their leitmotifs. Really gives the sense that everything to that point was prelude, and the real adventure begins there. Considering that's also around when the game starts getting harder, it's justified.

Famously, the game is as hard as it is because the developers got too familiar with it, and kept spicing it up to keep themselves challenged. But I think that also goes to show the sheer confidence and respect the team had for what they were doing. Very much a game worth playing and studying, even today.

An amazing game, but quite complicated. Tecmo's proposal to insert cutscenes makes the game's story very engaging. The villains have a very interesting look. The gameplay is fluid and fast-paced. You are Ryu Hayabusa and the game requires of you all the skill and speed that a ninja must have to overcome enemies that 'respawn' all the time if you move a millimeter the wrong way.

The last act of this game requires hours of practice to overcome. The game is punishing and throws you to the beginning of the act if you die in any of the final bosses. Despite the difficulty, it's a must-play because it teaches you how complicated it was to finish games back then.

It's no secret to anybody who has even heard of this game, that Ninja Gaiden on the NES is a very tough game.

After playing it, I feel very conflicted on it.
The controls are solid, and I really like how fast-paced this game can be.

The story, while nothing too amazing, is nice to see unfold, and this was also one of the few NES games to have cutscenes, so that's also neat!

The music is really good! There are a lot of memorable tunes, and gets you excited for the action ahead.

The biggest sticking point, in my opinion, is the level design, more especifically, the enemy placement.
At first, it's rather simple and you won't really have much trouble, but the more you progress, the more punishing it gets, as the game just throws more and more enemies at you, nonstop!
And the enemies also constantly respawn, which makes matters even worse.

By the end of the game, I was just tired of all of the shit it threw at me, and combined with a final boss who throws projectiles at you that are very hard to dodge, this game drained me by the end.

It's not a bad game, but I really wish Ninja Gaiden's method of giving you a hard time wasn't by spamming enemies left and right.