Ninja Gaiden is the epitome of NES hard. The original arcade version of Ninja Gaiden is a completely different beast. It’s a beat-em-up in the vein of Double Dragon. The NES Ninja Gaiden couldn’t have given the player some clemency by offering a simple beat-em-up. The developers wanted all the children of the 1980s to get their parent’s money’s worth, so they transformed the IP into a 2D platformer, the apex of challenge in the 8-bit era. Ninja Gaiden makes games like Castlevania look like a walk in the fucking park. I don’t think there is another 2D platformer from this era that is so chaotic, overwhelming, and unrelentingly hard. Why did I even bother to play this game then? If you know my gaming pedigree and what I gravitate to, I live to play games that feel like getting smacked around like a pinball. This game is another hot pepper I must ingest to not only feel accomplished for doing it but to give my life some dangerous flavor.
Although I gravitate towards more difficult games, I have limits to what I’m willing to put up with (fuck you, Ghosts ‘n Goblins). It’s not the relentlessness of an NES game that can deter me from playing it, but the very primitive arcade-like ethos of challenge. Limited continues, and a little margin of error are the two biggest aspects that make me weary of an NES game. Konami games like this and Castlevania have more forgiving aspects like health bars, unlimited continues, power-ups, etc. It wrongfully tells that this game is accessible when it is anything but. The first few levels of Ninja Gaiden are relatively easy to lull you into a false sense of security like many 2D platformers do. It’s about Level 2-2 where the true colors of this game rear their ugly heads, and the game does not let up.
The ingredients for difficulty in Ninja Gaiden boil down to three essential elements: enemy placements, enemy variety, and getting knocked back ten feet in the air whenever you get hit by anything. Simon Belmont just gets blown back a little bit, but Ryu gets absolutely dusted by anything. No matter if it’s a bullet, a sword swipe, or the swipe of a wild animal, Ryu is about as durable as paper being blown away by the wind. More than not, he’ll be blown away into a crevice, prematurely emptying your health bar and having you start from the beginning of the level. This will happen often due to the borderline unfair enemy placements in this game. Many enemies will be standing at the edge of a cliff, and many of them are also either shooting you, or they’ll lob objects at you. Enemies in this game will also walk back and forth on narrow platforms giving you meager legroom. I don’t think I have to mention that if you fuck up, you’ll fall in a pit and die. There is very little room for error in this game. Frequently, there will be another enemy that appears out of nowhere, most likely a wildcat or the stray bullet of another enemy that will more than likely knock you off the ledge into a pitfall right after you’ve taken care of the enemy on the ledge. There are usually tons of enemies on the screen ranging from commandos with AK-47s and bazookas to a bevy of wild animals like bats and wildcats. The eagles are the bane of my existence. They dive at you at an erratic pace, they take off a third of your health if they hit you, and they are EVERYWHERE past a certain point in the game. If the enemies with weapons don’t get you trying to get to a platform, the eagles will make it their mission too. The rudimentary flaws of the NES also bring enemies back to life if you defeat them and move back a little bit. The impetus of doing this is to prepare for an accurate jump on a platform, but the game demands that you defeat the enemy and jump simultaneously, requiring extreme precision. Through extreme practice and memorization, Ninja Gaiden won’t be easy, but it will be at least feasible. Once you gain a rhythm of each level, you will feel as spry and skilled as an actual ninja.
Fortunately, Tecmo gives you plenty of devices to get through this relentless endeavor. Like in Castlevania, there are power-ups you acquire by smashing light sources (in Castlevania, they’re candles, and in Ninja Gaiden, they’re oriental lamps). These powerups include a fire shield, shurikens, and a spin slash move. My advice is to just stick with the spin slash because it is essential when dealing with enemies on narrow platforms surrounded by pits. These also have an energy limit like in Castlevania, except it is replenished by something called “ninpo” instead of hearts. Ryu moves very tightly, as you’d expect from a ninja, and thank god because if he didn’t, this game would be unplayable. The only time this isn’t the case is with the wall-jumping mechanic. It works in the grand scheme of ninja acrobatics, but it feels a tad stilted, and you can only jump between walls and not climb up them unless a ladder is attached. If you find yourself clinging to a wall without another one parallel to it, breathe a heavy sigh and try again because you’re fucked.
Besides the infamous difficulty level, Ninja Gaiden is one of the best games on the NES in terms of presentation. The 8-bit graphics are some of the best of the era. Each level is a different foreground ranging from cities, jungles, mountains, etc., and they all look fantastic. I notice a deep hue in each of the graphics, which gives them a little more depth. This is also one of the few NES games to implement a cinematic story told through a series of comic-book-like cutscenes. They may seem a little dated now, but this was practically unheard of during this era. The story of Ninja Gaiden is about Ryu, the main character, traveling to America to avenge his father’s death. That must explain the abundance of eagles. His father was working on a project with another man to resurrect an ancient demon using two demon statues. Forget the pirates versus ninjas debate. Let’s use Ninja Gaiden to start the ninjas versus demons debate. It turns out that his father is still alive, but the demon is coming very close to being resurrected, and Ryu must stop it. This is probably the only spoiler cloak I’ve ever had to use with an NES game. The final boss is a fight against the demon that comes in three phases, each one harder than the last. Up until this point, the bosses were big but simple. They reminded me of the bosses in Zelda II with their simple attack patterns (except for the level five boss, which takes leveraging damage with aggression and a touch of pure luck). Up until this point, you also had unlimited continues, but the developers decided it would be funny to sweep the rug under every player and have you start from 6-1 when you die. Real funny, guys. The game lets you continue from the phase you were last on, like a proto Bed of Chaos, but you’ll have to endure three stages filled with the hardest sections in the game. This was when I decided to exploit the Switch’s save/load feature to get to the end. Judge me all you want; the NES Game Genie was made for a game like this.
Ninja Gaiden is a game where its reputation precedes itself. It’s not an example of NES hard: it’s the game that made people coin the term in the first place. It’s not without its merits, however, as its presentation and tight gameplay were phenomenal for its time.
Don’t give me that bullshit statement that an exceptionally difficult game is “tough but fair” because there is nothing fair about Ninja Gaiden. You must hone your skills and acquire a great sense of discipline to play Ninja Gaiden like a real ninja.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
Although I gravitate towards more difficult games, I have limits to what I’m willing to put up with (fuck you, Ghosts ‘n Goblins). It’s not the relentlessness of an NES game that can deter me from playing it, but the very primitive arcade-like ethos of challenge. Limited continues, and a little margin of error are the two biggest aspects that make me weary of an NES game. Konami games like this and Castlevania have more forgiving aspects like health bars, unlimited continues, power-ups, etc. It wrongfully tells that this game is accessible when it is anything but. The first few levels of Ninja Gaiden are relatively easy to lull you into a false sense of security like many 2D platformers do. It’s about Level 2-2 where the true colors of this game rear their ugly heads, and the game does not let up.
The ingredients for difficulty in Ninja Gaiden boil down to three essential elements: enemy placements, enemy variety, and getting knocked back ten feet in the air whenever you get hit by anything. Simon Belmont just gets blown back a little bit, but Ryu gets absolutely dusted by anything. No matter if it’s a bullet, a sword swipe, or the swipe of a wild animal, Ryu is about as durable as paper being blown away by the wind. More than not, he’ll be blown away into a crevice, prematurely emptying your health bar and having you start from the beginning of the level. This will happen often due to the borderline unfair enemy placements in this game. Many enemies will be standing at the edge of a cliff, and many of them are also either shooting you, or they’ll lob objects at you. Enemies in this game will also walk back and forth on narrow platforms giving you meager legroom. I don’t think I have to mention that if you fuck up, you’ll fall in a pit and die. There is very little room for error in this game. Frequently, there will be another enemy that appears out of nowhere, most likely a wildcat or the stray bullet of another enemy that will more than likely knock you off the ledge into a pitfall right after you’ve taken care of the enemy on the ledge. There are usually tons of enemies on the screen ranging from commandos with AK-47s and bazookas to a bevy of wild animals like bats and wildcats. The eagles are the bane of my existence. They dive at you at an erratic pace, they take off a third of your health if they hit you, and they are EVERYWHERE past a certain point in the game. If the enemies with weapons don’t get you trying to get to a platform, the eagles will make it their mission too. The rudimentary flaws of the NES also bring enemies back to life if you defeat them and move back a little bit. The impetus of doing this is to prepare for an accurate jump on a platform, but the game demands that you defeat the enemy and jump simultaneously, requiring extreme precision. Through extreme practice and memorization, Ninja Gaiden won’t be easy, but it will be at least feasible. Once you gain a rhythm of each level, you will feel as spry and skilled as an actual ninja.
Fortunately, Tecmo gives you plenty of devices to get through this relentless endeavor. Like in Castlevania, there are power-ups you acquire by smashing light sources (in Castlevania, they’re candles, and in Ninja Gaiden, they’re oriental lamps). These powerups include a fire shield, shurikens, and a spin slash move. My advice is to just stick with the spin slash because it is essential when dealing with enemies on narrow platforms surrounded by pits. These also have an energy limit like in Castlevania, except it is replenished by something called “ninpo” instead of hearts. Ryu moves very tightly, as you’d expect from a ninja, and thank god because if he didn’t, this game would be unplayable. The only time this isn’t the case is with the wall-jumping mechanic. It works in the grand scheme of ninja acrobatics, but it feels a tad stilted, and you can only jump between walls and not climb up them unless a ladder is attached. If you find yourself clinging to a wall without another one parallel to it, breathe a heavy sigh and try again because you’re fucked.
Besides the infamous difficulty level, Ninja Gaiden is one of the best games on the NES in terms of presentation. The 8-bit graphics are some of the best of the era. Each level is a different foreground ranging from cities, jungles, mountains, etc., and they all look fantastic. I notice a deep hue in each of the graphics, which gives them a little more depth. This is also one of the few NES games to implement a cinematic story told through a series of comic-book-like cutscenes. They may seem a little dated now, but this was practically unheard of during this era. The story of Ninja Gaiden is about Ryu, the main character, traveling to America to avenge his father’s death. That must explain the abundance of eagles. His father was working on a project with another man to resurrect an ancient demon using two demon statues. Forget the pirates versus ninjas debate. Let’s use Ninja Gaiden to start the ninjas versus demons debate. It turns out that his father is still alive, but the demon is coming very close to being resurrected, and Ryu must stop it. This is probably the only spoiler cloak I’ve ever had to use with an NES game. The final boss is a fight against the demon that comes in three phases, each one harder than the last. Up until this point, the bosses were big but simple. They reminded me of the bosses in Zelda II with their simple attack patterns (except for the level five boss, which takes leveraging damage with aggression and a touch of pure luck). Up until this point, you also had unlimited continues, but the developers decided it would be funny to sweep the rug under every player and have you start from 6-1 when you die. Real funny, guys. The game lets you continue from the phase you were last on, like a proto Bed of Chaos, but you’ll have to endure three stages filled with the hardest sections in the game. This was when I decided to exploit the Switch’s save/load feature to get to the end. Judge me all you want; the NES Game Genie was made for a game like this.
Ninja Gaiden is a game where its reputation precedes itself. It’s not an example of NES hard: it’s the game that made people coin the term in the first place. It’s not without its merits, however, as its presentation and tight gameplay were phenomenal for its time.
Don’t give me that bullshit statement that an exceptionally difficult game is “tough but fair” because there is nothing fair about Ninja Gaiden. You must hone your skills and acquire a great sense of discipline to play Ninja Gaiden like a real ninja.
———
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com