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.
(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.