Ninja Gaiden (1988)
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 "With whom did my father have a duel and lose..? For what reason did he fight and die? Even I don't know for sure."
— Ryu Hayabusa
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Ninja Gaiden, known in Japan as Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword, and known in Europe as Shadow Warriors, is a 2D sidescrolling hack and slash platform video game created and published by Temco (who would later merge with Koei in 2009 to form Koei-Tecmo) for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, PC Engine, and mobile phones on December 9, 1989 for the Japanese, March 1989 for North America, August 15, 1991 for the PAL Regions, and January 24, 1992 for the Japanese PC Engine version.
Plot
Set in a retro-futuristic version of 1988, Ryu Hayabusa of the Dragon Ninja Clan receives a letter from his father which said that he was leaving for a duel with an unknown warrior. However, in that duel, Ryu's father has died. Ryu must now travel to America to avenge his father's death.
Why It Rocks
- Great graphics for their time that push the NES to its technical limits. In fact, many sprites look almost at times 16-bit, despite Ninja Gaiden being an NES game.
- One unique thing about Ryu is his ability to cling, climb, and jump off of walls (in fact this was the first game to implement wall jumping). Any wall in the game can be clung to, and sometimes it is imperative to be able to climb up a certain wall with no ladder. In these instances, you must be able to jump up the wall. The downside, however, is that Ryu can only directly climb up or down a wall that has any type of rungs or fence. Also, Ryu can not attack when clung to a wall.
- Excellent music which compliments the gameplay very well.
- Despite its cheesiness, the game tells a genuinely good story for a time where games more often didn't focus on such thing.
- Lots of great boss fights that require you to study their attack patterns in order to defeat them.
- Unlike games like Mega Man, which put an emphasis on taking your time and being considerate, Ninja Gaiden puts an emphasis on speed and intensity and encourages you to speed your way through levels as fast as you can. This is a perfect example of fast-paced platforming before Sonic the Hedgehog came out in 1991.
- Great cinematic cutscenes by NES standards. The animation in these cutscenes was very well done for their time, especially in terms of close-ups and body movements. While the cutscenes are not fluid, they were effective and managed to get across the kind of story the game is trying to sell on the player.
- You can find powerups and secondary weapons that you can find by are obtained by striking the background scenery depending on the setting similar to Castlevania. In this game, the player must acquire Spiritual Strength in order to use these items. There are two kinds, red and blue, and you can increase your Spiritual Strength by collecting them. Blue gives 5 points, red gives 10.
- Power-Ups
- Time freeze: A rare icon that will halt every enemy movement both onscreen and off for 5 seconds. Beware though, running into a frozen enemy CAN still cause Ryu harm.
- Bonuses: Comes in two forms, both red and blue, which will increase your score by 1000 points and 500 points, respectively.
- Restore Strength: This will boost Ryu's health meter by 6 cells.
- 1 Up
- Fire Shield: Acts as a protective barrier from enemies, circling Ryu. Any enemy who touches Ryu when in this state will die. The Fire Shield does not last long so gain as much ground as you can.
- Weapons
- Throwing Star: The most basic of all of Ryu's special abilities. When used, Ryu will launch a star straight across the screen. Although useful at times, the throwing star is the weakest of all attacks. The throwing star costs 3 Spiritual Strength points.
- Windmill Throwing Star: One of the most useful of all the special abilities in the game. Basically a shuriken that acts like a boomerang, returning to Ryu after it is thrown, the windmill star is stronger than a normal throwing star. This attack can also strike enemies behind Ryu if you jump upon the shuriken's return. The windmill throwing star costs 5 Spiritual Strength points.
- Art of Fire Wheel: When used, Ryu will throw 3 fireballs circling upward through the air. This ability is excellent against bosses, and good for clearing the screen of flying enemies. The Art of the Fire Wheel costs 5 Spiritual Strength.
- Jump and Slash: Overall the strongest single attack in the game. It is, however, very hindered in it's reliability. Trying to jump and hit an orb to gain an item will cost you 5 Spiritual Strength every time.
- Power-Ups
- It has unlimited continues, which was a huge step up from most similar games at the time and helps with the game's extreme difficulty.
Bad Qualities
- Artificial Difficulty: This game is infamous for its difficulty due to the number of ways the game punishes the player.
- While the checkpoint system is great, if you died to a boss you're taken back to the beginning of the stage.
- There is knockback which leads to cheap deaths especially when trying to deal with flying enemies.
- The enemies spawn in the moment you go near their spawn point. This leads to multiple enemies spawning in repeatedly which can lead to you getting overwhelmed.
- The game had overly detailed background art, especially during the indoor levels, which tended to camouflage bottomless pits.
- While many of bosses are difficult there has always been a way to avoid them by learning their patterns, Bloody Malth has lightning fast homing projectiles that are nearly impossible to dodge. Trying to even get to the boss stages with full health is hard enough as it is. This just rubs salt in the wound. The best course of action is to just rush him and mash the attack button as well as use what item you have on your persons.
- False Advertising: The box art claims it is a port of the arcade game by saying "Biggest Arcade Hit!", but the NES game is its own game, a platformer and not a beat'em up.
Reception
Ninja Gaiden received critical acclaim upon release with many praising the gameplay with some comparing it to Castlevania and the anime-like cinematic cutscenes while criticism focused on its high difficulty, particularly in the later levels. Even fifteen years after its release, the game is considered one of the best NES games as well as one of the best games of all time. A 2006 Joystiq reader poll, with over 12,000 votes, listed the game at No. 10 on a list of top NES games. Another reader poll from GameSpot listed the game at No. 10 in its top 10 NES games list. It was No. 17 on IGN's Top 100 NES Games list. In August 2001 in its 100th issue, Game Informer listed the game at No. 93 in their Top 100 Games of All Time list. In 2006 Electronic Gaming Monthly featured a follow-up to their The 200 Greatest Videogames of Their Time, where readers wrote in and discussed games they felt were ignored on the list; the game was listed at No. 16 of the top 25 games discussed. At the end of 2005, Nintendo Power ran a serial feature titled The Top 200 Nintendo Games Ever. The list, which included games for all Nintendo systems, placed the game at No. 89. In August 2008, the same magazine ranked it the tenth best NES game of all time; they praised the gameplay and described the cinematic cutscenes as revolutionary for its time. The game's music received honorable mention on IGN's list of Best 8-Bit Soundtracks. IGN featured its introduction on its Top 100 Video Game Moments list at #53; it was also listed as the second best video game cutscene of all time in Complex magazine.