Ninja Gaiden
Arcade
Nostalgia Factor:
I have nothing but love for the NES Ninja Gaiden titles. I’ve been a big fan of them virtually my entire life. That said, I never had much experience with the arcade game growing up. I only encountered it a small handful of times in my life – and similar to Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker – never seemed to have many quarters on me whenever I would encounter it. I was always intrigued by it, though. I liked how it was SO different from the NES games, offering players a side-scrolling Double Dragon-esque beat ‘em up style of play. I thought it was just so fun. One thing that always stood out in my mind was the continue screen, where Ryu is facing certain death by buzzsaw if you don’t plug a quarter in and continue. Good stuff!
As the years passed, arcades eventually went away for good. As a result I basically threw my hands up in the air and said “okay I guess I’ll never get the chance to play that game again!”
But here in the year 2021 emulation is readily abvailable at our fingertips, and easier than ever to pull off. I’d get my chance to come back to this game that I loved so much as a kid and finally be able to sink a significant amount of time into it.
Would I still like this game? Well, let’s just say some things are better left to memories. Read on for my full review.
Story:
While the storyline of Ninja Gaiden was its driving force for the NES, it has almost no consequence whatsoever on this game. You’re a ninja and you’re out to destroy some random bad guy who is trying to make Nostradamus’s apocalyptic visions come true. Fight through all the stages and you kill him at the end of the game. That’s it.
Gameplay:
The best comparison for this game would be something like Golden Axe or Double Dragon. It’s a beat ‘em up, so basically all you do is work your way from the left side of the screen to the right, beating up enemies as you go. You move on a 3D surface, meaning you can move up and down in addition to left and right. Enemies come at you in waves. Unlike other games where you have your standard attack in addition to special moves or jump kicks, this game is pretty much limited to your standard punching attack. The recipe for success is to line yourself up on a slightly different plane from your enemies and either move towards them and punch them or let them come to you. You also have a throw attack where you jump at your enemy and hit the attack button. This throws them across the screen, doing damage to them in the process. It’s a little touchy to pull off though. There were times I had everything lined up perfectly and the attack didn’t work. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to its successs rate.
The environment is filled with destroyable objects. You can either throw or punch your enemy into them to destroy them. You can’t just destroy them with your fists. Many of these destroyable objects contain power ups like health items, point-accruing items, one ups, or a sword that you can hold for a limited time that does extra damage to your enemies.
You aren’t going to find a whole lot of variety here. Most of the stages consist of the same thing over and over again. Punch, throw, beat people up, move to the right side of the screen. I mean, this is normal for beat ‘em ups of this era, but the action isn’t as fun or as well put-together as it is in games like Final Fight or Streets of Rage. It just gets really boring after a while.
I’d say the part where I started to lose touch with the game came about halfway through it. You have to swing across tree branches over a body of water filled with enemies that pop out and attack you. I couldn’t even figure out how to grab the tree branch. I must have died at least 20 times on this part. Luckily I was playing on an emulator with unlimited continues, but can you imagine if I had been playing this on an actual arcade unit using quarters? It would have cost me a fortune!
It gets worse on the game’s last stage. A few of the game’s final bosses kill you with one hit. You only get two lives per “quarter”. If you die, the game takes you back a significant amount of time in the level. So to beat these bosses you basically have to do it on just two hits. Absolutely ridiculous. I hate that the game doesn't let you pick up where you died when you continue. Even with save states I struggled mightily with this part of the game. I can’t possibly imagine doing it in the arcade. It would have been almost impossible to pull off.
I’ll admit there are times this game can be fun, but at the same time I can’t deny that it is repetitive and cruelly unfair at other times.
Graphics:
I suppose for a game that was released in the late 1980s it looks pretty good. I don’t know. As I was playing I just couldn’t find much of anything about this game’s graphical style that impressed me too much. Maybe because I was kind of having a lousy time with the game I wasn’t really willing to give the game’s graphics too much credit. In retrospect I can admit it looks pretty decent though. This game has a nice, vibrant color scheme. The stage backgrounds are full of details like signs and advertisements. Although the enemy characters repeat themselves quite often, the cast as a whole doesn’t look too bad.
The continue screen is one of the most awesome continue screens I’ve seen in a video game. I guess I have nothing to complain about.
Sound:
Just like the graphics, the game’s sound didn’t impress me much at first either. It wasn’t until I got near the end of the game when I noticed something peculiar about the music playing during a boss battle. Is that…? No, it can’t be. Wait, I think it is. Holy shit.
Yup, the song “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath is turned into a video game tune and plays a few times during this game. How cool is that?
Overall:
This is a game I desperately wanted to like. I love the NES Ninja Gaiden titles. I love beat ‘em ups. I love the concept of this game. I love my memories of it as a kid. The presentation is good. It’s got solid graphics and music. It just has one fatal flaw:
It’s not very fun to play. There is no way around it. It starts out like it might be okay, but by the time you even get to the second level you realize you’ve already seen everything this game has to offer. It starts to become a chore to play. It’s SO repetitive. Throw in the crappy branch-swinging segments and the absurdly unfair boss fights at the end of the game and you’ve got yourself a supremely frustrating video game experience.
I have nothing against games being difficult, but when they start to venture into unfair territory, that’s when I have a problem.
I do notice that this game is two player co-op. Maybe with a second player this game is more fun to play. It’s extremely possible – but well I only played with one player so I am only going to report on my experience with the game. It’s not fun. I wouldn’t say Ninja Gaiden is horrible or anything, but it is definitely one of the worst games I’ve played since I learned how to emulate. I’d recommend this title only to historians who are interested in seeing what Ninja Gaiden would look like as a side-scrolling beat ‘em up. Everyone else won’t be missing much if they decide to skip over this one.
Final Score:
D
If you liked this review, please check out some of my other game reviews:
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