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Retro|Spective 093: Ninja Gaiden

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    #16
    Ninja Gaiden 2 on 360. Soooooo bloody with the Monty Python dismemberments, so slick to play, so fun, so funny (dismembered enemies just keep on crawling after you, glistening stumps n' all). It's just GREAT. An actual, bona fide great game.

    Sigma 2 PS3 is good. But is ruined by censorship and lack of enemies and dismemberments. It's all soft focus, as well. I see it as like a DVD bonus feature to the 360 version. In essence? Wishy washy to the max.

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      #17
      Originally posted by QualityChimp View Post
      I didn't know what ACA was, but I have several search engines available, thanks for the heads-up, despite this being a rival franchise, J0e Musashi!

      I remember the first game looking amazing in the arcades and totally up my street as an 11-year-old.

      Ninjas were still all the rage and this was jam-packed with great imagery from the ninja on the boat riding under the Golden Gate Bridge, smashing through the window as the game starts to that terrifying image of the sawblade slowly descending on the continue screen.







      Stuff like the rain lashing down on the attract screen, the big posters for other games, the crazy round clear scenes (gambling in a casino surrounded by Bunny Girls) and the crazy moving neon signs were all really eye-popping.

      The game itself was hella tough at the time and those meaty Voorhees clones always used to beat the hell out of me.
      You could use the lampposts to hang from and kick, but it just seemed to turn me into a punch bag for the Jasons.
      The wall run was also a neat move, but I normally ended up landing in the enemies' laps or missing and running down a hole.

      I played it later in life on MAME and learned the cartwheel throw, but found I could get to the platforming section, but couldn't jump down.

      I lost interest after that, preferring feeling more badass in Shinobi, Shadow Dancer, Revenge of Shinobi, Ninja Spirits, Ninja Kids and Bad Dudes.
      The limited move list just didn't cut the wasabi.

      It's interesting to think that ninjas were a Japanese idea, getting popular in America and a Japanese game company making a game to tap that American interest.

      Like Sega re-doing their arcades differently for the home consoles, Tecmo had different versions, but they were developed at the same time by Strong Shima (Gemini Wing, Tecmo Knight) in the arcade and Hideo Yoshizawa (Klonoa) at home.

      Some nice articles:
      Ninja Gaiden developer reunion
      Why Ninja Gaiden's Surreal Arcade Version Is Worth Revisiting
      Ninja Gaiden (Arcade)
      A brilliant post which sums up my feelings on the original coin-op.

      I was 6 when it was released (as Shadow Warriors in Europe) so obviously it was the greatest thing ever in my eyes back then but with hindsight it was obviously considerably inferior to Capcom and Konami’s best belt action games, never mind the other Ninja games of that day that [MENTION=10111]QualityChimp[/MENTION] rightly mentions.

      It was one of the last Wii Shop Channel games that I downloaded from Virtual Console Arcade (another potentially great concept that Nintendo turned to sh1t) and it really hasn’t aged too well, though I have to say that the continue screen with Ryu Hayabusa about to take a circular buzzsaw to the chest is as iconic as Haggar/Cody/Guy desperately trying to blow out dynamite sticks while tied up in the Final Fight continue screen, IMO.

      I feel like the NES Ninja Gaiden games are somewhat overrated in terms of their gameplay though they clearly have a cult status in North America - infuriatingly difficult for no reason with no obvious progression of difficulty curve, even in an era of Mega Man and Daimakaimura games. That said, they generally have excellent music.

      I will say that the modern Ninja Gaiden games, up to NGII, are excellent and that must be credited largely to the brilliance of Tomonobu Itagaki - he largely resurrected the franchise and breathed new life into it. Itagaki-san is arguably as talented as any Japanese game developer you can name but it’s just a shame that he has a reputation for being a massive douchebag.

      NGIII and Yaiba are pretty much the franchise’s shark-jump moments.
      Last edited by Nu-Eclipse; 07-06-2019, 10:10.

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        #18
        I didn't know anything about Yaiba before this thread.
        It actually looks pretty cool, but it's quite a departure stylistically, so can see why fans didn't like it.

        I really liked the look of the original Devil's Third trailer, but I think it lost something in the redesign to make the lead a bald dude.

        For posterity, here's the nunchaku dude from XBox Ninja Gaiden:

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          #19
          [MENTION=10111]QualityChimp[/MENTION] I had high hopes for Devil’s Third too but it looked really rough even during development - you can find many previews from major gaming news sources slating it at the time.

          The fact that it ended up as a largely forgotten F2P PC port says it all. It just looked like a game that should have been released during the early part of the 360/PS3/Wii generation.
          Last edited by Nu-Eclipse; 07-06-2019, 10:32.

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            #20
            Originally posted by QualityChimp View Post
            Oh yeah, a couple of other titles worth mentioning was the unreleased Mega Drive version that was heavily channelling Streets of Rage:


            "Sega even had a third Ninja Gaiden project running, this time for the Mega Drive. Once again, the development was done by a third party. This time it seems to have been the mostly unknown developer called Opus, as in-game art and the sound engine used indicate. This game was never released, probably due to quality issues, but a beta copy was leaked and can be played on emulators nowadays. The game tries to build upon the concept of the original arcade game, but feels more like a very bad approach to the Streets of Rage school of beat-em-ups. It is obvious that it either was in a rather early development stage (an EGM preview for November 1992 labeled it 60% complete, but it’s unknown if that was the version that got dumped), or Sega did right to pull the plug on this botched mess.
            There’s really nothing good about this game, and it stayed unreleased for a reason. Give it a wide berth.
            Your post made me curious so I found the prototype of MD Ninja Gaiden. Wow it’s terrible. I appreciate it wasn’t completed but the controls needed serious work and that should be one if the first things finalized in any game. Best left unreleased.

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              #21
              Originally posted by QualityChimp View Post

              For posterity, here's the nunchaku dude from XBox Ninja Gaiden:
              He had arms like Scott Steiner

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                #22
                Originally posted by CMcK View Post
                Your post made me curious so I found the prototype of MD Ninja Gaiden. Wow it’s terrible. I appreciate it wasn’t completed but the controls needed serious work and that should be one if the first things finalized in any game. Best left unreleased.
                Ah, you found it!
                Sorry it's crap, but I find unknown at the time projects like this really interesting.

                Originally posted by Team Andromeda View Post
                He had arms like Scott Steiner
                Reminds me of this guy...

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                  #23
                  Originally posted by QualityChimp View Post



                  Reminds me of this guy...
                  There's nothing finer than Scott Steiner!

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                    #24
                    I have massive nostalgia for the arcade version of this game (Shadow Warriors in the UK). My brother and I first discovered it at a motorway service station. We were really into ninjas at the time and used to play all these Ninja game books (Way of the Tiger) so it was like mana from heaven. Later my brother borrowed the Amiga version from a friend and it seemed a pretty close conversion considering.

                    It's still a good game but like QualityChimp said in his post - the limited move list is an issue (I find this a problem with so many beat em ups). It also has a slight slow/ unresponsive feel to it when you compare it to other games of the genre.

                    I do have Ninja Gaiden 2 on 360 but I haven't played it that much. It felt similar to the Devil May Cry or God of War style of game that I had already played a lot. I get annoyed with those "flailing around games". I much prefer something like Godhand where it's more precise and everything you do is on purpose.

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