Ninja Gaiden (NES)

Ninja Gaiden, known in Japan as Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword, and known in Europe as Shadow Warriors, is a trilogy of 2D sidescrolling, hack and slash, platform games 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. The series would eventually be rebooted into a more modern hack and slash series in 2004.

Overall

 * 1) Great graphics for their time that push the NES to its technical limits. In fact, many sprites look almost at times 16-bit, despite being a NES games.
 * 2) 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.
 * 3) Excellent music which compliments the gameplay very well.
 * 4) Lots of great boss fights that require you to study their attack patterns in order to defeat them.
 * 5) 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.
 * 6) 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.
 * 7) 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.
 * 8) *Power-Ups
 * 9) **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.
 * 10) **Bonuses: Comes in two forms, both red and blue, which will increase your score by 1000 points and 500 points, respectively.
 * 11) **Restore Strength: This will boost Ryu's health meter by 6 cells.
 * 12) **1 Up
 * 13) **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.
 * 14) *Weapons
 * 15) **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.
 * 16) **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.
 * 17) **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.
 * 18) **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.
 * 19) There are unlimited continues, which was a huge step up from most similar games at the time and helps with the game's extreme difficulty.

Ninja Gaiden

 * 1) Despite its cheesiness, the game tells a genuinely good story for a time where games more often didn't focus on such thing.

Ninja Gaiden II

 * 1) A new feature gives Ryu the ability to "split his body" and clone himself when the player collects an orange ninja symbol. Collecting this symbol creates an orange shadow of Ryu that follows behind and copies every move Ryu makes, including climbing walls and ladders and attacking enemies. Using this technique, the player can strategically position Ryu and his clones to more easily defeat enemies and bosses.
 * 2) Ryu can now climb up and down walls without the need of a ladder and can attack while latched onto a while.

Ninja Gaiden III

 * 1) Ryu to hang overhead from pipes or ivy; he can swing up on top or drop from them, and as with walls, he can only attack enemies while hanging with secondary weapons.
 * 2) This entry introduces a new weapon and item.
 * 3) *Vacuum Wave Art: Hurls vacuum blades above and below Ryu simultaneously.
 * 4) *Dragon Spirit Sword: Increases the range of Ryu's sword.
 * 5) The objects that give you items are now opaque and you can see what items they hold.

Overall

 * 1) Artificial Difficulty: The trilogy as a whole is regarded as one of the most punishing and unforgiving series of games for the NES, right up there with Castlevania. Mainly due to how these game punish the player.
 * 2) *While the checkpoint system is great, if you died to a boss you're taken back to the beginning of the stage.
 * 3) *There is knockback which leads to cheap deaths especially when trying to deal with flying enemies.
 * 4) *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.
 * 5) *Ninja Gaiden III 's NES version has no password feature, limited continues, less checkpoints and stronger enemies than its Famicom counterpart.

Ninja Gaiden

 * 1) The game has overly detailed background art, especially during the indoor levels, which tended to camouflage bottomless pits.
 * 2) 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.
 * 3) mh:crappygames: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.
 * 4) 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.

Ninja Gaiden II

 * 1) Stage 3-1 is the hardest stage in the game. You have to get through this whole level that is pitch black and is only revealed through periodic lightning. The enemies and items are otherwise visible. You basically need to exploit the lightning while the game is paused to be able to reasonably platform it, because the game swarms you with fireballs that will likely send you into a pit or mob you to death, and some of these jumps are tight. The last part of the stage really sells how hard this level is as you need to get across a large number of one-tile wide platforms with almost pixel-perfect jumps. You fall, back to the beginning of the stage.
 * 2) The plot is a more generic save the damsel in distress and defeat evil story as opposed to the more intriguing revenge and mystery plot of the first game.

Ninja Gaiden III

 * 1) Stage 7 in The Ancient Ship of Doom: not only is it the longest stage in the NES trilogy, but running out of time is always expected of players, and borderline impossible of ensuring that doesn't happen (this "perfect run" accomplishes the stage without death, yet closes with a mere two seconds remaining on the clock).
 * 2) *7-1 has wind currents impeding player progress and can cause frequent plummets off the stage to death if care isn't taken. While there is a "Fire Wheel" spell that can be acquired, it's the only one in all of the stage, and incredibly easy to lose either through dying or picking something else up by accident.
 * 3) *7-2, among other things, has traps look like part of the background. There are two 1 Ups in this section, but the first one is difficult to get without dying in the process.
 * 4) *7-3 places spikes almost everywhere as if you were playing a level from I Wanna Be the Guy. There are no health potions and the only way you would get one is if you got the only one from 7-2. This level does show some mercy, though. Unlike the first game, losing to the boss won't send players back to 7-1, but the sub-stages being so obtuse and the fact players have finite continues in the American version of this game make it much more problematic, though not one they'll have to repeat.

Ninja Gaiden
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.

Ninja Gaiden II
Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos received positive reviews with many critics considering it an improvement over its predecessor while maintaining a high level of difficulty for players; the game was criticized for having a more generic and predictable plot.

After the game's release, it debuted at #4 on Nintendo Power magazine's "Top 30" list for September–October 1990. In March 1991, the game was nominated for the "Nintendo Power Awards '90" in the following categories: "Best Theme & Fun"; "Best Play Control"; "Best Hero" (Ryu Hayabusa); "Best Bad Guy" (Ashtar); and "Best Overall". It did not win any of those categories. In a 1991 issue of Game Players in its list of Annual Awards, the game received the "Game Player's NES Excellence Award" as one of the best NES games of 1990.

In 1997 Nintendo Power listed Ninja Gaiden as the 49th on its "100 Best Games of All Time" list. It was also listed as having one of the best 100 cheat codes of all time, which was pressing a series of buttons on the title screen to enable various sound tests. The same year, Electronic Gaming Monthly listed the NES version as 88th on their "100 Best Games of All Time", saying it was "easily the best" of the three Ninja Gaiden games which had been released at this point, citing its gameplay, storyline, music, and the body-splitting ability. They said they were not including the SNES compilation in the listing because they felt the changes it made to the gameplay and music made the game worse. In 2012 GamesRadar ranked it the 20th best NES game ever made. The staff felt that it was a large improvement over its predecessor due to improved gameplay, audio, visuals, and control.

Ninja Gaiden III
Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom received mostly positive reviews from critics. Early reviews praised the game for its plot, gameplay, and difficulty; later reviews criticized the plot, level designs, and the game's difficulty level, in which the North American version was intentionally made harder than the Japanese version through limited continues, stronger enemies, and omission of a password system. The Atari Lynx port, while receiving general praise for graphics and controls, received poor reception for its sound and for the inability for players to see characters and items, attributing it to the Lynx's small screen.

In a retrospective of the Ninja Gaiden series, Eurogamer said that Ninja Gaiden III was the only game in the NES trilogy not to make it to Europe. They made similar criticisms about the difficulty level, saying that the North American version was made more difficult than the Japanese version by utilizing limited continues, making the enemies much more powerful, and removing the password system present in the Japanese version. They said the story was too outlandish, calling the plot, of which a short-lived anime Ninja Gaiden series would loosely be based, "a glorious load of old bollocks". While the version from Ninja Gaiden Trilogy for the Super NES remedied most of their criticisms, they said that the game added new frustrations which included slower framerates, lower-quality controls, and the omission and shuffling around of several tracks, which they said "is precisely the sort of thing that makes die-hard videogame fans apoplectic with rage".

Ninja Gaiden
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Ninja Gaiden II
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Ninja Gaiden III
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