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Post by Jave on Sept 25, 2008 10:07:25 GMT -5
www.seanbaby.com/nes/ninjagai.htmI know, this is sooo old, and probably everyone here has already read it, but it kid of seemed like mandatory reading if you're going to talk about ninja gaiden.
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Post by derboo on Sept 25, 2008 13:18:21 GMT -5
That's awesome. It should be added to the links in the article.
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Post by Vendaval Este on Sept 25, 2008 21:31:02 GMT -5
Seanbaby... Awesome.
Does he update anymore?
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Post by Jave on Sept 26, 2008 16:58:10 GMT -5
The most recent update on his site is from 2006, so I'm guessing he doesn't, not that I've given up hope.
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Post by Discoalucard on Sept 26, 2008 18:12:40 GMT -5
He mostly just contribute monthly columns to EGM now.
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Post by kal on Sept 29, 2008 9:54:08 GMT -5
I'm a bit late to the party here but
"To further lengthen the game experience, Tecmo intended to cash in with new downloadable content. At the time of its release, you can buy a separate mission mode with 25 new tasks for 800 MS points and a whole bunch of costumes in packs of five for 200 points each pack, but none of them are particularly exciting and seem like a waste of money. "
In the interest of strict accuracy you get 1 Costume per 200 points with 5 colour varients. The article seems like it's implying you get different models rather then 5 different hues.
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Post by derboo on Sept 16, 2009 8:17:33 GMT -5
I'm revisiting the first pages of the article, and found a few issues:
From the intro:
"the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where emerging from an independent comic parody"
"or the many campy Ninja movies" (since the word is used not in a title, but as a common noun here, it has to be lowecaps, right?)
"A movie title like "Ninja in the U.S.A." probably will put a smile on the face of everyone who played the Ninja Gaiden arcade game, amongst the many other ninja themed games from that time, like The Legend of Kage, Ninja Warriors, Ninja Jajamaru-kun or Shinobi."
The last part kinda weakens the sentence, since it is supposed to be about the screentext "Ninja in USA", as displayed in the screenshot on the right. Maybe it should go to:
" and there where dozens of other ninja games available in the arcades and on home consoles" + ", like The Legend of Kage, Ninja Warriors, Ninja Jajamaru-kun or Shinobi.
"It MAY relate to Ryu going to the USA and thus somewhat having a side story to his everyday ninja adventuring in Japan, but more probably it was just a name Tecmo thought westerners would be able to pronounce (at which they were terribly wrong, and to this day people keep pronouncing it as "gay- den"), so we'll never know for sure."
I think "so" in the sentence doesn't make perfect sense, how about this correction:
"It MAY relate to Ryu going to the USA and thus somewhat having a side story to his everyday ninja adventuring in Japan, however, more probably it was just a name Tecmo thought westerners would be able to pronounce (at which they were terribly wrong, and to this day people keep pronouncing it as "gay- den"), but we'll never know for sure."
"who is often presenting himself as outspoken, if sometimes arrogant rock star wannabe."
Should it say "as an outspoken..."? I'm not too sure.
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Post by derboo on Sept 16, 2009 8:30:39 GMT -5
The arcade game:
"Almost all the standard enemies, about seven or eight different types, are introduced in the first level." this sounds somewhat like there's seven or eight types of enemies in the first level. My correction: "Most of the standard enemies, which are no more than seven or eight in total, are introduced in the first level."
"When you start fighting them, you have a standard attack combo, a cool move where you jump and flip the enemy in mid air, and a cool kicking move activate while hanging from a pole." don't like that sentence, either "When you start fighting them, you'll discover that you have a standard attack combo, a cool move where you jump and flip the enemy in mid air, and a kicking move that is activated while hanging from a pole, at your disposal."
"When it hits zero, the screen turns into bright end before it ends, although there's technically no gore." should be "red"
"It's all downhill from here. Next let's talk about the CPC and Spectrum, whose ports are also similar, despite the rather particular hardware limitations of these two machines." make that "similar to each other", for more clarity.
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Post by derboo on Sept 17, 2009 20:26:49 GMT -5
The trilogy intro:
"This was, again, the sytle of the time, " I also don't like that sentence anymore, let's change it to "This was once again following contemporary trends," and change in turn "contemporary" to "current" in front of "8-bit consoles".
Ninja Gaiden 1 NES:
"But there are also many corresponding enemy types, especially in the beginning, where the stupid birds being the most annoying." Should be "with"
"These activated, of course, but pressing Up + Attack." Lot of typos, here. Correct to "These are activated, of course, by pressing Up + Attack."
"First, it's a very fast game, as there aren't be many instances where you just hold your position or slowly approach your enemies." "be" needs to go, add "can" after "instances where you"
"Though you also get 5 or 10 points for every "Spiritual Strength" item you collect, you can quickly run out of ammo, a stark contrast to Castlevania, where you can spam weapons continously and defeat a good number of the bosses." add "using only those" at the end
"But all the weapons and special items aside, Ninja Gaidens greatest specialty once again is Ryu's agility as a ninja." should be "Gaiden's"
"Jumping carelessly will get you hit, and since every enemy hit throws you back, usually tossing you into a pit." grammar is wrong, I think.
"the farthest you'll get ever thrown back is the beginning of a stage, which usually aren't too." Words missing and probably not quite correct grammar. change to: "the farthest you'll get ever thrown back is the beginning of a stage, which is never too far away."
"now all the games provid a password system"
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Post by Discoalucard on Sept 18, 2009 21:20:22 GMT -5
Alright, I fixed these up.
For the future, it'd be easier if you just copied the whole text into the forum post and make any edits there...that way it's easy for me to copy/paste into the HTML.
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Post by derboo on Sept 18, 2009 22:39:51 GMT -5
OK.
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Post by derboo on Sept 20, 2009 3:45:39 GMT -5
NES Ninja Gaiden 2 Updated in full text:
Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos takes place shortly after the events of the first game. Ryu has defeated the Jaquio, but soon the next threat arises in form of the Emperor of Darkness, Ashtar, who wields the sword of chaos and has Irene kidnapped. Of course, Ryu is on his feet and to the rescue immediately.
This time, Tecmo was finished genre shifting - the basic game play stays untouched from the first NES game. Yet there are a dozen small tweaks that make Ninja Gaiden II much more enjoyable. You now can use your extra attacks while climbing and climb up or down freely, though you still have to do wall jumps to get on the top of a platform. The ladders are still there, only this time they lead you to the next section of the stage. The jumping speed is also a bit slower and floatier, but easier to control.
The weapons system had some changes, too. Now every weapon use draws much more points, and you also get them faster - there's even an item which fills your gauge completely. This time you start out with a maximum of 40 weapon points, though it can extended by collecting scrolls, which are hidden sporadically throughout the game, usually in difficult locations. This way, the game encourages you to use special weapons even more, since hoarding your ammunition has become useless. The game provides you now with the ordinary shuriken and 10 points at every start, thus making you not as helpless after dying in a difficult section as the first one did. Also, in that case, your weapon points don't get cut into half anymore, instead you keep all of them, unless you have to use a credit. There's also a new weapon available - it's the opposite of the Magic Fire Wheel, a flame that fires downwards. They ditched the unbalanced special air attack and the out-of-place time stops, while the Invincible Fire Wheel has become a "normal", if expensive, special attack.
The biggest addition is the "Phantom Shadow" technique. By collecting this item, you summon up to two copies of Ryu, who shadow your every movement. They're invincible, but can still damage enemies. They also stay floating in mid-air after you jump, so it's possible to position them strategically to take down bosses easily. It even triples your special weapon power, since each of Ryu's duplicates launches them, too. While they are cool to have, they provide very cheap methods to beat most of the bosses, and are a bare necessity for some of the others, therefore throwing off the game's balancing.
As compared to the first Ninja Gaiden, which kept things plain and simple, the enviroments are much more varied. It was all pits and platforms in the predecessor, but now you have to cope with strong winds, dark passages only illuminated sporadically through lightning, flowing water, spikes and the like. The boss battles have also improved and now almost all of them require a certain strategy, though a few can be rendered useless through the aforementioned copies.
The graphics are basically on par with the original, although the power-up items are all encased in floating orbs, giving the game a more consistent look. There's a part in Stage 3-2 that takes place mostly in darkness, and you have to wait until lightning flashes so you can see where you're going. The lightning still flashes even when you've paused the game, which makes it much easier if you have the patience. The music is easily as good as the first NES game, although the drum samples have changed, so it has a pretty different sound to it. Overall, the difficulty has been toned down too, and there's nothing nearly as frustrating as the first game's last stage. There is also an extremely cool sound test called the "Musicruise", which shows super deformed versions of Ryu and Irene, along with the track names and a display of the sound channels.
This time, Manley & Associates Inc. developed ports for IBM PCs and the Commodore Amiga, which where published by Gametek. Similar to the original Ninja Gaiden on the PC Engine, the graphics received a major overhaul, now leading to a look that is in tune with many contemporary western home computer games. At some parts, it looks better than the NES version due to the computers' hardware power, but the overall art quality is definitely inferior.
In the end, everything this versions could have going for them is destroyed by an atrociously low frame rate, that makes them virtually unplayable. It has to be about 2 FPS, or at least it feels this way. But even if it wasn't for this huge handicap, there would still remain enough problems to make this game not worthwhile. Ryu switched colors with his copies so he's red now. In principle just a cosmetic change, but slightly annoying when you've played another version before. The collision detection is messed up, so now you die from a downfall long before you reach the bottom of the screen (annoying), it takes forever to wait for the lightning in stage 3-1 (very annoying), you get thrown back from a hit even when you are clung to a wall (extraordinarily annoying) and, while you get thrown back, you're turned around the other direction all the time (extremely annoying) and if you make the mistake to push "up" together with "forward" while jumping to a wall to immediately climb up as you reach it, you stop jumping forward and fall in to a pit, a whole damn centimeter before you reach the end of the screen (so f*ing annoying it makes me want to bang my head into the monitor). And if your system of choice is the Amiga, you get a nice, overly complicated 1-button control scheme free of charge. Did I mention loading times? Do not play!
Of course, this episode is also part of the Trilogy for the SNES and received the same treatment as the first game. Again, there's some slight censorship, and the darkness & lightning effects in stage 3-1 got removed. At first, I wanted to complain about that, but after going back to the NES version (not to mention the unspeakable PC port), one can say it's really a good change. The password system applies here, too, but from now on, using passwords comes with a serious drawback: the amount of scrolls you picked up to increase your maximal ammo isn't contained in the password, you will have essentially less weapon points on your disposal than you get with a single run.
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Post by derboo on Sept 20, 2009 3:46:32 GMT -5
Ninja Gaiden 3, with just a few minor corrections and changes:
The third and final installment of the NES trilogy brought a few greater changes regarding the theme as well as aesthetics. In the intro to this final episode, you watch Irene being killed by...Ryu Hayabusa? But, no wait, it was a clone. The plot is a tad more detached than in the first two games, and now instead of humans, animals and demons, your enemies are machines and biomutations. The graphical style has changed to a flat perspective in contrast to the slightly isometric view that the previous games featured, but overall the visuals have vastly improved, with bigger and more various enemies, vertical scrolling and awesome looking backgrounds with quite a few parallax and lighting effects. The cover art now took the same style as the Ninja Gaiden anime, at least on the Japanese box. A lot of tasks were shifted from the creator of the series, Sakurazaki (real name Yoshizawa Hideo) to former artist & cutscene creator Runmal (Katou Masato), with Sakurazaki only staying the game's executive producer, and you can tell from playing the game that someone else was in charge.
So it's no wonder the gameplay underwent a few greater changes too, probably inspired by newer contemporary games like Strider and Shadow of the Ninja. The general pace of the action is slowed down, particularly because Ryu is given much more airtime during jumps, which sadly doesn't feel quite right. Also, the hand-over-hand climbing on bars from the arcade game is back, and you now can climb onto higher platforms directly without having to wall-jump.
Furthermore, a new major special item is introduced with the sword upgrade, which greatly enhances your range and makes it possible to hit small or lower enemies without ducking. The phantom shadow fighters are gone for good, as is the ordinary shuriken, so that you now start every stage with the powerful Windmill Shuriken equipped. The ability to shimmy below platforms goes along with a new weapon tailored for such situations - a pair of energy blades that attacks enemies immediately above and below yourself. The item orbs are now transparent, so there's no fear of accidentally collecting bad weapons anymore. The greatest novelty of them all - the enemies no longer respawn infinitely - makes for more tactical combat, since a retreat now actually can better your situation. Ninja Gaiden III is also the first game that provides a password system in the original release on the Japanese Famicom.
If you think all this will make your life easier, you're on a completely wrong track. No respawning of enemies is made up by their sheer numbers and the levels are full of traps like quicksand, moving or collapsing platforms and slippery ground.
The Japanese version actually <i>is</i> a bit easier than the first two Ninja Gaidens, especially with the included password system. Fearing that longtime fans would be disgruntled (or perhaps just to prevent kids from beating it in a rental), the North American version was made considerably more difficult. Enemies' damage levels were raised, so that almost every enemy hit draws two points off your life bar from the very first stage on. Plus, the locations of extra weapons have been rearranged, and you get considerably fewer weapons. The Invincible Fire Wheel is very rare, and you have to hold out much longer without the sword upgrade on most stages. And if all the obstacles finally get the better of Ryu, you don't restart in that same area, but the beginning of the current stage. The password system is also gone, and now for the first time, you are limited to 5 credits. After that, it's time to start from scratch again. This makes it the hardest of all Ninja Gaiden games and quite frustrating, and I strongly advise to choose the Japanese or Trilogy version instead. Alas, this final game of the series never saw an European release. At that time, games tended to come out in Europe one or two years after the Japanese or American games, Ninja Gaiden II wasn't released before 1992, and before someone could even think about releasing its sequel, the NES was irrevocably dead.
With its port to the Atari Lynx, now every one of the NES games was ported to a different non-Nintendo platform. This one is actually the closest port of the three, which is also its biggest problem. The graphics are just scaled down to the handheld's lower resolution, which means you can hardly recognize anything. For some reason they switched around the attack and jump buttons. Although this doesn't do any actual change to how the game is played, it may prove confusing to players that are used to the regular button order used in the vast majority of 2D action platformers. Otherwise, it generally retains the good gameplay (though it is the tough, sometimes unfair gameplay of the North American version), so if you get eye cancer from playing it, you'll at least have had a good time.
The Trilogy port this time gets along without censorship (but there weren't any pentagrams/stars of David to begin with, thanks to the new theme), but otherwise it's the most retouched of the three games, and sadly not quite for the better. It's missing most of the graphical effects, the parallax-scrolling is completely gone (interestingly, it was still present in the Trilogy version of Ninja Gaiden II), as are a few lighting effects. At this time, they probably ran out of cartridge space or something like that, and so they took out at least two music tracks and replaced them with repetitions of other stages' tunes instead. Why the hell has a Super Nintendo game to be technically inferior to a NES game? As kind of a compensation, though, it sets the damage level of all the ordinary enemies back to a single point, making damage even lower than the original Japanese version. Unlimited credits and the password system are also back, of course (they should have fixed the last act of Ninja Gaiden I, while they were at it). In turn, for some reason they used the American NES version's arrangement of extra items and restart points, which actually made the game a bit harder for Japanese players in the end, while kindly relieving some of the hardships Western gamers had to endure.
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Post by derboo on Sept 20, 2009 4:20:36 GMT -5
Only one thing with Ninja Gaiden Shadow: There's a space missing after a full stop in the third paragraph.
The Game Gear game:
In 1991, Sega began to release licensed Ninja Gaiden games for their own hardware. In the title screens they all state "reprogrammed game copyright Sega 199X", but they're completely new original games and not based on any of the previous ones.
Ninja Gaiden for the Sega Game Gear was the first one to share one title for all regions. I guess if anything, Sega Europe had more <a href="segaballs.jpg">balls</a> than Nintendo and made do without family friendly self-censorship. On top of that, now the title "Gaiden" finally made sense, since the story of the game wasn't related to the main series at all. This story, though, is definitely the stupidest one in a Ninja Gaiden game EVER. Ryu is hunting a terrorist demon, who wants to bring the whole world to war. None of the events following make any real sense, and it's best to just ignore it and play the game.
On the other hand, the gameplay isn't too hot, either. The controls feel rather loose and hectic and most of the weapons got replaced by more common and boring energy shots. At least you can run and slash your sword at the time, making for a very different feel than the other games. The level design is now very simple, and most of the time you just need to rush from left to right, or up a skyscraper while crap is falling down on you. The only refreshing exception brings the fourth (and last!) act, where you have to jump from wall to wall and can make a turn around with certain wall segments. The bosses are easy to beat, but you should never get hit by them when you are right above their heads, because if that happens, you'll most likely bounce of and get hit again until you're dead, and that doesn't take a lot of hits.
The graphics look boring and glitchy, and there's terrible flickering in the skyscraper stage. Everything's bright and colorful, though, so you won't have any trouble recognizing stuff. If you'd play this game for longer than an hour, you'd certainly get terribly bored. Fortunately (?), you will probably have finished the game well before that hour passes.
SMS:
Sega's next endeavor in the Ninja Gaiden series was released for the Master System in 1992, only in PAL territories, because they were the only ones that didn't notice that the Master System was dead in the rest of the world (In fact, it should stay alive at least in Brazil for a looong time). This time, Sega actually produced a decent game out of the franchise (though there is <a href=http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6909>speculation</a> that it was actually outsourced to SIMS), too bad hardly anyone would have noticed at that time.
After all his adventures in America - that's as far as the plot connection to the other games goes - Ryu now finally could return to his home town in Japan, only to find it completely destroyed and it's most valuable treasure, the Shinobido scroll stolen by the evil (and demonic, of course) Dark Shogun. With their second try Sega actually paid attention to the story development and cinematic cut scenes, though they are rather slow paced, miss interesting plot twists and aren't as exciting as the NES games' cut scenes by far.
Unlike the Game Gear title, the game also provides an appropriate play length with eight stages, with many sections partly borrowed from previous Ninja Gaiden games or common clichés, like an ice stage, a volcano stage and a waterfall stage. The bombs lying around in some levels certainly remind one of Sega's Shinobi series. Compared to its predecessors, climbing is an even more important factor in these stages, despite the fact that Ryu's abilities have become more limited. Instead of clinging onto walls, you now immediately have to time your wall jump and continue, or you will fall down. You still can cling onto the branches of trees and poles, but there's no hand-over-hand climbing anymore. These changes make the climbing much more challenging, but it provides a lot of fun.
Ryu's arsenal has been changed once again. The Windmill Shuriken makes its comeback, but now it's just a strong shuriken that doesn't return to you. Other weapons include a projectile that is cast into the four main directions and homing fireballs. The latter one are the greatest flaw of the game, because they totally destroy the balance. The developers took a lot of pain to come up with creative and challenging boss fights, but all their efforts are in vain if you just can stand in a corner and comfortably spawn your fireballs to beat them. The game suffers from heavy Castlevania syndrome, so you are not likely to ever run out of ammo. You even can get an unlimited amount if you ever reach 999 charges. It's a shame to see a game with such a good potential be spoiled by unnecessary, stupid design flaws, but if you restrain yourself to not using any special weapons against the bosses, you'll have a fun and challenging game. Ryu can now also perform a completely useless "desperation attack", which kills every enemy on screen except bosses, but depletes a fourth of your health, which is more than any group of enemies could ever do to you, as long as you're not acting extremely clumsy.
Though the game finally manages to at least reach near the quality of its more popular siblings, the music certainly can't match up. Most of it is based on very repetitive loops that are much too long, and it gets on one's nerves very fast. It's lacking drum samples like those in the NES version, so overall it carries a lot less of the musical punch that made those ones so catchy.
Genesis/Mega Drive:
Sega even developed a third project, this time for the Mega Drive. 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 would have tried to build on the concept of the original arcade game, but feels to some degree more like a very bad approach to the Streets of Rage school of beat-em-ups. It soon becomes very clear that it either was in a rather early development stage, or Sega did right to pull the plug on this botched monstrosity.
It features a lot of cut scenes, all of them in the finest Engrish. The chapter titles are in Japanese, though. The story doesn't make any sense, at least not in its presented state. Later in the game, you meet people you should know but don't, and about halfway through the game you get to know that your goal from the beginning was to rescue your kidnapped friend.
The controls are odd, because you can't walk straight forward - instead, you can only walk diagonally. This is completely absurd, because the screen isn't viewed from an isometric angle. Not only is it difficult to line up attacks, but you'll often end up double tapping the controller, which sends Ryu rolling all over the screen. Everything looks, feels, and sounds unnatural, especially when you're trying to pummel someone. Once again, Sega couldn't resist to build in a desperation attack that consumes a quarter of your life. You'll never need it though, since your enemies are dumb as hell. You retain your standard combo and Guillotine Throw from the arcade game, but there isn't any climbing action. There are poles in some levels who look like they might have been intended for such a purpose, but there's no way of knowing if that was actually the case.
A few stages are reminiscent of the arcade game, but there are no traps and they are as boring as the rest of the game. This title is much longer, though, and so the levels are filled up with not-so-breathtakingly exciting innovations like a bar stage, or a level that takes place on an elevator. In the beta, you can jump to any level you want by pausing the game and selecting the stage number, which is now displayed instead of your remaining time, but you won't find any decent ones, no matter how long you search. There are actually a few visually well designed bosses, like the punk rock guitarist, who constantly sticks his middle finger or the final boss monster with its long arm, but gameplay wise, they're just as stupid and boring as the rest.
To conclude, there's nothing good about this game, and it stayed unreleased for a reason. Give it a wide berth. Follow-ups to the original arcade game just didn't seem to get any luck. Reportedly, there was a Ninja Gaiden II for the arcades in development and went as far as having location tests in July 1994 (on nothing less than NeoGeo hardware!), but soon disappeared, barely leaving any traces at all.
These are all I'll be checking for now. Maybe I'll have a look at the rest during next month.
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Post by Bobinator on Sept 22, 2009 2:16:06 GMT -5
Does anyone have any information on arcade NG2? Pictures, video, interviews, random tidbits, anything? I'd love to hear about it, I love hearing about unreleased games.
EDIT: Good god, how did that typo happen? And how did I go so long without fixing it?
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