Debunking the Difficulty - Ninja Gaiden (NES)

[Music] so you want to beat ninja gaiden i've been waiting for you ladies and gentlemen welcome back to another episode of debunking the difficulty if you missed the first episode teenage mutant ninja turtles be sure to check it out today we are taking on a legendary nes title called ninja gaiden now i believe ninja gaiden needs little to no introduction um so i won't say much it's a platformer from the nes era where you play as a ninja named ryu and it's known for its grueling difficulty another game that a lot of people you know have never beaten swear they'll never beat um i'm not gonna lie to you this game is nuts even with the tricks i'm about to share with you this game will not be easy for you to complete however debunking the difficulty isn't necessarily about giving you a free win it's about teaching you how you can win so without further ado let's hop into it the first stage of ninja gaiden is actually pretty easy but before we begin i need to teach you a technique if you're gonna play this game and beat this you must learn this technique i don't know if this has an official name but there's a trick that allows you to attack rapidly while in the air if you play normally you would play like this and only be able to swing one time at a time maybe a couple times maybe like two swings but with this technique you can swipe man five six seven times i don't even know i can think of about four major things you will need to learn to beat this game one is this we'll call this fast slashing number two is wall climbing learn how to wall climb you can do it in the beginning see this learn how to climb a wall up one side it's pretty easy once you get it down but you can stay here as long as you want actually there is a timer and you will time out eventually but you can just reset the game so whatever so sit here in the beginning practice your wall climbs practice your fast slashing and once you have them both down then we get started all right you got it down let's go so the first level is actually pretty easy you can go slowly and kill everything and pick up items here uh this stuff is called ninpo which i think is short for ninja power it's basically your magic power and that's going to be pretty important to you as well so you do want to pick that up along the way so there are a lot of items in ninja gaiden and a lot of them can be helpful even the ninja star has its value however there's one item that stands among the rest and it's not this one here it is this item is the spin slash and you're gonna need this to destroy your enemies the way this works is that you hit the button in the air and your your guy spins like crazy and he deals massive damage one detail i need to teach you about the spin slash and this is crucial if you jump in attack he'll do the spin slash and it'll consume five of your ninja power as you can see i'm now out of ninja power and i can't spin slash anymore so you can actually conserve your ninja power with this trick jump hold down and you can attack normally without using your spin slash so if you do this you can save your ninja power for when you need it most okay now that you know all this stuff we can continue with the stage you want to get to the boss with at least five ninja power if not ten just to be safe um as you can see i'm going nice and slow it's very easy i haven't gotten hit a single time there's really not much to talk about here this first boss is extremely easy even without the trick you can kill this guy even without using spin slash but if you do use it he just explodes all right so we're moving on to stage two uh the difficulty goes up very quickly in this game and unfortunately every time you enter a new act um you lose your items so we don't have a spin slash anymore so my advice to you is to take it nice and slow through these levels um i cannot hold your hand through everything you're gonna have to learn how to survive the stuff um this stuff here is not too difficult take your time get items kill guys um jump up here jump left jump right climb up come to the top play it slow play it safe like i said i don't have you're gonna have to get good let's be honest um this level's not that hard a technique i can't teach you is that you can spawn guys um like this like see this guy i spawned him but i didn't go down there and then he just fell and died and then he respawns immediately kind of funny how that works in ninja gaiden but you can wait for him to spawn and then jump down here and then you have to fight him um i did get a new spin slash um i'll point out the most important locations in this level you'll find it very easily um in future levels well we'll get to that but as you can see i haven't taken any damage that's a big jump so make sure you get a big jump uh my greatest advice is to just be patient take your time i haven't gotten hit a single time and it's not because i'm a god gamer it's literally because this level's not really that hard i'm just chilling got hit by that guy that'll happen but we're still we're still good and we're gonna move on to 2-2 now this is where the game gets interesting so your first major hazard in this game is going to be these guys we're gonna call them hammer bros um i think it's pretty self-explanatory why i call them that um you're gonna want to use projectiles for them however this game is one of the most ruthless and unforgiving games when it comes to enemy respawns it's such bs it's such bs you have to have eyes on where they spawn so for this guy i'm gonna need to move forward a little bit and then kill him but look at this if i back up just a little bit there he is this is the final point of all the stuff i wanted you to learn there was climbing walls spin slash fast slashing the fourth one is learning how to manipulate enemy spawns and you're gonna see just how important this is later on so for this guy we're gonna get close kill him and then proceed guys are popping out from every conceivable angle you're gonna have to practice there's no getting around it take it slow and just watch how i do it and you'll figure it out i promise this is where the platforming starts to get pretty delicate um you can get full health items sometimes and you can get this really good item here which is a fire barrier which protects you from all damage so when you get it just run and jump run and jump run and jump and get through this area no problem now this part right here gets pretty unfair you're gonna have to learn how to deal with this part so you're gonna have to get through these guys and these guys um if you don't have an item one of the problems with the fire barrier is it actually takes your item that you're holding on to because now we have no projectile so that sucks but you can still get past this guy you're just gonna have to play it a little safe so what you're gonna want to do is dive at him and slash when he walks towards you try to time it when he's not throwing a hammer so we're gonna keep taking it slow killing these dudes as they spawn you do get a spin slash right there so what you want to do is you want to jump attack jump attack we're chilling jump attack jump attack see those hammer bros they don't stand to stand a chance against the spin slash i'm gonna time out i was gonna time out i was gonna time out man use the technique i taught you in stage one to conserve your ninja power so you can get through this section because you need the spin slash to survive now i recommend getting to the boss with some spin slash um i'm about out and my tutorial is making it difficult but i just did that i was able to save one last shot you can use the same trick on this boss as the first one now this boss again is pretty easy if you want to fight him the normal way you can actually just duck under him and attack see that he's so he's so easy you don't even need to use the spin slash on this guy he's so easy now we're moving on to act three this game gets progressively harder and harder and harder it just keeps getting harder so yeah you're gonna see so i'm gonna keep showing you guys how to play it safe play it cool play it smart that item there actually freezes time it's pretty cool so i'm able to get through here i'm gonna show you guys a trick right here check this out you don't have to do that it's a fun swaggy trick if you can pull it off you can pull it off but it allowed me to get that fire item which is really useful for this area's boss so one thing about ninja gaiden is you want to avoid backtracking if possible because of how enemies respawn you clear out an area and then you go backwards and everybody comes back so if you can avoid backtracking you want to avoid backtracking obviously for sections like this i can't give you any pro easy every time tips you're gonna have to learn how to make these jumps play it safe though and remember to learn how to manipulate enemy spawns because i got rid of those birds by doing nothing and just like that we are moving on to 3-2 now i do feel like it'll be beneficial for me to show you a lot of what i'm doing in this game just so you can actually see it um because i feel like getting through a lot of this stuff is pretty challenging and if you see how i do it i think it will help you um so if you are gonna play this game pay careful attention to how i approach situations and like i'm not gonna bother going down there you know that's not worth my time you also need to know where to go and where not to go how to avoid certain situations so if you just watch what i'm doing you'll be good so these parts get pretty tough but if you take it slow take it easy these birds are terrible but again just be patient just be patient you either despawn them or yeah despawning them works now here's one of the hardest parts of look at this see this watch out for that guy this is one of the hardest parts of the game so far so here's my advice watch out for that cheetah move to the edge look at these birds and the reason that happens is because of where you're standing it's the worst possible spot from a spawning perspective now for this part i recommend jumping over the bird and then jumping down and killing the guy i'll show you how to do it so walk forward walk forward a little bit a little bit more there's the guy the guy here with no bird perfect no cheetah we're chilling i'm gonna wait for the guy to start walking backwards and then i'm gonna move forward and then jump over the bird watch jump over bam bam you're going to have to practice a little bit but if you want to be ninja gaiden you're going to have to work for it i'm not going to lie to you you want to be ninja gaiden you got to work for it but i'm going to show you the tricks you need to make it happen all right all right now here's the boss and this is why i was saving the firepower you don't need the firepower to beat this boss but it helps so this guy jumps around and you can just mess him up with the fire as you can see it's amazing absolutely amazing so i highly recommend the fire you don't need the fire but i highly recommend it moving on to act four and the game just keeps getting harder this act is i don't think this hacked as uh i don't think this act is much harder than act three maybe a little bit but overall not too bad i would kind of just rush through it you'll learn in ninja gaiden that going fast can be beneficial oh god being going fast can be beneficial but obviously going fast is harder so you have to find what works for you um the reason going fast works well a lot of the time is because you can despawn enemies by going fast just play it safe platform smart um like i said if you want to beat this game just kind of follow what i'm doing it'll help you out as you can see i've gotten a spin slash which is nice i'm just kind of chilling here playing is safe playing it cool we're gonna go up this ladder here gonna have to dodge a few birds here just pause kill him pause kill him he's gone he actually despawns himself which is pretty cool and we are going forward and we are gonna activate one of the most iconic cut scenes of all time this one is like ingrained in my memory from when i was a kid so epic all right now i'm gonna need you to do something very important i'm gonna need you to stop and rock out to this tune [Music] this is like the best song in the game straight up alright so we're gonna press forward um this area gets harder and harder and harder um there's some cheap stuff like this bat so what you want to do is you don't want to run and jump so it's kind of a death trap in that way they do that a lot in this game if you run and jump you're going to hit that bat so what you want to do is spawn the bat and then go and then you have to worry about him so i'm just going to be like cruising through here you know doing my thing you all know you all know how i roll um i have a lot of tricks and techniques that i use to get through here pretty effectively as you can see i'm just kind of chilling try to try to do your best here and get through without taking too much damage there's some health right here if you need it so same with here this bird is going to spawn and try to mess you up just let him pass despawn him easy there is a spin slash here now this is kind of a pivotal moment for act four um i think this is the last spin slash before the boss which means if you want to have spin slash on the boss you need to carry this one all the way to the boss which is not easy i'm going to try to do it though all right so going into 4-3 it's getting a little spooky we're going to climb up here take it nice and easy game's getting harder for sure we're going to climb up here you're going to start seeing where the climbing comes into play more and more we haven't had to use it too much yet but you will trust me so coming through these areas we're just kind of chilling kind of chilling kind of chilling nothing crazy i'm gonna go here got this guy boom nice and easy nice and easy okay nice and easy this part that part's he that guy despawned off the top of the screen don't even know what that's all about bats are coming uh there's a fire actually i don't want that good thing i didn't get that because i'm trying to keep my spin slash so that guy is not friendly you want to get the drop on him like that so go kind of fast don't give him don't give him a chance to shoot you know what i mean you don't want to you don't want to mess with that yeah i thought you could despawn him actually it doesn't work on this one you can lure him towards you and then jump over him though or not i don't know that guy's weird okay forget that whatever just kill that guy so i think we're in the final room of 4-3 here um once again we're kind of chilling i haven't taken much damage and i have some spin slash here so make sure you carry this all the way to the boss this is the boss room i have five ninja power which is enough to use spin slash once which is great for this boss so look at this one shot one shot if you don't have the spin slash my recommendation is that you use the fast slash that i taught you in the beginning because you can hit those guys like a million times in a row okay we're going into act five and i'm not going to lie to you this is where the game gets pretty rough so once again we're going to be playing it safe kind of playing it slow um trying not to get roasted too hard but there are no guarantees at this point once again just kind of follow what i'm up to do your best not to die easier said than done right so i'm doing a lot of stuff here um i recommend the throwing stars in this one they're very good against some of those bigger opponents there's a couple spots we're gonna want to be careful and that's coming up right here see this bird this guy's gonna try to mess you up so kill him jump duck clean it up should be good to go that guy gave me a boost not gonna complain about that okay another spot here see this bat let him spawn jump over him easy peasy if you go right away there you're gonna get screwed uh right here you can do a one-sided wall climb highly recommend see this guy here drop down ninja star easy peasy moving on to 5-2 which is easily the hardest part of the game so far you're gonna have to do some platforming here you're not gonna be able to get around it but i'll show you a few tricks that should help out so this part here drop down ninja star don't let that guy get you so we're gonna keep on going here playing it safe um there's some hard parts coming up here these parts aren't too bad the only thing the only thing about this part that's tough are the birds so this bird here is going to mess you up see this guy see this guy keeps spawning so this part's a little tricky i'm going to show you kind of like a good way to do it also one of the nice things about ninja gaiden is that there's unlimited continues um if you do game over i think it sends you back to the beginning of the stage you're in but it never sends you all the way back also there is a spin slash right there the spin slash is not as important in this stage actually you don't need it in this one but it helps all right so for this part i recommend just running and jumping if you're lucky he won't hit you at all even if he hits you he won't knock you off the ladder coming through this part nice and slow kill the jackie chan dudes kill them throw a ninja star at him easy peasy kill this dude kill this dude respawn that bat and then jump over him you're gonna see that technique a lot where you spawn an enemy before jumping and then jump over him watch out for the birds get this guy kill him there's a health here if you need it now here's a trick that i think you absolutely should learn see the way the game wants you to do this is it wants you to grab the ledge right there and then jump to the right that is a very difficult jump and i'm not gonna do it here's what i do see that that is why you need to know how to do a one-sided wall jump because you jump up there let the bird hit you it's fine and then you climb upwards and just hold right and you'll go through the wall and skip that crazy little jump right there so we're gonna keep on going here keep on going keep on going here's a bird here who likes to spawn infinitely he's a real jerk but you can let him hit you and then go which works so here's the thing you want to get to 5-3 because now the game is never going to send you back to 5-2 5-1 it doesn't matter how many times you die it will never send you further back than this stage right here so 5-3 is a little bit tricky in certain areas but i'll show you kind of what's up here first room is pretty easy we're gonna go up here and this room sucks there's no getting around it this room sucks it has the jetpack ninjas which are one of the stupidest enemies in video games these guys suck so hard but we're gonna try to get through here in one piece um you got a hammer brother right here but he's so easy to beat he literally despawns himself just by standing here so let him despawn and then you just pass through no problem coming up here you want to play it very carefully so we got this guy kill him keep moving forward jump the bat keep moving forward jump the bat kill the cat easy peasy get this firepower climb go go go go this is crucial you need to go fast here this section is very difficult but if you have the fire it's not that bad see that so now we're standing here we just gotta get past him now the key to getting past him is to get hit on his right side so that when you take damage you're gonna get knocked to the right and not to the left because if you get knocked to the left you're gonna fall in the pit again knock to the right you're all jeezy so check this out boom yeah he didn't even hit me even better even better man take it slow despawn the enemies go through here quick that guy spawns out in nowhere but you can get up here before he even messes with you we are on the last room which is free nothing to worry about here jump up here we're at the boss this is the easiest boss in the game believe it or not believe it or not so for this boss you don't even need the spin slash all you do for this boss is you walk up and you hit him that's it observe i walk the wrong direction at first i hope i beat him yeah i'm good all you do is walk up and hit him and you win i don't know what they're thinking with this boss design if you dodging him is nearly impossible so if you try to actually fight him and dodge him and stuff you're done it's over but if you just do that it's a completely free kill all right now we're moving on to the final stage the final act of ninja gaiden one of the most famously difficult areas and again i'm going to show you some tricks um your goal is to get through this bridge alive that is your only goal it doesn't matter how much damage you take it doesn't matter what happens just get through here alive run run run run use all your ninja power to survive you get spin slash right here use your spin slash just get through here just get through here just get through here because once again when you get to a new stage you'll never be sent back well never say never there is one time that sends you back but this is not it so now that you're in 6-2 you can kind of chill you probably took a lot of damage so you might want to take a death to get your health back um this area is kind of a cluster [ __ ] so be patient try your best you're gonna have to practice this one um i'm probably gonna take a death here to get my health back but you know what i'll try to do it without it it's got jetpack ninjas which sucks so bad yup i'm dead so the key to this part is spin slash and i'll show you kind of how to do it so now that i'm at full health we're gonna go through here play it slow kill these guys i recommend not jumping staying on the ground as much as possible no damage taken coming through here kill this guy jump kill this guy kill that guy watch out for the jetpack ninjas dude watch out for the jetpack ninjas kill those guys get the spin slash at this point you should have about 15 ninpo which is more than enough this will get you through the jetpack ninjas right here and then this guy coming up who kind of ledge guards a little bit kill him too with your awesome spin slash then you're moving on to the next area come in here we're gonna kill this guy and we're gonna spawn i forgot how this part works actually oh the bat yeah you want to jump and slash that bat kill this bird take it slow run kill this guy kill this guy kill this guy kill this guy nice and easy nice and easy going up and now we're coming to one of the most famously ridiculous hallways in video game history but i'm gonna show you how to do it okay i've done this in a while so i'll probably die but we'll see so the key here is to take it slow inch forward kind of get used to what's coming up jump over here kill kill that guy this guy here is a straight up camper he's a cheater but you can despawn him by standing right here at this point all you do is run forward and slash to kill the bird kill the bird kill that guy two guys you gotta kill and that's it home free so once you get that part down that part is really not that hard and then once you get here just run through these guys and get the fire there's a barrier right here and then you are good to go my friends good to go and you're moving on to 6-3 the final stage in ninja gaiden this one is not as hard as 6-2 which is nice so there are two ways you can go about the stage you can get the spin slash or you can use the down technique that i taught you so i'm gonna grab the spin slash you have to go out of your way for it uh down in that corner right there and then we're gonna proceed here take it nice and easy spin slash will be nice i do recommend getting it but you don't have to so this room's free nothing to worry about coming up here you got some crazy dudes freaking bad ow kind of low in health kind of low on healthier so that's not good kill that guy spin slash will be incredibly helpful getting through here but you know sometimes you're gonna get got and that's just kind of the way it goes but it's okay because you die and you respawn right at the beginning of 6-3 all right this section is actually pretty tough um i'm going gonna try it without the spin slash for you i recommend spin slash make it a little bit easier um for me though i'm gonna try it without just to show you that it can be done so you just have to master a few well-timed attacks to get through there with the spin slash you can kill that guy who's camping the ledge a lot more easily um for this part make sure you have some ninja power and then you can just hit him with the knight or the you can either use that spin slash or you can get the ninja star right there whichever you prefer for this part you're gonna get the hourglass and you're gonna go through here as quickly as you can while the time is frozen if you don't do it while the time is frozen some bad enemies will spawn it becomes a lot harder so just try to get through there as quickly as possible uh this part's pretty easy there's really nothing to talk about here um we're coming up here which is the final section leading up to the final boss there's another time freeze right here so what i'm gonna do is grab this took a little damage no big deal while the time is frozen again go as quickly as possible to get through here hold right very important technique it is a cluster [ __ ] of enemies right there but there's a trick where if you hold right you get hit twice and it just puts you in the door you don't even have to worry about anything else as long as you don't die as long as you have enough health to tank it you can get through there free all right we're at the final boss of ninja gaiden i'm not gonna lie to you this is gonna piss you off so much if you die to this final boss even one time it sends you all the way back to 6-1 i'm not kidding you it is one of the trolliest most ridiculous design choices in video game history the devs who implemented that and then the project managers who passed it were clearly evil people so obviously you want to beat this guy without dying at all i'm going to try to help you so you can do that um if you really want to beat this game you could use save states to practice the final boss get him down and then go back and play the play it all the way through without save states to beat it for real like that's fine like i wouldn't hold that against you at all but you know to each their own so the final boss has three phases this is the first one so you're going to want to jump up here and you need to hit that orb right there there's two ways to do this if you have the spin slash you can kill the orb instantly very easy if you don't have the spin slash which is more likely because getting the spin slash all the way here is actually kind of difficult um you're going to use the technique i taught you in the beginning of the game that you practiced right so check this out look at that no spin slash needed because you're a freaking ninja and now we move on to one of the most famous boss fights in video game history this guy right here let me show you um how do we want to do this so this guy flies around and he spits fire at you here's the thing he's not really that bad if you are on the ground the fire he shoots will despawn however if you jump up in the air and if you get hit by the fire and stuff if you get hit by the fire while you're in the air uh sometimes the fire will wrap around and keep it'll be on screen still and then you'll have all sorts of fire on screen my advice for you for this boss is to just do exactly what i'm doing here and get used to dodging him so i'm just running around dodging his fire getting used to it getting comfortable so what we're gonna do is we're gonna be alternating between doing this and jumping up there and getting some hits off and this is the most important reason for knowing this the what did i call it fast slash strategy because it's how you're gonna dish out damage to this guy so basically you're gonna be looking for opportunities to jump up there and hit him without getting hit by the fire so let me go ahead and show you how that works so i see an opportunity maybe like right here that wasn't the best opportunity i got one hit off um play it safe and be patient man you're not in a rush his fires only deal one damage you know you can get hit a lot don't get hit by his body because his body deals more damage than his flames so you want to play it nice and safe get that damage get that damage off play it very safe be very patient if you get hit a couple times it's not a big deal i've gotten hit several times and it's not a big deal always go back down to the floor so his flames despawn as you can see i've already dealt more damage to him than he's done to me even though he's hit me like a million times just chilling oh no i'm gonna run out of time i killed him oh my god i killed him with zero seconds i killed him with zero seconds okay i was just goofing off forever and i forgot about the timer let that be a good reminder you can be patient but don't don't overdo it because you can time out so don't you gotta you gotta attack him okay you still gotta attack him you get a little bit of time to be patient but not too much it's a good reminder because i forget about the timer in this game now there's one more phase to this final boss and he's tough he's still tough honestly i feel like this boss is just as hard so what you're gonna do is run up here use your fast slash dodge those see those little shrimpies that are coming out do not let those hit you they deal a ton of damage and you can die in this boss fight pretty easily so you're gonna run up and do your fast slash on his head dodge play it safe his head falls off pretty fast with the fast slashing you do a ton of damage once his head falls off you pretty much are guaranteed to take damage it's very hard to dodge but it only deals one hit of damage the next thing you're gonna do is kill this dude's tail so you're gonna run up duck swing be patient don't get hit play it safe if you're gonna get if you see a shrimpy coming your way dodge it see look at that tail is dead i haven't gotten hit except the one time from the head now all that's left is the heart this is the hardest part because you have to get up in there hit the heart while dodging the shrimp once again play it safe if you think a shrimp is coming your way dodge it don't get greedy do not get greedy here use your fast slash see this look how much damage i deal i got hit once it's okay getting hit once is okay use your fast slash and you deal tons of damage and then spam the jump while holding right and you can jump on top of them and teabag them very important if you didn't t-bag him did you really beat ninja gaiden and ladies and gentlemen that is it that is how you beat ninja gaiden like once again this game is hard as hell even with all the tricks i showed you you're going to get brutally punished but if you want to beat this game learn those techniques i showed you kind of follow in my footsteps and i guarantee you it's not as hard as you thought it was you'll probably die a lot but you'll eventually beat it i believe in you i can't assure you if you beat ninja gaiden it's one of those games that you'll want to occasionally bust out and run through because beating it is very satisfying it's always fun running through this game oh yeah i guess some ryu huh uh yeah all right everybody thumbs up subscribe let me know what game you want to see next hope you all enjoyed the video and i'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Ryu

Views: 293,495

Keywords: ryukahr, ryukhar, ryu, nintendo, nes, retro gaming, gameplay, consoles, vintage, arcade, high score, extraordinarily hard games, sega genesis, extraordinary games, master system, how to beat, u can beat video games, ninja gaiden, super nintendo, snes, avgn, angry video game nerd, ninja giaden

Id: YVg7qFycpxU

Length: 36min 8sec (2168 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2022