Impossible Ninja Gaiden Challenge Finally Completed After 30 Years!

hello you absolute legends when it comes to difficult video games there is one franchise that always seems to top the list and that of course is dark souls the soulsborne games are universally praised for being both extremely difficult and yet fair allowing players to fully harness their skills in order to cleanly navigate their way through tough challenges on the 20th of march 2019 the happy hob accomplished one of the greatest gaming feats of all time completing the entire soulsborne series without taking a single hit he consecutively beat bloodborne dark souls dark souls 2 dark souls 3 and demon souls in an utterly flawless manner an achievement that took a total of 17 hours and one that i would love to cover sometime in the future whenever you have very difficult games there is always a small subset of gamers that seek to push the limits of what's possible finishing a game without taking a single hit or without incurring a single sliver of damage is an obvious way to demonstrate your complete dominance while these days dark souls and similar games tend to take center stage in this conversation 30 years ago it was the nintendo entertainment system that facilitated the most notoriously difficult games available for play games such as battle toads ghosts and goblins contra and silver surfer were all famously difficult to complete and yet players have done the seemingly impossible by finishing them without being touched by the game's enemies but there was one particular game that was legitimately considered impossible to beat in such a way a game that is infamous for its difficulty and that game is ninja gaiden similar to dark souls ninja gaiden is almost unfair to the casual player if you don't know what you're doing you are going to be destroyed if you do learn the ins and outs of the game however you can make pretty short work of it as speedrunners have demonstrated over the years as for beating the game without taking a single hit that is a different story entirely for over 30 years no one believed it could be done but on the 23rd of december 2020 the impossible was achieved with the gamer slackinator getting through the entire game without losing a single hit point in this video we are going to learn why everyone thought this feat was impossible and what slackinator was able to do in order to get the job done the key to this achievement is actually insane and it's honestly mind-blowing that anyone was able to pull this off i really hope you enjoy now before we go on a huge thank you to rich for making this video possible ridge offer amazing compact wallets that not only look good but also feel great in your pocket forget those traditional bulky wallets ridge wallets are the future not only are they easy to carry but these bad boys are tough as nails and will last forever ridge offer a lifetime warranty and a money-back guarantee if you don't love it you can get 10 off today plus free worldwide shipping by going to ridge.com legend and use the promo code legend the link is in the description in may of 2012 a user by the name of surefire tactics uploaded a video to youtube titled ninja gaiden no damage run you'll notice that the no damage is in quotation marks and this is because it's not technically a no damage run in the very final boss fight the protagonist ryu takes damage from the demon's head as it dislodges from the body and launches itself forwards this kamikaze strike cannot be avoided you can't jump over it and slashing the head has no effect as its health is too high in their video surefire tactics overlaid the text this attack is unavoidable in the description they stated the only problem is that there is an unavoidable attack at the third phase of the final boss otherwise i have beaten the whole game without taking a hit whether or not this particular run is completely legitimate is up for debate it uses some dubious strategies that have extremely low chances of being successful leading some people to believe it made use of save states or some kind of tool but the prospect of getting through the full game without taking a hit wasn't necessarily a crazy one at least until the final boss fight in december of 2013 the player magnus zero uploaded a segmented no damage run again it was proclaimed that the damage taken in the final boss fight could not be avoided in the uploaded video they stated and there's the undodgeable cheap shot yes unless you hack you can't dodge it even recently in september of 2020 the gamer press continue released a segmented no damage run of ninja gaiden at the beginning of the video he had this to say about the final fight but in this video i'm going to take you step by step through the entirety of this classic nintendo game and i will show you how to prevent taking any damage at least that which can be prevented to begin with because this game actually contains a single unpreventable hit against the final boss when the head comes off it's not physically possible to avoid taking damage from that especially because given that your item is taken away before you get here you cannot rely on spinsless iframes either meaning it's a guaranteed hit by design and therefore something we are simply forced to accept so that will be the only hit i take in this playthrough needless to say he was accepted as a universal truth that getting hit by this particular attack was as certain as death and taxes at least for a human player while it was definitely a given that taking damage from the boss fight couldn't be avoided the game's code did theoretically allow for the head to be killed in 2004 a tool-assisted speed one was created by boltar completing the game in 11 minutes and 20 seconds the entire run contains the usual tas shenanigans that a human could never do but the end fight was particularly interesting in this tool-assisted run they were able to kill the demon head outright before it even touched the ground this tells us that like any other enemy in the game it does have a set amount of health and will die if that health is fully depleted in fact we know that the head has exactly 16 hit points which is the same as the tail and heart of the demon the head dislodges from the body after 11 hits meaning that it has 5 remaining so technically if you were to hit it five times before it fell you could destroy it before it hit you at first glance this doesn't even seem possible the standard slash animation is pretty slow and when you jump you are only able to perform around two slashes before falling to the ground but there is a technique that allows us to strike much faster and it's called slash cancelling by pressing both the attack button and down on the d-pad at the same time ryu will perform an extremely quick attack how quick exactly well it's so quick that you're essentially only limited by how fast you can press the buttons obviously a tool assisted speedrun doesn't have to worry about restraints caused by the human nervous system so it can hit the demon head 16 times in around half a second this is way faster than a normal person could ever do people can mash pretty quickly though in 2017 the world record holder of ninja gaiden arcus uploaded a tutorial showing us how fast he could execute slash cancels so again the other hand can do left and right if needed and this is only used against the final two bosses but i thought i'd show it now since i do have the webcam here so yeah once again you can't really get a good good view of it from this angle but yeah i'm gonna tap tap a with the middle finger and mash it out like this personally i consider myself to be a pretty fast clicker in the mario party 4 mini game domination where it counts how many clicks you can do in 10 seconds i would almost always come out on top so how fast can i click well on clickspeedtest.com the highest i could achieve in a single second was 14 clicks which i think is pretty respectable but would this be enough to kill the demon head well we can actually calculate the mashing speed required in order to do so from the exact moment the head is hit by the 11th slash to the moment it hits the ground is 0.334 seconds so you need to perform five slash cancels in a third of a second which is a rate of 15 presses per second i've tried and i simply cannot press a button that quickly but slash cancelling is far more difficult than simply pressing a single button like what i did in the click test slash cancelling requires two buttons to be hit at the exact same time so not only do you need to mash at inhuman speeds but you need to mash two buttons in perfect synchronicity and you need to do it on a nintendo controller this is something only a small percentage of people would ever be able to do no matter how much practice they put in 15 presses per second is extremely high but it seems to be on the cusp of what's possible in may of 2016 the youtuber sin uploaded a tool assisted no damage run that demonstrated a more realistic demon head kill instead of doing all 16 hits in a single jump it would prepare the kill by doing three jumps totaling 10 hits it would then perform the final flurry of 6 hits in 2017 a viewer in arkansas's stream asked him to try the tass only kill destroying it before he could launch itself forward using a save state and repeating that section many times he was finally able to do it there it is it destroyed the demon head this was the first time we had ever seen verifiable proof of anyone actually pulling this off being able to kill the head wouldn't just be of use in a no damage run technically it would be a time save for speed runs as well in the world record run performed by arcus he does get hit by the head causing him to be pushed backwards and disabled for half a second so if he had managed to kill the head there was potential to save up to a full second ultimately this would never be used in speed runs it's simply too difficult the chances of getting to the end on record pace and then pulling off this insane kill are way too low but it did open the door to a no hit run and showed that it was at least theoretically achievable in practice though it was essentially still considered impossible which might sound strange given that it was actually successfully done however there is a big big difference between grinding the same trick over and over again using a save state and managing to pull it off first try at the end of a 15 or 20 minute no damage run there are plenty of strategies that exist that are humanly possible but will likely never be performed in a real speed run one of the most well-known examples is the infamous carpetless strategy in super mario 64. in the rainbow ride stage you can get the star big house in the sky without riding the carpet it was a theoretical strategy that might save almost a minute in 120 star speed runs but it was only something that had been done in tool assisted playthroughs in 2019 the speedrunner zaya became the first person to ever successfully perform the strategy in single star attempts but does that mean it will now be implemented in full game runs no definitely not and there are very few people that think it ever will for all intents and purposes a no damage ninja gaiden run was still out of the question but several years later in august of 2020 the question was asked again this time in the twitch chat of slackinator a speedrunner that holds multiple world records and specializes in classic nes titles slackinator was provided a clip of arcus performing the demon head kill three years earlier in 2017. being a fan of video game challenges he decided to investigate the feasibility of a true 100 percent no damage ninja gaiden run he began work on practicing the mash and made the commitment that if he was able to successfully kill the head one out of every 20 tries he would officially commence attempts at the first legitimate damageless run three months later he was ready and in november would begin routing throughout this video i've been focusing on the final boss fight but the rest of the run is still incredibly difficult aside from the dubious video uploaded in 2012 no one had been able to complete a full damageless run in a single setting just getting to the final boss fight at all is extremely difficult but slakinator would need to do it many times due to how insane the final kill is he needed to be able to complete a run not only consistently but also relatively quickly as if each attempt was too long the grind would simply be too drawn out on november 25th he would get his first completion taking only a single hit from the demon head oh one hit away there is there is ninja gaiden beaten with one damage two weeks later on december 9th he would get the first demon head kill in a no hit run in history [Music] yes oh [ __ ] we got shrimp we got the freaking oh my god we got them no oh i don't care at this point oh we got the mash in a run oh unfortunately getting the kill isn't the only thing you need to worry about the projectiles being thrown by the demon can hit you while performing the mash so even if you do everything perfectly you can still get unlucky and in this case that's exactly what happened he did kill the head but was hit by a single projectile immediately afterwards which was unavoidable slackinator wouldn't be dissuaded after two more weeks of grinding on the 23rd of december he would do this i did it okay all right just relax the first ever freaking oh my god it happened it was the first try today oh i am just freaking out shaking calm down oh my god it happened oh i never thought it was gonna happen guys i truly did not believe i was gonna be able to do that for the first time in over 30 years one of the most notoriously difficult games ever made had been defeated in perfect fashion an accomplishment that was considered to be humanly impossible until the very day it was done a huge congratulations to slackinator and i highly recommend you go and throw him a follow over on twitch let me know in the comments if you want to see more video game challenges like this one featured on this channel personally i would really love to start delving more into no hit runs and other crazy feats as always thank you so much for watching you legends i hope you are having a fantastic day and i will see you in the next video you

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 1,715,363

Keywords: nintendo, NES, karl jobst, nintendo speedrun, speedrun, speedrun news, retro gaming, classic gaming, gaming documentary, speedrun world record, ninja gaiden, no hit run, nintendo entertainment system, nes

Id: R12g8HbeHtc

Length: 16min 47sec (1007 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/NeedlenoseMusic]

I believe there is either dark magic present or someone sold their soul for a resounding price.

[u/EyeAintComplainin]

This was a well made video, mini-documentary of sorts.

Do I care about the no-hit run in that game? Not really.

But I was super drawn in and invested, even anxious for the guy.

Congrats to this guy. fantastic.

[u/somery]

I gave up on trying to speedrun this game because of the cancel slashes and wall climbs. It's not easy. This is really impressive.

[u/bitsandglory]

My initial thought before watching the video was, "How are they getting past the head". Crazy stuff.

[u/bryce_engineer]

Insane.

[u/El-Hombre-Azul]

Woow

[u/NICH3664]

The patience, amazing

[u/stosyfir]

6 year old me is super extra special double whammy jealous.

[u/Outrageousclaim]

God damn that’s amazing