Ninja Gaiden NES Review | "Is It Fun?" | NESComplex

on this episode of is it fun we're gonna be talking about ninja gaiden guy Dan there are thousands of classic wait stop wait a minute go back of course it's fun why do I even ask I love Ninja Gaiden most people love Ninja Gaiden but after you watch this video I want you to have an even greater appreciation for this NES classic by the time Ninja Gaiden arrived in March of 1989 there were already tons of fantastic titles on the NES but something was different about this one the ninja theme tight controls cinema scenes soundtrack and its notoriously brutal difficulty so many things set it above its competition one thing that didn't was it's kind of weird commercial if you actually pay attention beyond the dad eating popcorn and the mom knitting or whatever the kid actually sneaks out of his bedroom goes downstairs and takes the game from the kitchen counter he obviously got in trouble and had it taken away wait Ninja Gaiden what is this game actually called in Japan it's called ninja ryukenden which translates legend of the ninja dragon sword but NES games have to have confusing hard to pronounce titles Astyanax [Music] so in north america it was renamed ninja gaiden which clueless kids like myself always pronounced as Gaiden gaiden means something like side story' which is really weird because it's not a side story' it's the first game in the series and no the lesser-known ninja gaiden beat him up arcade game doesn't count as the first game it came out only two months earlier some territories censored the word ninja as such a word would turn otherwise wholesome children into ill-mannered deviants so in some places ninja ryukenden gaiden gaiden was called shadow warriors which actually sounds and looks kinda better no matter how you slice it ninjas are awesome and in the 80s with ninja movies and characters like Snake Eyes and storm shadow from GI Joe everyone seemed to think so almost so to have a non stop action ninja game as polished and slick as ninja gaiden was every kid's dream come true since you play as a ninja tight controls are necessary and must respond immediately to every finger twitch while there are some minor annoyances with jumping and knock-back damage ninja guidance controls are near perfection Ryu runs with intensity jumps with flair and his sword strikes are instant and explosive Tecmo rounded out his ninja skill set with wall clinging and secondary weapons like ninja stars the windmill throwing star which boomerangs around until you catch it the art of the fire wheel and screw attack wait wrong game jump in / technique whatever these secondary attacks consume spiritual strength for ninpo which can be replenished by collecting red and blue symbol squares found when breaking streetlights lanterns and inside little bird intestines and spiders and bugs for some reason slashing these open is vital as you'll also find weapons the invincibility fire wheel and a health object which for some reason reminded twelve-year-old me of a uterus with breakable floating item drops and up and B's secondary weapons it plays a lot like Castlevania but it takes the 8-bit action formula up a notch making everything quicker more explosive and absolutely non-stop sometimes I feel sorry for the enemies like this weird goblin hag thing just standing there all day pacing back and forth throwing things the Jockey only pays like 750 an hour how did my life come to this I'm just a stupid stupid circus freak crony just throwing these over and over how did she climb up there she can barely walk and these poor guys entire existence seems to be running off cliffs another standout in ninja gaiden is level variety Ryu scales mountains and crosses bridges and slices his way through Galesburg City Crystal Lake the snow-capped lizard mountains the Amazon rainforest and half a dozen more beautiful environments spread across six action-packed stages or as Tecmo thematically branded them acts in a move that changed the landscape of video games storytelling they gave the game a cinematic feel which they termed Tecmo theater with cinema display boasting the use of movie techniques like close-ups and different camera angles but they had to work within the confines of the NES hardware so they opted for dynamic comic-book style stills and splash screens as a kid I never understood the story or actually cared what was happening I mean I liked that it had cutscenes but I never actually bothered to read them but now as an adult I was curious what the heck is this game about without giving anything away there are a lot of twists turns ambiguous loyalties side characters with croissant hair and believe it or not strong similarities to Star Wars but at its core it's about a psycho named Gardea damn you aka the Jackie O Jackie O jock who you Oh Jackie oh well whatever he wants to bring to cursed artifacts statues together and resurrect an ancient evil demon to destroy the world you know the huge the pacing was geared for barely literate children which makes it feel slow I am off you will never get past me then I must defeat you okay you are as bold as your father but he is a much better swordsman okay go to the next part go but the story is solid especially for an NES game illustrator Masato Kato who later worked on Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 7 expertly conveyed the story with over 20 minutes of cutscenes that are iconic and memorable to this day all these dramatic comic like cutscenes and bugs slashing spin jumping actions are accompanied by an unbelievably good soundtrack ninja gaiden does what all masterpiece games do it uses music to accentuate the graphics so you can almost feel what you're seeing action sequences feel relentlessly intense [Music] while the cinema scenes feel more emotional with mystery intrigue and sadness fitting whatever the scene requires [Music] by far the biggest complaint people have about Ninja Gaiden is its difficulty the box says it's the fight of your life and they mean it I literally died playing this I got better danger is everywhere and often weird boxers monkeys machine gunners punk rockers this thing that thing again and no one respects my talents oh and even knows I bake delicious pies and of course the dreaded bats and birds that swoop around erratically killing you often you're gonna get used to this sound the birds wouldn't be so bad on their own but Ninja Gaiden also has a notorious respawning issue it's coded such the enemies spawn as you cross certain trigger points on the map but the problem is they spawn every time sometimes infinitely to make matters worse still collisions result in knock-back which sometimes pushes you down one of the many pits and sometimes forces you across a trigger point respawning another copy of the enemy that just hit you and enemies are deviously placed in precarious locations forcing you to strategize your jumps sword strikes and which secondary weapon you should have brought to each situation planning and memorization are not options they are mandatory fortunately you have infinite continues and thankfully when you do continue you begin at the beginning of the sublevel rather than the beginning of the entire level usually you see there was a programming mistake if you die even once against any of the final three boss forms and trust me you will die it won't matter that you've completed all three sub levels of the temple of darkness you'll be sent back to death bridge at six more darkness and this mistake was discovered before release oh darn ee darn but the designers chose intentionally to leave it in just to make kids cry so if you play it long enough your thumbs will either bleed out or become muscular basically you have to be a Jedi to complete it either that or Han Solo I mean Hans lo the Nintendo counselor who claimed he finished ninja gaiden without looking at the screen right so yes it's difficult but I learned to approach each situation as a puzzle how do I use my ninja skills to navigate the platforms and enemies and get to the next challenge there's a great satisfaction in completing a challenging game like Ninja Gaiden and once you master the patterns and quicks wit second actions you'll actually feel like a ninja playing it even though Ninja Gaiden is almost unanimously revered by retro gamers I think we forget how much of a landmark game it really is its cinematic storytelling changed video games forever the soundtrack was one of the first to truly match visuals with musical moods the responsive controls and fast twitch intensity set the bar for action titles and with multiple sequels across multiple systems it was only the beginning ninja gaiden takes us back to what made games on the NES so fun and that pure action fun is still inspiring games today thanks for watching see you next [Music]

Channel: NESComplex

Views: 23,056

Rating: 4.9563003 out of 5

Keywords: NESComplex, NES, Complex, NES games, NES Review, Nintendo games, Nintendo Review, Is it fun?, Ninja Gaiden NES Review, Ninja NES, Ninja, Gaiden, Generation Gap Gaming, nintendo, ninja gaiden nes music, ninja gaiden nes cutscenes, Ninja gaiden 2, ninja gaiden 3, ninja gaiden gameplay, tecmo, retro games, nes platformer, ninja ryukenden, shadow warriors, shadow warriors nes, ninja gaiden (video game), Retro Quest, Ninja Gaiden NES, Ninja Gaiden Retrospective, Pixel Game Squad

Id: 8_FD5iC36wc

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2019

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