"Ninjas, Thousands Of Them..."

One of the classic games for the NES was Ninja Gaiden, an action/platformer, released in 1989. Unfortunately, there hasn't been true sequel for over ten years, since Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom, but the release of Ninja Gaiden for X-Box will finally bring the ninja hero back into the limelight. In truth, Ninja Gaiden was actually a breakthrough in the video game world; rarely did games have cutscenes, and they weren't as plot forwarding as the ones in Ninja Gaiden were. Not only that, but the plot made sense and the cutscenes were of pretty high quality.

Ninja Gaiden is the story of Ryu Hayabusa, son of Ken Hayabusa and member of the Dragon Clan. During the introduction to the game, Ken is seen being beaten in a duel with another ninja, and he is presumed dead. Back at their home in Japan, Ryu finds a note from his father that explains where he has gone. The note also says that there is a distinct possibility that he, Ken, may not return to Japan alive, and that if this happens, Ryu must travel to America to meet one of Ken's acquaintances, Walter Smith. Ryu, fearing the worst, takes the family's sword, The Dragon Sword, and heads to the States to obey his father's last request.

In the U.S., Ryu is attacked by a barrage of street thugs, and then meets a young woman in a bar. After yelling at the woman to leave, she instead decides to gun down the ninja, knocking him unconscious. When he wakes up, Ryu is alone in a prison cell, where the same young woman meets him. She unlocks the door, gives him a strange statue, and tells him to escape. Not having any better ideas, Ryu does what he's told. Now Ryu has to survive long enough to meet with Walter Smith, avenge his father, and figure out the mystery of the strange statue…

The visuals in Ninja Gaiden are fantastic, they were considered amazing at the time. Plus, the three-dimensional view that allowed Ryu to interact with the backgrounds, like walls and pillars, was amazing. The levels are nice and varied; they include a city, snowy mountains, a jungle, a lake, and even a mine. Although most of them are interesting, some of them can become irritating, namely the jungle level. Everything is green, which includes the enemies; things just blend together too well. Other than that, however, the graphics are top notch, as are the enemy designs. Even if there are only a dozen basic enemies, they all look great. The bosses on the other hand, are awesome; the Bloody Malth, Jaquio, and the Demon in particular look incredible. Ryu himself looks pretty cool, or at least looks like what you'd expect from a ninja. But the cutscenes are what makes Ninja Gaiden's graphics so memorable; they are quite simply, stunning. The characters look amazing, they, as well as everything else, are very detailed and the way the angel shifts gives the scenes almost a comic book feel to them.

Like the graphics, the soundtrack featured in Ninja Gaiden is a high point, almost all of the tunes are memorable and you'll often finding yourself humming one of them while you play. The sound effects were surprisingly good too, for that matter. I liked the slash sound that Ryu's sword made when it didn't make contact with anything, and the explosions that bosses made when they died were pretty cool as well.

For the most part, Ninja Gaiden has pretty solid controls, but there's one exception to this. Ryu can't automatically climb walls once he's on one. In order to complete a number of the jumping puzzles in the game, you either need to jump between two walls to create a zigzag pattern, or, if a wall wasn't readily available, you'd need to jump out and quickly reverse direction before falling down. Not only did this take practice, but also it quickly became tiring; especially when you're near the top and you jumped wrong and fell back down to the bottom. And the fact that Ryu can't jump backwards makes it even more frustrating; not to mention that sometimes a falcon or any other of the more irritating enemies are attacking you; flying ninjas that throw shurikens anyone?

Thankfully, the rest of the controls are fairly smooth, there is almost no sense of jerky movements or delayed reactions, although Ryu is left pretty helpless when attacking in mid-air. Also, when he lands after attacking in the air, he pauses for a split second, and this is usually the time an enemy comes over and knocks me off of a cliff. Yeah, the hit-back problem is a major pain in the ass, seventy-five percent of the time it's going to be the reason you get killed.

As for the challenge, Ninja Gaiden is one of the classically difficult Nintendo games out there, and by “classically”, I mean “insanely”. Besides Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ninja Gaiden was the only other game that I just couldn't complete. It took me an entire summer to beat it, mostly because as soon as I reached the sixth act, I wouldn't be able to play the game without swearing at the TV. It just becomes insane, flying ninjas throwing shurikens at you, guys throwing maces, axes, and knifes from the ground, hawks, turrets, and many, many small platforms with enemies already crowding it. And you can't hang on the side of these platforms, so mistiming a jump or being hit, even once, will usually send you plummeting to your death. To make matters worse, the enemy re-spawn problem plagues this level especially, meaning that the same enemy can attack you dozens of times because your just off out of range and it keeps returning. It comes to the point where there are so many enemies being thrown at you that it becomes impossible to effectively attack them, without being killed or sustaining heavy damage.

Thankfully, there are unlimited continues, and even if you get game over you begin at whatever level you were up to, instead of the beginning of the act. There is, however, one exception to the rule, which takes place at level 6-4, the final area. In it, you fight the final three bosses, and needless to say I was thrilled to finally get to the end after nearly killing myself over 6-1 through 6-3. After defeating the first boss, I began the second, but was killed. To my horror, I found myself back at the first level in the act, and I hadn't even gotten game over! I became so enraged that I just turned the game off, dropped the controller, and didn't play my Nintendo for a month. Finally, almost two months later I decided that I would beat the game in Malcolm X style: By any means necessary. After spending over an hour on Act six, which was more than double the amount of time I had spent on the rest of the game, I finally managed to beat the game. And, I have to say, the ending was incredible; whether or not it was worth the hell I went through is a different story.

It's true that Ninja Gaiden is almost perfect, but the few flaws that is does have are just so irritating that it may seem a lot worse than it really is. It has everything that you would come to expect from a classic game; awesome graphics, great music, an intense plot, and near perfect controls, but the enemy re-spawn, the jumping puzzles, particularly in the sixth act, and the wall climb problem just keeps the game from being as fun or as memorable as it should be. It's a great game, but it just can't compete with games like Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos, which is a much better game; not only because it's more balanced than its predecessor, but most of the little problems that I had with the first have been fixed.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/20/03, Updated 08/16/04