Ninja Gaiden
1988/1992 Tecmo/Sega Sega Master System Ninja Gaiden is a 2D platform game originally released in 1988. This version of Ninja Gaiden differs from the original release and follows a different story, however, it still features the same protagonist, Ryu. The story of Ninja Gaiden revolves around Ryu retrieving the all-powerful Bushido scroll from the Shogun of Darkness. The game of Ninja Gaiden itself is pretty long, consisting of 7 levels, plus the final fight with the Shogun himself. Each of the 7 levels is broken down into various different sections involving different obstacles for Ryu to overcome, with every level ending with a boss fight ranging from exceptionally easy, to quite frustrating. Ryu must travel through forests, caves, icy wastes and Tokyo itself before fighting his way to the Shogun of Darkness’ castle for the final showdown. During his travels, Ryu meets many different types of enemies and platform puzzles which require some thought and practice to overcome at times with the final boss fight still holding up well as a particularly tough fight. The graphics of Ninja Gaiden have held up very well over the years with Ninja Gaiden still looking quite pretty and as it was released in 1992, it is at the cutting edge of 8-bit technology, being much sleeker and tidied up from its 1988 counterpart. However, one of the downsides to Ninja Gaiden is the fact that Sega recycled a lot of the same features throughout each level giving not just a familiarity and déja vu, but more of a ‘really, this bit again’. This aside, each level with Ninja Gaiden is very pretty, in particular the Castle of the Shogun of Darkness has a lot of detail in the background art and the best example of this is when Ryu is fighting his way through the outside towards the inside and you can clearly see that the Castle is in disrepair. As can be expected, Ninja Gaiden has very Japanese influences on the music that plays throughout each level and can draw parallels with the likes of previous games of this genre such as Shinobi. The music is very orientated towards that 1970s martial arts movie style through the 8bit sound and does a decent job at removing the focus from the rather repetitive and common sound effects of this era in gaming. Ninja Gaiden is a decent, challenging platform game and still holds up really well today. The main issue with the gameplay is that sometimes it is difficult to get Ryu to turn around very quickly, which can be a tad frustrating at times, especially with the boss on the ice level. This aside, Ninja Gaiden has really good replayability and is a fantastic example of a game that could easily overshadow a lot of games ahead of it. 7/10 Adam
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