Ninja Gaiden

Plot

In Japan, Ninja Ryu Hayabusa finds a letter by his father, Ken, who was seemingly killed in a duel by an unknown assailant. In the letter, Ken instructs his son to find an archeologist named Walter Smith in America. Ryu travels to the nation, but before he can find Dr. Smith, he is shot and kidnapped by a mysterious young woman; she hands him a demonic-looking statue before releasing him. Ryu then sees Walter, who tells him of the demon statues he and Ken had found in some ruins in the Amazon. Walter tells Ryu of an evil demon named Jashin that "SHINOBI" defeated, whose power was confined into "Light" and "Shadow" demon statues. Ryu shows Walter the "Shadow" demon statue given to him by the woman, but during their conversation, a masked figure named Basaquer suddenly breaks into the cabin and steals the Shadow statue. Ryu gives chase, defeats Basaquer, and retrieves the statue, but when he returns, he finds Walter mortally wounded and the Light statue is missing. As Walter dies in his arms, three armed men apprehend Ryu and take him with them.

Ryu is taken to an interrogation room, where he meets agent Foster, head of the Special Auxiliary Unit of the Central Intelligence Agency who denies being responsible for Smith's death. He explains that years ago, a more-than-2000-year-old temple was discovered by Dr. Smith in the Amazon, of which he mysteriously sealed. The Special Auxiliary Unit has been monitoring the activity of Guardia de Mieux, also known as "the Jaquio", who recently moved into the temple where the body of the demon was confined. Using the statues, the Jaquio plans to awaken Jashin and use it to destroy the world.

Ryu is flown to the north-west corner of Brazil, where he is dropped off in a parachute in the jungle near the temple. He discovers the Jaquio has captured the girl who handed him the "Shadow" statue earlier. He orders Ryu to give up the demon statue after threatening the girl's life, then drops Ryu through a trapdoor and into a catacomb.

After fighting his way back to the top of the temple, Ryu encounters Bloody Malth, whom he defeats. As he is dying, Malth reveals that he was the one who dueled with Ken, who is still alive.

When he reaches the temple's inner chambers, he discovers his father under Jaquio's control as the Masked Devil. He destroys a crystal orb on the temple chamber wall that was controlling Ken and releases him from Jaquio's hold. An enraged Jaquio shows himself and tries to kill Ryu with a fiery projectile, but Ken throws himself in front of Ryu and takes the hit. Ryu subsequently kills Jaquio, but then a lunar eclipse causes the demon statues to revive Jashin. After Ryu defeats the demon, a dying Ken tells Ryu to leave him behind in the temple while it collapses, and to take the young woman with him. Afterwards, Foster, communicating via satellite, orders the girl to kill Ryu and steal the demon statues; she chooses to be with Ryu instead of carrying out the order. The two kiss, and the woman tells Ryu her name, Irene Lew; they watch as the sun rises.

Gameplay

Ninja Gaiden is a side-scrolling platform game in which the player takes control of the player-character, Ryu Hayabusa, and guides him through six "Acts" that comprise 20 levels. A life meter represents Ryu's physical strength, which decreases when he is hit by an enemy or projectile. A "life" is lost when the life meter is depleted entirely, when Ryu falls off the screen, or when the timer runs out. A game over screen appears when all lives are lost; however, the player may restart the level where this occurred by continuing. At the end of every Act, the player fights a boss; bosses have life meters depleted by player attacks. When its life meter is depleted entirely, a boss is defeated. Each boss is one of the "Malice Four"—evil underlings of the Jaquio, the game's main antagonist. The Malice Four consist of Barbarian, Bomberhead, Basaquer, and their leader Bloody Malth.

Players attack enemies by thrusting at them with Ryu's Dragon Sword—a katana-like sword passed down by the Hayabusa clan for generations. They can also use secondary weapons that consume Ryu's "spiritual strength". These include throwing stars, "windmill throwing stars", which cut through enemies and return like boomerangs, a series of twirling fireballs named "the art of the fire wheel", and a mid-air slashing technique called the "jump & slash". When Ryu's spiritual strength meter is too low, the player cannot use secondary weapons. Players can replenish Ryu's spiritual strength by collecting red and blue "spiritual strength" items found in lamps and lanterns. Other items found along the way include hourglasses that freeze all enemies and projectiles for five seconds, bonus point containers, potions that restore six units of physical strength, "invincible fire wheels" that make Ryu temporarily invincible to attacks and 1-ups.

Ryu can jump on and off ladders and walls, and by using the directional pad, he can climb up or down ladders. Ryu can spring off walls by holding the directional pad in the opposite direction he is facing and pressing the jump button. He cannot attack while on walls or ladders. Players can use this technique to get Ryu to climb up spaces between walls and columns by holding down the jump button and alternating between left and right on the directional pad. He can also climb a single wall vertically by springing off it and then quickly pressing the directional pad back towards the wall.

Ninja Gaiden's highly responsive, fast-paced gameplay is achieved through the use of limited animation techniques that use fewer frames for animation. For example, the walk cycle animation only used four frames, while contemporary games like Prince of Persia required 12 frames.

Development

Ninja Gaiden was developed and released around the same time as the beat 'em up arcade version of the same name; neither of the games were ports of each other but were parallel projects developed by different teams. According to developer Masato Kato (listed as "Runmaru" in the game's credits), the term "ninja" was gaining popularity in North America, prompting Tecmo to develop a ninja-related game for the NES at the same time the arcade version of Ninja Gaiden was being developed. Hideo Yoshizawa (listed as "Sakurazaki") developed and directed the NES version. Ninja Gaiden was Masato Kato's first full-time project as a video-game designer, and he contributed the game's graphics, animations and instruction-manual illustrations.

Drawing inspiration from the Mario series, Yoshizawa kept the same title but changed everything else; it became a platform game as opposed to a beat 'em up such as Double Dragon, and the gameplay was modeled after Konami's Castlevania, with Ryu being equipped with a katana-like Dragon Sword, shurikens, and ninpo techniques such as fire wheels. In designing the protagonist Ryu Hayabusa, the development team wanted him to be unique from other ninjas. They designed him with a ninja vest to place emphasis on his muscles, and they furnished him with a cowl that arched outward. They originally wanted to equip Ryu with sensors and a helmet with an inside monitor to check his surroundings, but that idea was scrapped. According to Kato, they used specific locations and environments to justify the need for having a ninja for a main character. A further concern, according to Yoshizawa, was to appeal to the gameplay-oriented expectations of Ninja Gaiden's target audience, mainly represented by experienced players who appreciated challenging game design. He recalled that during development, Tecmo adhered to "the philosophy that the user would throw a game away if it wasn't hard enough". As a result, Yoshizawa decided to give the game an overall high level of difficulty.

Yoshizawa placed greater emphasis on the story, unlike the arcade version, and wrote and designed a plot that included over 20 minutes of cinematic cutscenes—the first time an NES game contained such sequences. Yoshizawa stated that the adoption of this presentational style came from his earlier aspiration for a career in commercial filmmaking, which led him to seek an opportunity "to put in a movie somehow". His idea was to reverse the then-prevailing trend wherein the narrative aspects of contemporary NES games were undervalued by consumers with the inclusion of an interesting plot that could engage those players. Tecmo called the cutscene system "Tecmo Theater" in which the game reveals the storyline between Acts through the use of animated sequences. They are used at the beginning of each Act to introduce new characters such as Irene Lew, Walter Smith, and the Jaquio. This feature uses techniques such as close-ups, alternate camera angles, differing background music, and sound effects to make the game more enjoyable for players. Unlike earlier titles such as Final Fantasy, the cutscenes consisted of large anime art on the top half of the screen with dialogue on the bottom half. This made the artistic style more reminiscent of manga titles such as Lupin III and Golgo 13. Dimitri Criona, Tecmo USA's director of sales and marketing, said that console games had an advantage over arcade games in that they allowed the creation of a longer game and the inclusion of cutscenes, which Tecmo trademarked as "cinema screens". He noted console games required a different reward structure than arcade games. The game contains a feature that was originally a glitch but was left in the final game intentionally, according to Masato Kato; having lost to any of the game's last three bosses, the player is sent back to the beginning of the sixth act.

Marketing and release

Tecmo first announced the Famicom version of the game in Family Computer Magazine on January 15, 1988, under the title Ninja Gaiden (which would later be used for the game's American version). The game was released in Japan on December 9, 1988, under its final title Ninja Ryūkenden, which roughly translates to Legend of the Dragon Sword.

Since the game's title was deemed too difficult for English audiences to read, it was renamed when it was released in Western markets. In early 1988 advertisements from Nintendo Fun Club News, Tecmo used Ninja Dragon as a tentative title for the U.S. release. They decided to use the title Ninja Gaiden (its original working title) when the game was released in the U.S. in March 1989. The title literally means "Ninja Side-Story", but the game was not intended as a spin-off of any prior work. According to an interview with developer Masato Kato, when deciding how to translate "Ryukenden" into English, the staff chose Ninja Gaiden "because it sounded cool". In Europe, the game released on August 15, 1991. It was retitled as Shadow Warriors—just as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was renamed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles—as ninjas were considered a taboo subject in Europe. It was one of many ninja-related video games around the time, such as The Legend of Kage, Ninja Warriors, and Shinobi.

Upon Ninja Gaiden's North American release, Nintendo of America, whose play-testers liked the game and gave it high ratings, decided to help with its marketing. Nintendo's house organ Nintendo Power featured it prominently. According to Criona, it did not take a lot of effort to market the game through the magazine, nor did Tecmo or Nintendo do much else to promote it. Ninja Gaiden received strong publicity in Nintendo Power in 1989 and 1990. Ninja Gaiden received preview coverage in the January–February 1989 issue of Nintendo Power in its "Pak Watch" section. It "got the highest marks of any title ... [the magazine's staff had] seen in a long time". It was expected to be No. 1 on their "Player's Poll" quickly. The preview compared Ryu's ability to climb and spring off walls to the gameplay in Metroid. It was featured on the cover of the magazine's March–April 1989 issue and was referenced in the following issue in a Howard and Nester comic strip. It was one of the featured games in both March–April and May–June 1989 issues of the magazine; both issues included a walkthrough up to the fifth Act, a review, and a plot overview. Underlining the game's difficulty, it appeared in several issues in the magazine's "Counselor's Corner" and "Classified Information" help sections.

Ports

Nintendo released an arcade version for the PlayChoice-10 on July 15, 1989.

A PC Engine port of Ninja Ryūkenden was produced in 1992, published by Hudson Soft and released only in Japan. It features more colorful and detailed graphics, along with difficulty and gameplay tweaks and a different soundtrack. This version also supports three different language settings with Japanese, English and Chinese as the available options. However, the English translation used in this version differs from the one used in the earlier NES version.

Ninja Gaiden appeared as a remake of the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy compilation for the Super NES in 1995. Some reviewers appreciated the redrawn graphics and music in this version, but others found them to be an inadequate effort. Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewers compared it unfavorably to another updated NES remake, Mega Man: The Wily Wars for the Sega Genesis; they called the version "an exact port-over with no noticeable enhancements in graphics, sound and play control". Along with the other two games in the Ninja Gaiden trilogy, the SNES version was featured as an unlockable game in Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox.

The NES version was released on Wii's Virtual Console on April 10, 2007, in Japan and on May 14 in North America. Europeans, Australians, and New Zealanders were able to purchase the game as part of "Hanabi Festival" on September 21. The PC Engine version was released for Virtual Console in Japan on April 21, 2009. The NES version was also released for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, with an original release date set for November 8, 2012, but was delayed until December 13. The NES version was released on Wii U's Virtual Console in 2014. The game was also re-released as part of the NES Classic Edition dedicated console in November 2016, and for the Nintendo Switch in December 2018 as part of the Nintendo Classics service.

Related media

In July 1990 Scholastic Corporation published a novelization of Ninja Gaiden under the Worlds of Power series of NES game adaptations, created and packaged by Seth Godin under the pseudonym F. X. Nine. Godin and Peter Lerangis, under the pseudonym A. L. Singer, wrote the novelization. As with the other Worlds of Power books, the amount of violence present in the video game was toned down in the novelization, because Godin and Scholastic were concerned that some of the material in the video game was inappropriate for a young audience. The novel did not adhere strictly to the game's storyline; for instance, the ending was changed so that Ryu's father survived. Godin believed the revised ending was consistent with the Worlds of Power character. As real-life fathers Godin and Lerangis were reluctant to leave Ryu fatherless. On the book's cover, otherwise a copy of the North American box art, the kunai held in Ryu's front hand was airbrushed out, leaving him prodding the air with an empty fist.

Pony Canyon released a soundtrack CD, Ninja Ryukenden: Tecmo GSM-1, in February 1989. The first half of the CD starts with an arranged medley of the game's music. It continues with enhanced versions of the game's music which used stereophonic sound and additional PCM channels. The rest of the CD features music from the arcade version. In 2017, Brave Wave Productions released a vinyl box set, Ninja Gaiden- the Definitive Soundtrack, mastered by original composer Keiji Yamagishi.

Reception

Commercial performance

While moderately successful in Japan, the game was significantly more successful in North America, where it became a major commercial hit. According to Tecmo USA's Dimitri Criona, high demand led to repeated orders for Ninja Gaiden in increments of 60,000 cartridges per order. On the Computer Entertainer video game charts, it reached number three by August 1989 (below Super Mario Bros. 2 and Blaster Master). On the Toy & Hobby World charts, it was the second top-selling video game by October 1989 (below Zelda II). On the Famitsu USA charts, it was the second top-selling NES game by December 1989 (below Tetris).

Ninja Gaiden went on to sell about 300,000 units in Japan and 1.5 million units in the United States, for a total of over 1.8 million cartridges sold worldwide. Reflecting on his career as a game designer, Yoshizawa considered Ninja Gaiden–along with Klonoa: Door to Phantomile–his proudest accomplishment, explaining that the title enjoyed the best sales performance out of all of his projects.

Critical reception

The game debuted at No. 3 on Nintendo Power's Top 30 list for July–August 1989, behind Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Super Mario Bros. 2; it stayed at No. 3 in the September–October 1989 issue. The Nintendo Power Awards '89 featured the game as one of the top games that year. It was nominated for Best Graphics and Sound, Best Challenge, Best Theme, Fun, Best Character (Ryu Hayabusa), Best Ending, and Best Overall; and it won for Best Challenge and Best Ending. In its preview of Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos, the magazine said that "the colorful, detailed and dynamic cinema scenes of the original Ninja Gaiden set a standard for action game narration that has since been widely emulated. These cinema scenes made Ninja Gaiden play almost like a movie."

Beyond press coverage by Nintendo Power, the game received strong reviews and publicity from other video gaming magazines upon its release. In a review from VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, the presentation and gameplay were compared to Castlevania, while the cinematic cutscenes were compared favorably to Karateka and other computer games by Cinemaware. The review praised the game's animation in these cutscenes and noted Tecmo's usage of close-ups and body movements. The reviewer said that while the cutscenes were not fluid, they were effective and entertaining and provided important information about what the player was supposed to do. He appreciated the game had unlimited continues which slightly offset its difficulty, but he criticized it for having over-detailed background graphics especially in the indoor levels, saying that some bottomless pits and items in these levels become slightly camouflaged. From July to October 1989, the game was listed at No. 1 on Electronic Gaming Monthly's Top Ten Video Games list; it fell to No. 2 on the list behind Mega Man 2 in the November issue. In their Best and Worst of 1989, it received awards for Best Game of the Year for the NES and Best Ending in a Video Game for all consoles. The staff said that Ninja Gaiden "proved to be an instant winner" with its cinematic cutscenes and unique gameplay. They added the game's climax was better than some movies' climaxes at the time and that it established continuity for a sequel, which would be released the following year. Later in June 1994, the magazine ranked it at No. 4 on a special list of Top Ten Most Difficult Games of all time for all consoles.

The July 1990 pilot issue of UK magazine Mean Machines featured Ninja Gaiden on the cover; the magazine was distributed as part of the July 1990 issue of Computer and Video Games. In its review, Julian Rignall compared the game to its beat 'em up arcade counterpart, which was titled Shadow Warriors. He noted the game has great graphics that feature diverse backgrounds and character sprites; he especially praised its use of cartoon-like animation sequences between Acts where the game's plot unfolds. He enjoyed the game's difficulty especially with the bosses, but he noted the game will seem tough at first until players become accustomed to the controls. He criticized the game for its sound, which he said did not fit with the graphics and was "racy" but added "what's there is atmospheric and suits the action". He highly recommended the game to fans of the beat 'em up and combat genres. A review in Computer Entertainer complimented the games story and "excellent animation" which they found enhanced the martial arts-themed gameplay.

Legacy

Ninja Gaiden initiated the original Ninja Gaiden game series and was followed by Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (1990), and Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (1991).

In 2004, Tecmo began releasing low-priced episodic installments of Ninja Gaiden for AT&T and Verizon mobile phones on both BREW and Java platforms. The official English Tecmo Games' mobile website advertised it for a future release along with a mobile version of Tecmo Bowl. The company planned to release the entire game throughout 2004 in a series of four installments—similar to what Upstart Games did when they ported the NES version of Castlevania to mobile phones. The port featured the same visuals and soundtrack as the NES version. Each installment was to consist of several levels of gameplay at a time. The first installment, titled Ninja Gaiden Episode I: Destiny, was released on July 15, 2004; it included only the first Act from the NES version but added two new levels. The second installment was planned to be released in North America and was previewed by GameSpot in September 2004, but it—along with the third and fourth installments—was never released.

The mobile phone port of Ninja Gaiden was met with some praise and criticism. IGN's Levi Buchanan and GameSpot's Damon Brown praised the port for its accurate translation from the NES to mobile phones, saying the gameplay, graphics, and cinematic cutscenes remain true to the NES version. They praised the game's controls, despite the omission of the ability to duck so that pressing "down" on the phone's directional pad could be used for secondary weapons; Brown said the port had better controls than most other mobile phone games at the time. They both criticized the port for its lack of sound quality, but Buchanan said this was not Tecmo's fault. In a preview of the port, GameSpot's Avery Score pointed to generally inferior American-made handsets as the reason for the sound's shortcomings.

Retro Gamer took a look back at Ninja Gaiden in its March 2004 issue, when the Xbox reboot was released. They said the game broke the mold of conventional video game titles by including a plot with cinematic cutscenes added between gameplay segments, adding that the concept of adding cinematics for a game's introduction, plot, and ending was a new concept which "naturally impressed the gaming public". The article noted the game's high level of difficulty, saying the game "threw up an immense challenge even for the veteran gamer, and almost dared you to complete it mentally and physically intact". Chris Kohler, in his 2004 book Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, said, while it was not as far-reaching as Tecmo Bowl, "it ended up revolutionizing video games with its courageous, unique, and trailblazing use of cinema scenes".