Cheap Ninja Gaiden (Video Games) (Nintendo NES) Price

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Customer Reviews of Ninja Gaiden

Graphics: Pretty typical for the NES. Thankfully, glitching is kept to a minimum. 3.5/5

Play Control: Just like Castlevania, but the action is faster-paced, and you have midair jump control (thank god!) 4.5

Challenge: The game's greatest weakness. This is one of the HARDEST games on the NES. If you die, you get to restart on the screen you were on when you died, but if you die while fighting a boss, you have to start the whole stage over!? Also, due to very poor planning on the behalf of the programmers, many enemies reappear right after you kill them! And whenever an enemy hits you, you get tossed back, sometimes to your death! Lack of passwords or batteries doesn't help things either. To call this game hard would be an understatement. 5/5

Theme/Fun: This is a fun game overall (the cinema scenes are a nice touch), but the game is just too difficult! Normally I don't have difficulty detract from this category, but I had to make a huge exception here. 3.5/5

Storyline: Avenge your fallen father's death. Simple and to the point - just like all game stories should be. 4/5

Sound/Music: The sounds are pretty generic, but this game features some of the BEST music on the NES! 4.25/5

Originality: The game borrows a lot from Castlevania, but for the most part is fairly unique. 3.5/5

Replay Value: Once again, this category is derailed by the game's difficulty. 2/5

Overall Score: 3.25/5
This is a good game, but I can't stress the difficulty enough. If you must play this game, play it on an emulator so that you can save your progress, a benefit the programmers robbed you of.

Cinematics on your NES! Really.
Now with the understatement of the decade, let's look at this title in more depth. The original Ninja Gaiden is still one of the best titles available on the NES. Games of this era were generally quite hard, since sheer difficulty was generally the main way a developer created replay value. That said, this game is as hard--perhaps harder at times--as Ghosts n' Goblins, making it arguably one of the toughest games out there. Unlike Gn'G, though, this difficulty is due to the tightly patterned design of the levels and enemy attacks that must be faced rather than randomness or poor programming.

For such a small program (256K,) this title does a highly recommendable job with the graphics. Stylish, very well orchestrated and designed cutscenes make the most of tight restrictions; the title screen is quite impressive for the NES as it leads right into the cutscene as a good movie might. Most levels are packed with layered scrolling backgrounds giving a great sense of depth, though this isn't evident from playing the first level (a rather odd version of late 1980s America, complete with biker guys wielding clubs and gun-toting punk rockers). It is easy to see how some might consider this a Castlevania ripoff--coming slightly more than two years after the original 1986 Famicom Disk System version of that game, this one has a sidescrolling perspective, special weapons work in a similar way and, most importantly, are often found inside lanterns! It is a very shallow comparison, however. Ninja Gaiden has you leaping all about the place with stunning speed--you grasp walls and bounce off street signs to get to high places, and the general emphasis is on getting There, wherever that might be, instead of beating whatever is in your way to bits.

Sound is actually quite good. Across the board there are a couple outstanding tunes, and you won't be getting any headaches soon from this game's music.

This game (even more than most 16 bit titles) has a sense of scale and depth that few others even begin to compete with. Ninja Gaiden moves you across the world on a quest of such scale that it's hard to put a finger on it--demons, the CIA, and traditional Japanese virtue all have their place here.

AWESOME game, one of the reasons why the NES is great!

For those of you that are "new gamers" and don't remember this series, this first game was one of the defining entries in the NES system and one of the reasons why the NES is considered one of the greatest systems ever. You play the role of Ryu Hayabusa, a ninja, and battle your way through levels and eventually must take the two demon stones away from Jaquio, the main bad guy.

The graphics were ok, but what made the game different were the animated cut scenes inbetween the "acts" (a.k.a. stages). I don't know if this was the first game to use them, but because of this game, many games thereafter did. The gameplay and controls are for the most part awesome.

Let me tell you, though, THIS GAME IS HARD. Time and time again, I have stated that the old NES games (at least the ones from 1985-1990) were made to [beat you]. This game is one of the reasons why. There's no spoonfeeding here; it takes a lot of patience and effort to defeat this game.

Overall, this is a CLASSIC. Simply fantastic. While the passwords in the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy (...) provided a relief for the game, it's still nothing in comparison to playing the original NES version... no passwords. Fun and difficult, the way a game was meant to be.