25 Gaming Experiences You Must Have Before You Die - Part IV: The NES Ninja Gaiden Trilogy

Ninja Gaiden (NES, 1988)

Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (NES, 1990)

Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (NES, 1991)

Why You Should Play It

Ninja Gaiden is a lot more important than initially apparent.
On the surface, it's an incredibly fine-tuned NES action game with an almost unprecedented level of precision. It's fast, extremely challenging, but remarkably intuitive and responsive. Within Ninja Gaiden are the genetics that spawned high-octane action games as we know them. It's unlikely that we would have ever gotten games like Devil May Cry, God of War, Bayonetta, and their ilk without Ninja Gaiden laying the groundwork for fast-paced combat tied to a flowing narrative. And its the narrative that's really worth highlighting, oddly enough.

You see, while Ninja Gaiden is an excellent action game in every respect, what really makes it dynamic is what goes on between the action. Ninja Gaiden was one of the first action games that had a story intertwined with its action segments. At the end of each stage, the plot would continue and grow in complexity (and convolution). Ryu's adventures unfold like twist-laden detective stories, full of melodrama and betrayal. It's a curious detail considering that many of its contemporaries were content with no more than a panel or two of prologue and epilogue bookending an entire game.

Now, Ninja Gaiden's narrative achievements via the “Tecmo Theater” design might seem incidental and ultimately unimportant, but consider this: the cutscenes were designed by Masato Kato. The name might not immediately strike you as familiar, but he would go on to pen some of the most celebrated and exhaustively complex stories in gaming, including Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, and Final Fantasy VII. Now, while Kato didn't actually create the story for Ninja Gaiden, the fact that his artwork was the medium by which those stories were told make him just as responsible for the success of Ninja Gaiden's plot, and it seems far too providential for the man who worked on one of the first console games to weave such a coherent and developed narrative going on to write scripts for games that pushed the boundaries of video game storytelling to be mere coincidence. Therefore, I pose that it's not too much of a stretch to give Ninja Gaiden some modicum of credit for games becoming a storytelling medium by the mid-90s.

Regardless of whether or not you think Ninja Gaiden advanced video game storytelling, one thing is abundantly and undeniably clear: Ninja Gaiden is pretty awesome. While there is some debate as to how good its two sequels are, the overall quality of the series is fairly consistent despite what you may have heard. The story definitely gets more batshit as it goes on, but the fact that it's even there is pretty dynamic considering the time. It's a series no one should miss.

Potential Barriers

Ninja Gaiden is one of the more gracefully aged games of its era. The music and graphics hold up nicely. The controls are responsive, the hit detection is fairly reliable, and while the game is certainly hard, it's not impossible. Much of the frustration comes from the diabolical enemy placement during segments with heavy platforming. Other than that, liberal deployment of power-ups and the notoriously easy bosses make Ninja Gaiden a more than passable affair.

Current Availability

NES carts for the first two Ninja Gaiden games are pretty common. Ninja Gaiden III, being released well into the SNES/Genesis era, received a much less substantial print run and will be a bit more costly, usually around $30-50 for a used cart. The three games were packaged together and rereleased on SNES with slight graphical and sound upgrades, though this “Trilogy” cart is extremely rare and often fetches multi-hundred dollar asking prices even for a loose copy. If you have a Wii, all three games are available via Virtual Console. Other than that, your best bet is going to be the XBox Ninja Gaiden, which includes all three as unlockable games. Unfortunately, you'll have to play through the entire game before you can play the NES ones. Note that you can't do this with Ninja Gaiden Black, as it only includes the arcade beat'em up Ninja Gaiden, which is an entirely different and far less awesome game.

If You Really Dig It 
So you want more high-octane, wall-jumping, slicing-and-dicing ninja action, huh? Well you're in luck, because there is certainly no shortage of games in this vein, and there are quite a few that are not only worth playing, they're nearly as integral as Ninja Gaiden itself.

Strider series
Strider (Arcade/Genesis, 1989)
Strider (NES, 1989)
Strider 2 (Arcade/PSOne, 1999)

While Ninja Gaiden favors careful planning and stage memorization, Strider is straight up, balls-to-the-wall action, typically centered around somewhat cinematic set pieces and intense boss fights. When Strider hit arcades in 1989, it was one of the most technologically impressive games of its day, and the nearly arcade-perfect port on Genesis was one of the crown jewels of the system and a major boasting point for the system during the console war. That same year, another Strider game was released for NES. It's an entirely different game (actually, it more closely resembles Ninja Gaiden than Strider) and some fans denounce it pretty strongly, but it's a pretty decent game all things considered. After that, a terrible mockery of the Strider brand was released in the form of Strider Returns, a "sequel" developed by a European team that completely missed the point of what Strider was. Sadly, this was the last we'd hear from Strider in almost ten years. In that time, Strider's only noted appearance was as a playable character in Marvel vs. Capcom. Then, finally, in 1999, a true sequel to Strider was finally released in arcades and a bit later on PSOne. Strider 2 is very brief, but quite beautiful and almost incomprehensibly fast and intense. The fact that Strider 2 comes packaged with the arcade original makes it the best option for someone trying to catch up with Capcom's legendary ninja action franchise.

Shinobi series
The Revenge of Shinobi (Genesis, 1989)
Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (Genesis, 1993)
Shinobi Legions (Saturn, 1995)

Shinobi resembles Ninja Gaiden a bit more closely than Strider. It's still all about intense ninja combat, but the pacing is a bit more deliberate and the level of difficulty involved asks the player to think about their trajectory and approach to combat. While the series has its roots in arcades prior to Ninja Gaiden, the original Shinobi and its direct successor, Shadow Dancer, are steeped in the design principles of late 80s arcades. Shinobi truly begins with The Revenge of Shinobi on Genesis, a game that came out very near the Genesis launch, whose graphics and intense action very succinctly left the 8-bit world behind. Revenge was followed nearly four years later by Shinobi III, the undisputed masterpiece of the Shinobi franchise, and one of Sega's best games overall. Shinobi III was a visual and experiential tour de force of everything the Genesis was capable of. The game pushed the limits of the Genesis hardware, both graphically and aurally, and from a design standpoint, it boasts one of the greatest adventures of the 16-bit era. As the Genesis retired and made way for the Saturn, a new Shinobi came soon thereafter. Shinobi Legions often gets a bad rep for its Mortal Kombat-style sprites comprised of digitally captured performances from live actors. But make no mistake--Shinobi Legions is a true Shinobi game in every sense. It has some great set pieces, and while the aesthetic definitely wears the look of a company conceding to a fleeting craze, the live-action cutscenes in between stages are priceless.

Shadow of the Ninja (NES, 1990)

Natsume, self-proclaimed supplier of "Serious Fun", was a small company that produced a lot of quaint, yet quality titles throughout its life-span. In the late 80s and early 90s, it produced a series of games that were similar to big NES titles and were eerily competent at emulating their success. Shadow of the Ninja is Natsume's take on Ninja Gaiden. The similarities are uncanny, so uncanny in fact, that a planned sequel to Shadow of the Ninja on Game Boy was scrapped and then transformed into a Ninja Gaiden game called Ninja Gaiden Shadow (see below).

Shatterhand (NES, 1991)

Also developed by Natsume, Shatterhand is one of the more excellent action games on the NES and definitely uses Ninja Gaiden as a template (in fact, it plays almost like a sequel to Shadow of the Ninja). Though the original Japanese version was based off of a Japanese super hero show, the game was modified for its Western release and instead you get some douche with Bret Hart sunglasses (though this also leads to what is quite possibly the greatest cover art for any NES game, ever).

Other 2D Ninja Gaiden Games
Ninja Gaiden Shadow (Game Boy, 1991)
Ninja Gaiden (Master System, 1992)
Ninja Ryukenden (Turbografx 16, 1992)

If you want a more pure 2D Ninja Gaiden experience, there are yet other titles in the Ninja Gaiden lineage available for your pleasure. First is the aforementioned Ninja Gaiden Shadow, originally conceived as a portable follow-up to Shadow of the Ninja, developed by Natsume. It's the same side-scrolling action fare as the NES classics but with some Bionic Commando-style grappling thrown in for good measure. Another Ninja Gaiden title (simply titled "Ninja Gaiden") was released for the Master System in 1992, developed by one of Sega's many smaller houses. This game mimics the NES trilogy very closely, and in many ways, towers over it. The graphics are some of the best on the SMS and the level design is top notch. This is a must play if you're a true Gaiden fan. Lastly, there's Ninja Ryukenden for the PCE/Turbografx 16, a complete overhaul of the original Ninja Gaiden with some interesting twists and an entirely new soundtrack.