Ninja Gaiden, the one well known sequel of astounding ninja centered games from the 8bit NES era made one appearance on Gameboy and this is it. The series has been known for its sharp challenge, long levels, oddities, and its amazing cinemas between each stage. The question though is did the series make a good or bad transition to the Gameboy back in its early days, or not.
Graphics The graphics given to you in this rendition of Ninja Gaiden are pretty darn good, yet really don't open up anything too unique over past ventures. In the game you will come across many incredibly stupid, yet decently drawn grunts. Other than the lame foot soldiers you can come across some nicely drawn freaks, mecha, and other interesting creatures and bits of machinery.
Graphics The graphics given to you in this rendition of Ninja Gaiden are pretty darn good, yet really don't open up anything too unique over past ventures. In the game you will come across many incredibly stupid, yet decently drawn grunts. Other than the lame foot soldiers you can come across some nicely drawn freaks, mecha, and other interesting creatures and bits of machinery.
The levels are drawn up pretty adequately, yet seem to lack much flair in comparison to other titles of its day. The first level feels much like the Contra title out at the time where you walk around on simple uninspired platforms with minimal background. Inside some of the complexes the detail
level does go up and add a little bit of motion here and there, but not much. Adding more insult to injury other than the small clips from the intro of the game there is no trademark storyline or elaborate cinemas that put all the old 8bit NES fans in awe, a stupid BAD move.
level does go up and add a little bit of motion here and there, but not much. Adding more insult to injury other than the small clips from the intro of the game there is no trademark storyline or elaborate cinemas that put all the old 8bit NES fans in awe, a stupid BAD move.
Rating: 2.5 SoundThe music of the game and sound effects are typical 8bit Ninja Gaiden material through and through for the most part. Many of the effects in the game don't sound all that special and leave me quite bored. I could go as far as saying the effects are static and beepy, but I've heard a lot worse so I won't even touch that. The musical scores on the other hand are pretty smooth
though I have to admit they are not at all memorable. A real sad bit to this was that the Ninja Gaiden jingle before and upon stage clearance is GONE, and I really have to ask what were they thinking.
Rating: 3.0 Theme & Fun Typically a game from this series has a theme based around some evil doings that our Ninja Ryu Hayabusa has to take care of. The player is pulled into the evolving plot with amazing cinemas with mood music that fits the events that unfold. As you can tell where I am going with this I'll make it brief, THEY'RE GONE. Cutting out all but an opening story to the game really ruins the theme and fun of the title because they its just chopped down to some generic ninja (or whatever) slash and burn the enemy bit seen in many games. The game is short and with that key element missing, so is most the fun value.
Rating: 2.5 Play ControlThe play control of this title is standard Ninja Gaiden mostly. You can jump in any direction and slash away at enemies. Our ninja can grab onto a ladder and scale a wall, yet he needs that kind of grip to do so in this game. An added feature of this game is a grappling hook which is mostly useless as it can only grab onto a few types of surfaces and doesn't stretch that far. To make matters worse you can only toss it straight up and only when you are on the ground. A side from these the player can pick up various ninja magics that can be fired off with relative ease, but at times can be let go on accident which can get annoying.
Rating: 3.5 ChallengeTo quote an old 1980's Wendy's commercial would best fit this category. The
difference is not asking "Where's the beef?" the question is " Where's the challenge?" Get the drift of where I'm going? Basically when I bought this game I wasn't all that great at this series of games and it was my first (I later got the 3 games for the NES from a friend). Anyways in comparison to the NES titles, this game is about with the star wars galaxy of heroes hack as challenging as watching time pass. Everything in this title moves slow, is highly predictable, and is not all that aggressive. If you take your time and not try to spaz your way through the game you'll probably kill it with your original stock of lives.
Rating: 1.0 Replay Value and Closing Notes:I can't think of anything really to put here for the replay value notes as the game just isn't really replayable. All the qualities of the NES trilogy have been neutered by the vets at Tecmo. I don't know what they are smoking, but once you kill this game off since all the elements of the original series are essentially missing you probably won't play it again. I didn't.
Stopping short at calling people crackheads, or being on something I really have to ask what they were thinking when making this game. If they are just put a little more effort into the title, and used a larger ROM size they could have included all the cinematic and the other elements of the NES series. I can not recommend this game for anything but a rental and will say no more.
Overall Rating: 2.5 / 5.0
