www.longplays.org
Played by: BimmyLee83
An interesting entry in the Ninja Gaiden franchise with seemingly no connection to the Arcade or NES games of the series, save for the character of Ryu. This game featured a new storyline, new characters, and a more simplistic mission structure in which stages are set up as single chapters, and not subdivided into different acts like the NES games.
The gameplay should feel very comfortable to veterans of the NES trilogy since Ryu retains most of his original moveset and attacks are performed in the same manner. One notable change is that Ryu can't cling to walls in this game, but rather bounds off of them. It helps keep the gameplay fluid, but it can also lead to unavoidable damage in some situations (jumping into an enemy or stage hazard). Ryu also has a "desperation attack" that kills all on-screen enemies, but drains a portion of his health. It's activated by simultaneously pressing Jump and Attack so it's easy to accidentally do the attack and lose health.
Another aspect is the game's generosity with power-ups. You have your standard energy power-ups (white), your Ninpo power-ups (red), and your special attack and score pick-ups. One strange thing is that the Ninpo counter tops at 999 N, but once you reach that number, you seem to have infinite magic (which I tried not to abuse). If you use your Ninpo sparingly, you'll easily reach 999 by the third or fourth stage.
The sound is kind of off-beat and out of sync in some parts because the sound from the original video had some prominent static noise which was really irritating, so I had to make a VGM log and convert to WAV. Even so, it sounds much better than it did. -
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