(AfroGamers.com) I have played numerous ninja video games throughout the years both physically and digitally via emulator. Some of the best ninja video games that I have ever played throughout the years have been amongst the toughest to beat and one such game is The O.G. Ninja Gaiden game for The NES.
I had an NES through my childhood and I used to heavily play classic NES games such as Dragon Warrior 1, 2, & 4 (didn’t have 3), Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, & 3, Zelda 1 & 2, and of course The Original Ninja Gaiden game.
For the older gamers like me who grew up playing NES back in the day who pressed the power on button on The NES Console with The Original Ninja Gaiden game inside the console, the famous iconic “TECMO PRESENTS 1989” screen faded onto the screen here in The States and in the Japanese version of the game, it was “TECMO PRESENTS 1988” and the Japanese version of the game was called “Ninja Ryukenden”.
Note: Gaiden is Japanese for “side story”.
The Original Ninja Gaiden game for The NES also holds the distinction of being “The Poster Child For Video Game Cutscenes” because prior to the release of the game, cut scenes in video games was unheard of, but once The Original Ninja Gaiden video game came out, it forever changed how the video game storytelling is presented and the original Ninja Gaiden game was even referred to at one point as “Tecmo Theater”.
The cutscenes in The Original Ninja Gaiden game were so well drawn and thought out by The Legendary Team Ninja staff because when you played through the entire game especially after beating the entire stage and before you start the next stage, watching those cutscenes felt like you was watching an anime movie from Japan that you had never even seen before and I absolutely loved that vibe that the game gave me in terms of the cutscenes.
This game was absolutely difficult to beat because while the stages 1-3 were easy, stage 4 was challenging, but stage 5 & 6 were the most difficult stages that I had ever played and beaten because it tested your critical thinking and survival skills in the sense of avoiding taking too much damage from enemies especially bosses, avoiding jumping or falling into large pit holes, etc. The extremely challenging difficulty that this game had made me thought about the old U.S. Tecmo commercials back in the day with the slogan, “Hard To Beat”.
While though playing this game was extremely challenging to the point of being nauseating, but it was fun in the sense of collecting powerups like a fire shield, big orange star dagger, little blue star dagger, doing a flipping sword attack, to the beautiful anime like cutscenes that told the story.
The Conclusion – Not only is The Original Ninja Gaiden NES game a classic, but it is definitely one of the most challenging and difficult video games that I had ever played in my entire life.
Staff Writer; Kwame Shakir (aka Joe D.)