A History of Violence: A Ninja Gaiden Retrospective

by Ross Miller { Jun 3rd 2008 at 3:55PM }

A little bird told us Ninja Gaiden II was coming out today. Actually, that bird was more like a note attached to a shuriken with a flower on it, but the message was all the same. In honor of the series milestone and in memory of the now-former Ninja Gaiden designer Tomonobu Itagaki, we present you with a series retrospective we're affectionately dubbing A History of Violence (hey, we thought it was clever). Click here and be educated.

Tags: itagaki, ng2, ninja-gaiden, ninja-gaiden-2, ninja-gaiden-ii, team-ninja, tecmo, tomonobu-itagaki

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

PojoMofo @ Jun 3rd 2008 4:05PM

this is not the only thing from Tecmo out the door today...

Vegeta (aka Ska Oreo) @ Jun 3rd 2008 4:10PM

...I see what you did there.

PojoMofo @ Jun 3rd 2008 4:13PM

i know, Im a pretty fart smeller...i mean smart feller :)

JerJer @ Jun 3rd 2008 4:41PM

...
cant it be both?

343 Guilty Fart @ Jun 3rd 2008 5:05PM

Didn't Ninja Gaiden 2 come out in 1988??

Cesaria (MKW:2621-2994-1376) @ Jun 3rd 2008 5:12PM

Yes, and I believe it's on the Virtual Console. Screw paying $60!

Jack (SFC: 4983 4617 3409) @ Jun 3rd 2008 5:15PM

I thought the o.g. Gaidens had a good story, (for the time), its disappointing that the said aspect wasn't included its new iteration.

Kizzle @ Jun 3rd 2008 9:06PM

"For the time?" They're good regardless of era. Ninja Gaiden II did the "you beat the final boss only to learn the game is only half over" thing YEARS before Castlevania SOTN ripped it off.

Ninja Gaiden (NES) was fantastic, and the sequel was even better. The third one was kind of a step back but still worthwhile. As much as people bitch about the difficulty of the Xbox games, the NES ones were even more unforgiving.

Oh, and the music in all three of them was the pinnacle of the NES era.

DangerMouse @ Jun 3rd 2008 9:14PM

I used to rent Ninja Gaiden 2 all the time, and it was a tough mother. But i always came back for more.

icqpimp @ Jun 3rd 2008 10:39PM

Kizzle, you just summed my life up. You are god. Funky Dynamite and Jaquio forever!

James @ Jun 3rd 2008 5:18PM

I have the first Ninja Gaiden on virtual console. I cannot beat the second level and sadly, the best I've ever done on that game was when I was drunk.

Nigeria @ Jun 3rd 2008 6:51PM

Oh God, Ninja Gaiden is bloody.

Limbs and heads flying off everywhere. And the blood, the fantastic amount of blood, just cascades everywhere, kinda. It really is a sight.

But I'm still going to buy the game only when the price drops.

Jhongerkong @ Jun 3rd 2008 7:01PM

I remember playing NG3 for the first time when I was a kid and how shocked I was that Ryu kills Irene (in the beginning, no less). Good times...

Ryan Henson Creighton @ Jun 4th 2008 9:52AM

Not to be a nerd about it, but there's a historical error in your retrospective.

On the Ninja Gaiden (NES) page, you say:

"While many critics have lashed out against the game for copying the Castlevania design, which copied Metroid ... "

It's true that Ninja Gaiden (NES) was very similar to the style of the first Castlevania. It's not accurate to say that the first Castlevania game copied Metroid. The first Castlevania game to copy the Metroid structure (open-ended exploration with items/abilities that unlock new areas, left-, up- and down-scrolling areas) was Castlevania III.

Until part III, Castlevania was a straight-ahead side scroller, as was Ninja Gaiden. In the early days, structurally-speaking, Castlevania and Metroid had very little in common.