Una experiencia bastante desagradable. No conforme con que es tan asquerosamente corto al punto que una paja a mano cambiada dura más, es sumamente desinspirado tanto en su diseño de niveles como en su presentación. Los jefes son un chiste absoluto que al machacarles el botón de ataque ya los tienes domados por completo y así hasta que mueran, siendo la única excepción a esto el jefe final el cual tampoco es la gran cosa, pecando principalmente de que cuando te pegas demasiado a él, te vas a trancar al mismo haciendo que pierdas vida de forma rápida hasta que mueras, obligándote forzosamente a atacarlo con cuidado (a parte de que la invulnerabilidad en esta cosa literal dura milisegundos provocando que tengas muertes injustas porque no te pudiste despegar del enemigo a tiempo, los jefes hacen demasiado daño, como si los desarrolladores supieran que los mismos eran una basura y para disque compensar hicieron que te quitaran media salud de un golpe), y la música es repetitiva hasta decir basta. Lo más rescatable que tiene esta abominación sería quizás sus controles los cuales son extremadamente cómodos, y el esquema de diseño que te incita a ir a los bestia y tener buenos reflejos a la hora de evitar los obstáculos y matar enemigos, sumado a ciertas secciones en los niveles que buscan variar un tanto más la experiencia, pero a la larga no es suficiente para salvar un juego sumamente aburrido, que depende aún más del ensayo y error comparado a la trilogía original, mal programado y en general una perdida de tiempo.

Incredibly simplistic and easy game but, extremely short and enjoyable for what it is.

You can easily beat this one within half of an hour which, I can think of plenty worse you can do in that time.

I had fun!

Ninja Gaiden for Game Gear is a rather odd experience. It really doesn't feel much like a Ninja Gaiden game at all - at times I got more of a Strider vibe than anything, thanks to the fact you can attack while moving. The cramped screen dimensions means the level designs (particularly the intricacies of the platforming challenges) are kind of simplistic, which also contributes to the feeling of this game being just a bit off. It's also really weird to use your special weapons by pressing down+attack, instead of up+attack like it is in every other Ninja Gaiden platformer.

This game has the weirdest difficult curve, I swear. The first stage is a joke - especially the boss, who you can beat without taking any damage your first try, using an easily exploitable tricks that takes no effort to work out. The second stage is a bit more of a struggle - especially the second boss, who deals a ton of damage and can kill you in a couple hits. (by the way, this game's hit detection is really annoying - you have practically no i-frames, and can potentially die from one attack in a couple seconds if you get caught in an inopportune place). Then the third stage goes back to being really easy (albeit with an interesting vertical stage gimmick, feeling like an inversion of the bonus stages from Shadow Dancer on Genesis), with a third boss that is almost as easy as the first stage's? The fourth stage is a boss gauntlet, which is kind of annoying. Then the fifth and final stage can be pretty irritating to play through, followed by two easy final boss phases, and a third phase that's a bit more annoying. Oh, and you have no continues at all in this game, though there are a few extra lives to be found.

It's a weird one. This isn't a bad game, per se, and I don't dislike it, but I think it's pretty solidly the weakest Ninja Gaiden game I've played yet. As far as Ninja Gaiden games on Sega platforms are concerned, I think the Master System game delivers a stronger experience.

Well, I think that my ass has healed enough after getting kicked so much by Ninja Gaiden III, so I think it is about time that we jump back into another Ninja Gaiden game, but this time, on handheld! Of course, at this point, we already had the original NES trilogy of games, which are all great in their own right, and many consider them to be classics of the system to this very day. So, logically, as with every other franchise at the time, the next title would inevitably be made for a handheld system, and it would come to us on the Game Gear, which was Sega’s answer to the Game Boy, as well as the system that your parents would get you instead of a Game Boy if they genuinely hated you. Not only that, but the game would not be developed by Tecmo themselves, but instead by Japan System House, a company that would go on to also develop games like… Tails’ Skypatrol... oh god, this is gonna suck, isn’t it?

So, after playing it again, as well as recollecting memories on when I beat the game the first time around, I can say that Ninja Gaiden on the Game Gear is actually surprisingly alright, and that’s saying something given Japan System House’s later track record. It is without a doubt nowhere near as good as the NES Ninja Gaiden games, and Ninja Gaiden Shadow would outshine it later in terms of a quality handheld title in the series (at least from what I remember), but for what we do have here, it could’ve been a lot worse then this.

The story is simple, but of course, in the traditional Ninja Gaiden fashion, it is made more in-depth and engaging with plenty of cutscenes throughout, and while they aren’t on the same level as the NES games, it is still pretty good here, the graphics are… odd, to say the least, but given what they had to work with, it ain’t all that bad, the music is ok, but a lot of the tracks do blend into each other, the control is easy to pick up right away, and it works well here, and the gameplay is what we have come to expect from the series, except shrunken down onto a handheld.

The game continues the regular 2D-action-platforming that we are used to, where you move throughout several levels at a fast pace, defeating enemies along the way, gaining different power ups, health items, and subweapons along the way to help you take down enemies, and defeat challenging bosses… or not challenging, depending on which boss we are talking about. Again, it is all stuff we are plenty used to, but in terms of how it works on a handheld, it works pretty well, and it can be fun at points. Yeah, it is a little awkward, given how things look, play, and feel different from the original, but for what its worth, it gets the job done, and that’s all one can ask for. And I will give the game credit, it does change things up sometimes, such has having an entire stage where you climb up the side of two buildings while taking down enemies, rather then the usual running from left to right, which was a nice change of pace.

However, in the tradition of Japan System House games, there are problems that need to be addressed. To get one obvious complaint out of the way, the game is pretty damn short, with only 4 levels in total, and it doesn’t take long to beat them at all if you know what you’re doing, which can be a bummer, but it is expected, seeing as it is a Game Gear game. In addition, this game is also pretty easy in comparison to the original Ninja Gaiden games, and if there is one thing Ninja Gaiden SHOULDN’T be, it’s easy. Sure, it isn’t the easiest game in the world, and some parts can be pretty tough if you aren’t ready, but all in all, it does not hold a candle to some of the hardest challenges of the original games.

Where the difficulty truly shines, though, is part of Japan System House’s trademark element that they implement into every game they make: bullshit enemy placement and level design. Yes, Ninja Gaiden games have always been known for their difficulty and hard as hell enemy placements, but most of the time, if you are prepared and have the right weapon, you can take out the enemy no problem, but here, it just feels like there are parts in the game that are deliberately meant to fuck with the player and hurt or kill them at some points. For example, in Stage 2, there are these guys with guns that sometimes, when they appear on screen, they will shoot towards you, and they are usually placed near a large gap, and you can’t help but to get hit by it if you aren’t aware that it is coming, which you most likely aren’t. And speaking of gaps, the gaps in this stage are stretched out so far that you BARELY are able to jump over them, only making it to the other side by a mere inch, which makes me wonder why didn’t they make that more, I dunno, fair?

In addition to this, there are other minor things that can mess up your run, such as with a lack of invincibility frames, meaning that you will get hit quite a lot in succession if you aren’t careful, and there’s also the time limit, which is usually fair most of the time, but in the final stage, you can just BARELY finish it with only a few seconds left, given how much you have to do in said stages, as well as with the short amount of time they give you in the first place. It can get pretty annoying, but all in all, none of these things made me really hate this game, or have that bad of a time with it, and that is saying a lot considering what other games this company has made.

Overall, despite a lot of questionable design choices and a difficulty that doesn’t match where Ninja Gaiden should be at, it is still a passable, and somewhat enjoyable attempt at making a handheld game in the series. Again, it isn’t all that spectacular, and there are better handheld games in the series, but like I mentioned earlier, this could’ve been done A LOT worse. On a side note, I am not looking forward to replaying through Tails’ Skypatrol again to review it. I genuinely hate Tails’ Skypatrol with every fiber of my being, so I am dreading that day.

Game #224

SUBSTANTIALLY worse than Ninja Gaiden Shadow. While Shadow tried to introduce new concepts to the series from other ninja-based action platformers, Ninja Gaiden (GG) is a pale imitation of the more main series that brings nothing new and feels like little more than a downgraded experience. It also doesn't exactly seem like it "gets" Ninja Gaiden.

Let's get the big issue with this game out of the way: You essentially don't have mercy invincibility in this game. It isn't COMPLETELY non-existent, but it is so much so that getting stuck against just about anything is death. You know what sucks? When you go up to a hit a boss, say one with a slightly large hurtbox like the Stage 4 boss, and because you slightly miscalculated it you clip his sprite's hitbox and take 50%+ damage before you can escape. Or, say, having a moving spike barrier against a wall in the final level, and you mistime it and get hit. Guess what: You cannot escape those spikes until the barrier itself moves because you are caught in constant hitstun, causing you to take 80%+ of your life. This fact alone accounted for at LEAST 66% of my deaths and is probably the main thing that made this game just flatout unenjoyable. It's just not good.

On top of that whenever you're NOT having this issue, the game is EASY. Almost the only challenge in this game comes from cheapness such as having enemies that are offscreen but can fire projectiles. Even then, health pickups are abundant and so dying to enemies essentially only happens if you get wombo combo'd due to a lack of mercy invincibility. Wall snapping to this game is a bit too happy and you will frequently snap to a wall when you were trying to jump up a platform which is annoying. It does sometimes interact weirdly with walls and cause you to fall and die but most of the time it is just overly happy. And on the ship level Ryu will frequently clip into the boats sides instead of gripping on. And whenever a boss isn't clipping into you like a madman, the boss is easy with the exception of the 2nd Stage 4 form which I could not figure out how to dodge and just damage racked. Heck, 2/3rds of the final boss have easily findable spots that the boss CANNOT hit you on and the third stage has an easily observable pattern to make it trivial!

At least it has Ninja Gaiden style cutscenes? Presentation-wise the sprites are, you know, they're fine for a Game Gear game. Especially a year one game that I cannot imagine had much of a budget given it was a made by a studio I can only find info on like "was a game developers outsourced mobile ports too, did such a bad job Capcom never worked with them again" and that SIMS + Sega made their own Master System / Game Gear Ninja Gaiden (...which was so late it only came out in the PAL region and was actually well received but I digress). The sound though, dude, the music is soooooooo soulless and soooooo repetitive and there's some real weird sound effects like this sword twang on the final boss that gets spammed when you hit them and is loud and is annoying. Dunno what's up with that.

There's other bad stuff here too. A big one is that this game is SHORT: It is 5 "stages" but that is deceptive, as one stage is naught but a power-up room and a boss. If you know what you're doing you can easily beat this game in 30 minutes and it has no replayability. No secrets, no difficulty levels, nothing at all. This game has roughly the same amount of content as STUART LITTLE, come on!

Ultimately a tedious and frustrating affair, Ninja "Game Gear" Gaiden will only be worthwhile those with particular interests in exploring the Sega Game Gear's catalogue (it was a top seller when it came out, to no surprise when it was a portable Ninja Gaiden), those who want to DEEPLY dive into the history of Ninja Gaiden, ooooor they just like to play 30 minute-1 hour long platformers out of boredom on a Tuesday night.