Ninja Gaiden | Code Like It's 198x

In 1988 Tecmo released two games called Ninja Gaiden, and they had almost nothing in common. One was an arcade fighting game. The other, for Nintendo’s Famicom and NES, was a platform game that stopped between its levels to tell a story, with changing camera angles, sound effects and music, in scenes Tecmo called “Cinema Display”. Nintendo Power said in 1990 that those scenes had “set a standard for action game narration that has since been widely emulated”. The NES game was also very hard, and one of the reasons it was hard turned out to be an accident.

Fast facts

Developer and publisher: Tecmo.
Arcade game: 1988, a scrolling fighting game; Shadow Warriors in Europe.
Famicom and NES game: Ninja Ryūkenden in Japan (December 1988); Ninja Gaiden in North America (early 1989); renamed for Europe, where Mean Machines reviewed it in July 1991.
Hero: Ryu Hayabusa.
Structure (NES): six acts divided into twenty areas.
Sequels on the NES: Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (1990) and Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (1991).
Revival: Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox (2004).

Two games with one name

The two games were made side by side. Masato Kato, who drew the graphics for the Famicom game, told an interviewer in 2009 that “both were developed side by side on the same floor, at the same time. However, we only shared the same title, while each team developed their game as they pleased.” Wireframe’s history of Tecmo gives the same account: the company’s founder saw the ninja craze in America and set two teams to work.

The arcade game was a scrolling fighting game in the manner of Double Dragon, with a twist in its scenery: the ninja could swing from signs and poles and flip off park benches to kick his enemies. In Europe it was called Shadow Warriors, and Edge later put the change down to “the censorship standard of the time”. Ocean released home computer versions of the arcade game in 1990, and CRASH ran a competition to win a video recorder and a set of martial arts films with it that September.

Ryu’s story

The NES game shared only the hero. Ryu Hayabusa’s father goes out to fight a duel and does not come back. He leaves a letter telling Ryu to take the family’s Dragon Sword to America and find his old friend Walter Smith. Ryu does, and finds himself fighting the followers of a demon. Nintendo Power, which made it the main feature of its March–April 1989 issue, told the opening as the game does: the two warriors leaping at each other across a field of grass under a full moon, their swords meeting “with a flash of lightning”.

The story is told in the Cinema Display scenes between the action. Nintendo Power’s preview promised “movie-like scenes, giving you a rest between action sequences”, with “sound effects, different camera angles, and background music” adding to the realism. The scenes could be skipped with the Start button, which the magazine recommended to anyone “playing a second time, or third or fourth time”. Kato said the idea of “an action game with a dense story” belonged to the director, Hideo Yoshizawa, “who has to be called the father of the series”. When Nintendo Power’s readers voted on 1989’s games, the magazine praised the game’s “stunning, surprise ending” and said that “the use of Cinema Displays to reveal plot between action sequences is a winner”.

Climbing walls

Ryu runs, jumps and slashes, and he can cling to the walls he jumps at. Pressing jump and pushing away from the wall springs him off it, and Nintendo Power showed how a chain of these wall-spring jumps would carry him up a gap between two walls.

Lamps and torches hide items, revealed with a sword stroke. Some are ninja arts that use up Ryu’s spiritual strength: a throwing star; a windmill star that flies out and returns like a boomerang; the Fire Wheel, flames that circle Ryu and burn anything they touch; the Art of the Fire Wheel, which throws fireballs upwards and diagonally; and the Jump and Slash, a spinning sword attack in mid-air. Others freeze every enemy for five seconds or restore some of his health.

A hard game

The game is divided into six acts and twenty areas. Ryu starts in the town of Galesburg and goes on through Death Valley and Yomi’s Cave to the enemy’s Temple of Darkness. Acts end with bosses, among them the Malice Four, who run the gang of henchmen Ryu has been fighting, and the villain Jaquio; at the very end comes the demon itself. Nintendo Power said that getting to the end “takes lightning reflexes”.

The hardest part is the last act. Lose to the final boss and the game sends Ryu back to the beginning of the act, not to the boss. Asked in 2009 whether the game had been made so hard on purpose, Kato said that this restart was “something a programmer had implemented this way accidentally. However, no one tried to fix it. They were like ‘hey, that’s not bad, either.’”

Mean Machines reviewed the European release in July 1991 and gave it 90 per cent. Its reviewer compared its platforms and wall-leaping to Batman on the NES and admired the main sprite, whose animation was “so good that I was instantly impressed by this game”. It noted that the game’s unlimited continues did not make it short, because every lost life meant repeating the last part of the level.

Sequels

Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos introduced a new villain, Ashtar, and a pitch-black night stage lit only by flashes of lightning; Nintendo Power said in 1990 that it “surpasses the original”. Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom followed in 1991, when Nintendo Power reported a rumour that it would be Ryu’s last appearance. It was not. Ryu also appeared on the Atari Lynx, and Sega made a different Ninja Gaiden of its own for the Master System in 1992.

The series came back in 3D. Tomonobu Itagaki’s Team Ninja began work in 1999, at first on Sega’s NAOMI arcade board, and Edge interviewed Itagaki about it in 2002. “Ninja Gaiden is made very much for the west,” he said. “It is quite hard, with many functions and a higher level of difficulty.” The Xbox game came out in 2004, and Edge gave it nine out of ten, while warning that many players would hit “an impassable difficulty spike” after about 30 minutes, at the first boss. The Tecmo entry follows the series after Itagaki left, to Ninja Gaiden 4 in 2025.

Sources

Nintendo Power issue 4, January–February 1989, p. 84, “Pak Watch”: Ninja Gaiden preview (the Cinema Display, the wall-spring jump, the March feature).
Nintendo Power issue 5, March–April 1989, pp. 20–23: Ninja Gaiden feature (the father’s duel and letter, the Dragon Sword, Walter Smith, the wall-spring jump, the ninja arts and their costs, the five-second Time Freeze, skipping the Cinema Display).
Nintendo Power issue 11, March–April 1990, p. 90: Ninja Gaiden II preview (“set a standard for action game narration”, Ashtar, “surpasses the original”).
Nintendo Power issue 12, May–June 1990, pp. 27–28: readers’ awards for 1989 (Jaquio’s henchmen, “lightning reflexes”, “stunning, surprise ending”, Cinema Displays).
Nintendo Power issue 27, August 1991: Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom feature (the rumour of Ryu’s final appearance).
Mean Machines issue 10, July 1991: review of the European NES release (six acts and twenty areas, Galesburg to the Temple of Darkness, the Malice Four and the demon, the weapons, the comparison with Batman, unlimited continues, 90 per cent).
Raze issue 11, September 1991: Ninja Gaiden for the Atari Lynx.
CRASH issue 80, September 1990: Ocean’s Shadow Warriors competition.
Retro Gamer issue 37, 2007, “Boss Rush”: the arcade Shadow Warriors (1988, Tecmo). Issue 46, 2008: Ocean’s Shadow Warriors on the Spectrum (swinging from signs, flipping off park benches).
“Developer Profile: Tecmo”, Wireframe issue 35, March 2020, pp. 50–53: the two teams.
Sam Derboo, “Interview with Masato Kato”, Hardcore Gaming 101, 27 October 2009 (web, secondary): the parallel development, Yoshizawa’s idea, the accidental restart. https://www.hardcoregaming101.net/masato-kato-interview/
“Ninja Gaiden (Arcade)”, Hardcore Gaming 101 (web, secondary): Ocean’s licence for the European home computer versions. https://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ninja-gaiden-arcade/
Edge issue 113, August 2002, “Inside… Tecmo”: interview with Tomonobu Itagaki (the arcade game in 1988, Shadow Warriors, work on the new game since 1999 on NAOMI, “made very much for the west”).
Edge issue 135, April 2004: Ninja Gaiden (Xbox) review (the difficulty spike; nine out of ten).