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XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Ninja Gaiden - Unlockable Classics, Difficulty Worries? 34

Posted by simoniker from the the-new-animal-crossing dept.
Thanks to IGN Xbox for their hands-on look at Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox, as the eagerly-awaited ninja action title got an updated showing at the Tokyo Game Show. As well as what GameSpy call the "beautiful and frenetic action" of the main game, the developers showed off the NES Ninja Gaiden games that were recently announced as unlockable features, found "...hidden inside of a random chest. After finding it, series creator Tomonobu Itagaki directed us to a rundown arcade cabinet in the corner of the [in-game] room. Suddenly... we were playing the original Ninja Gaiden in all its 8-bit glory." Intriguingly, Itagaki was concerned that the new Ninja Gaiden was too easy, and "...said many Japanese gamers don't really like challenging games, and that he wanted to make sure the American fans were pleased and found the game challenging enough."
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Ninja Gaiden - Unlockable Classics, Difficulty Worries? More

Ninja Gaiden - Unlockable Classics, Difficulty Worries?

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  • Too easy? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dark Nexus ( 172808 ) on Monday September 29, 2003 @05:15AM (#7083146)
    I'd like him to define too easy, because compared to the original, "too easy" might just mean that you DON'T have to cheat or be nigh-superhuman to beat it (save-state in an emulator doesn't count)!

    Mind you, that was one of the wonderful things about the original - it was so hard to beat.

    Easily one of the hardest, if not THE hardest game on the NES.
    • Ninja Gaiden's tough, but it can't possibly be the hardest game on the NES. Zelda II was very difficult, but maybe it's because I started it when I was five.
      • All I know is that I know a lot more people who finished Zelda II - at least everyone I know who owned it, plus a few who didn't. I only know one person who ever even claimed to have finished Ninja Gaiden without using the game genie, and they claimed they were only able to do it the one time.

        But yeah, Zelda II was a difficult game. I never finished it, either. Personally, I always got bored while trying to find the hammer and gave up.
        • I beat the original Ninja Gaiden on the NES, no Game Genie. It was damn tough, though. It all depended on the last level, really.

          Granted, I only ever did it like 3 times, but I did it. Now, Ninja Gaiden II, that I beat multiple times.

          Thursdae

        • Ninja Gaiden was difficult primarily from what could be considered a "bug," depend on your viewpoint. Enemies would be queued by Ryu standing at a certain position along the path. Therefore, if you stood right where an enemy was spawned, and destroyed it, then it would respawn endlessly. So, even if you killed the bat flying towards you right in front a jump, the bat may respawn right after you begin your hop. Whether this is hard or not depends on what you think NG is all about... I always tried to think o
      • The last level of Zelda II was pretty tough, but not too bad. You had to be cheap though. If you tried fighting the more difficult enemies head on, you'd get destroyed.

        Blue birds with shields? When you break through the breakable blocks right before them, stay very high. get in a position so that if you kneel and swing your sword, it will hit the bird's head at the peak of his jump. They can't defend against that, and they can't hurt you.

        The next to last boss is just a bitch. The last one had a trick, but
        • Mighty Bomb Jack was hard as hell! I think I may have beat it, though. I seem to remember it... althought I may be wrong.. it was a long time ago. Fun game :)

          More hard games:
          Solomon's Key - the final level was near impossible if you took the wrong path getting there. Great puzzle game though.
          Milon's Secret Castle - just hard in general.
          SNES - Joe & Mac - I think it was intentionally made impossible to beat without a GG. I know I couldn't do it. Then the ending sucked, making it that much more worthl
        • IIRC, the trick to beating Link's shadow was to stay on the far left side of the screen and just keep slashing. He'll try to jump into you and will continuously hit your sword.

          Man, I can't believe that guy never beat Joe & Mac. The first time I played that game, I beat in a couple of hours. It was disappointingly short, because it had some fantastic artwork in it.
      • Ninja Gaiden was definetly tough, although I didn't relieze how tough it was until I got my hands on it again ten years later. Maybe my reflexes were quicker when I was 12... Zelda II (the adventures of Link), was my favorite NES game. I think it was mostly misunderstood by the general public, it wasn't quite a RPG like Zelda, and it had that platform element, that hard-core RPG's hated it, and hard-core platformers hated it. I really liked the variety, combining several kinds of games together was brillan

  • Cool! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PasteEater ( 590893 )
    I thought that they should have done that with the new Mortal Kombat (include prior versions of the game), but alas they didn't. For those of you not familiar, there are well over 200 unlockable items in the game that you get from "buying" them with credits earned from doing battle, etc. You can even unlock the box from Mortal Kombat 3 but not the game!

    We all know there's enough room on the DVDs for this stuff to start becoming more commonplace.

    • I think the reason most don't include previous games is because they still believe they can make profit off the old games. They might be able to on gameboy advance or something, but not on the xbox or ps2. I agree with you. Including the originals on the new versions would be great, but unfortunatly, most seem quite against this for some odd reason.

    • Re:Cool! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by wickedj ( 652189 )
      Well, if you look at what SquareEnix has done, that might tell you why not many developers have included prior games in sequels. Square rereleased many of their NES/SNES Final Fantasy games as PSX titles and made quite a bit of money in the process. Granted, they included new CG cutscenes, rescored music and some upgraded graphics (not much more than adding more colors). It's the same with DVDs. Why have one DVD with every extra on it when you can release it 4 different times, each with different conten
  • Its kind of interesting that the arcade version of Ninja Gaiden lacked all that made the NES version cool. Its like they made the arcade game and thought "Hey we could attach a pretty cool story onto this"
    • The original arcade version of Ninja Gaiden and the NES version have pretty much nothing in common.

      I'm actually quite displeased that it's the NES version that's unlockable and not the arcade version since I got the opposite impression when I first read about this. Granted, the one on the NES is harder (those FUCKING birds!), though I never finished the arcade version either due to lack of quarters. On the other hand, the arcade version is prettier and, in my opinion, more fun.

      Oh well, none of this is sto

  • Not an accurate recreation. (Score:3, Funny)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Monday September 29, 2003 @08:12AM (#7083876)
    They need to make an original NES or Sega Master System controller for the Xbox so we can get the complete experience, thumb blisters and all.

    Ninja Gaiden was the only game I remember where I had to bleed to beat it!

  • Odd... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tickenest ( 544722 ) on Monday September 29, 2003 @08:16AM (#7083901) Homepage Journal

    "...said many Japanese gamers don't really like challenging games, and that he wanted to make sure the American fans were pleased and found the game challenging enough."

    Oh, how times have changed. I seem to recall a decade or so ago that the U.S. was getting Doki Doki Panic instead of the real Super Mario Bros. 2, because it was too hard. Of course, we also got Final Fantasy II "easytype" with lots of good stuff dummied out.

    • I wonder what he's saying in Japan... maybe that American gamers don't really like challenging games, and that he wanted to make sure the Japanese fans were pleased and found the game challenging enough.

      Nothing like a little sop to national pride to boost games sales.

    • Yes, I too have heard exactly the opposite as well. I have heard repeatedly that japanease gamers like harder games. weird.
    • Actually, we didn't get FF2 until the origins collection. Our FF2 was FF4, and you are correct that it is the "easy" version. However, the easy version is identical to the hard version, just with weaker monsters.

      • Jerk. (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by Inoshiro ( 71693 )
        If you're going to be a nitpicker about names, you might as well get it right and remember things like the secret programmers room where you could get the book of porn which was taken out for the North American and European releases.

        Remember, kids -- if you're an obsessive/complusive nerd who corrects people on Slashdot about the name to a game which we were clear on, at least get your facts straight.
        • well, unless the hard version was also edited in the same way, then I don't have a clue as to what you are talking about. That plays through the same way as the orignal FF2 on my NES.
      • I don't know if this was made for the easy version or for the American censors, but the Japanese FF4 hard version also had a lot more verbal violence and thought provoking ideas (read : sex).

        As for the original topic; I'm more concerned about the current difficulty of the game (Ninja Gaiden for Xbox) if the report focused on that.

    • Considering that the majority of the changes is easytype were monster strengths, and considering that the "original" was merely longer than easytype because it took longer to level up before the boss fights, rather than require actual strategy..

      Most of the gameplay in the Final Fantasy series can be summed up as, "if you're enjoying it, you can play more." You can spend more time leveling up, more time playing with items and spells, more time talking to people in towns. Your reward for doing all this is

  • Original Ninja Gaiden (Score:2, Informative)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) *
    First, "Ninja Gaiden" is actually the name of two different games produced by the same company. It was originally an arcade port (a brawler, I believe), but Tecmo created a game with the same name but mostly different content for the NES. This is not the first time this has happened: the original Rygar and Astanynax were also arcade games with little to do with their NES counterparts. (But I admit, my memory is a little fuzzy concerning these.) The arcade version of Ninja Gaiden eventually got a port fo
    • The arcade Rygar was an endlessly-repetetive side-scrolling shooter; rather boring. The NES Rygar was one of the quite amazing games for the system. It was an action-adventure game with an excellent musical score that combined side-scrolling and top-down levels that could be explored with a great deal of freedom on the player's part. Very cool and still worth checking out.
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