Welcome to Modojo, 
The Golden Age of Ninjas
Written by Philip Jones on Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Modojo's resident ninja Philip Jones laments the death of his species and reminisces about the glory days...
...Continued From Page 1
Ninja Gaiden - Tecmo
There was another ninja on the block...a certain Mr Ryu Hayabusa, wearing his rather snazzy blue ninja rags. The series started out in the arcades as a side scrolling beat 'em up in the same vein as Double Dragon, only with added ninja athleticism. The home conversions on the other hand, were more along the lines of an action platformer, employing dash 'n' hack tactics. The Game Boy and Game Gear incarnations followed in the footsteps of the NES home version. Ninja Gaiden Shadow on the Game Boy, was actually the name given to the western release of a conversion of a Japanese Famicom game, Kage (Shadow), released in the U.S. as Shadow of the Ninja. It plays so much like a Ninja Gaiden title, that given the popularity of the series, it was considered an ideal candidate to become a part of the Gaiden family.
The Game Gear Gaiden was a proper ahem...stab, at being a Ninja Gaiden game, but like many Sega games, its development was handled by their own internal teams, hence the "Reprogrammed by Sega" on the title screen. Game Gear Gaiden typifies the early 90's handheld action game. Short, fast and sweet. Mister Hayabusa tears around the levels with great speed, chopping down bad guys as he goes. Which is good, seeing as if you get beaten by the level boss, you'll need the speed to get back to him, as you'll find yourself all the back at the start of the level! (Shakes ninja fist at sky)
The other handheld to be graced by the ninjas of Gaiden was none other than poor old Atari Lynx. Shunned by pretty much all the major game companies of the time, the Lynx amazingly became host to two excellent Ninja Gaiden games - most astonishingly, a conversion of the original arcade game. I can remember the day at school; we were all sat around at breaktime playing on our Boys and Gears. When the one kid who had a Lynx shouted out "I have new game!", we all sauntered on over expecting some rubbish like Uncle Bob's Lazer Golf Cart Quest 2000. Instead, we were all in stunned silence, as the arcade game we knew and loved danced in front of our eyes on the screen of the Lynx. It was a remarkably faithful conversion and quite possibly one of the best games to appear on the neglected Atari machine.
The second Lynx outing, Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom, was a port of the NES original. The only real problem with the otherwise excellent game was that the size of the sprites was verging on the ridiculous...tiny little ninjas, running around on minute LCD screens that featured a lot more blur than screens do these days. It becomes hard to tell the items and enemies from the background graphics! Gameplay though, is solid Ninja Gaiden action. So it's still worth picking up if you can find a copy.
ALL NEW NINJA GAIDEN DS!!!
As you're probably well aware, Ninja Gaiden made a comeback on the Xbox, and following on from this renewal of the franchise, we're going to be receiving an all new Ninja Gaiden game! Hell yeah! Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, which should be with us towards the end of the year, looks stunning from the few pictures released so far by Tecmo. The game adopts the "DS as a book" orientation, like Brain Age and Hotel Dusk. It looks like you'll be controlling Hayabusa with the dpad, while slashing away at enemies and casting spells with the stylus. Not that much else has been revealed about the game yet, so just view the screens and drool away!
posted April 26, 2007