Ninja Gaiden

1988 · Action / Platform · Arcade / NES

Overview

Ninja Gaiden (1988) is Tecmo's NES ninja platformer: Ryu Hayabusa avenges his father through a cinematic story told in cutscenes, and brutal difficulty.

Deep Dive

Ryu Hayabusa leaves Japan for America to find his father's killer and uncovers a plot involving an ancient demon. The story unfolds in anime-style cinematic cutscenes between acts, far richer storytelling than most NES action games offered. Ryu slashes, wall-jumps and climbs, using ninja arts powered by collected items. Its difficulty is legendary, especially the final act, where dying against the last bosses sends the player back to the start of the act. (Tecmo's arcade game of the same name is a different, beat-'em-up design.)

Developer Story

Ninja Gaiden was designed by Hideo Yoshizawa at Tecmo in 1988. The game was notable for its extensive use of cutscenes — between-level cinematic panels that told a story about Ryu Hayabusa's mission to avenge his father. These were the most sophisticated narrative sequences seen in an NES game to that point. The game's difficulty was legendary, particularly the final stages which reset players to an earlier point after the last few bosses.

Did You Know?

Ninja Gaiden used manga-style panel cutscenes to tell a complex revenge story — narrative depth unprecedented in NES action games.
Losing to any of the three final bosses sends the player back to the start of Act 6 — one of the most notorious difficulty decisions on the NES.
Ryu can cling to walls and jump between them — a traversal move that shaped the game's vertical stages.
The soundtrack, composed by Keiji Yamagishi, is considered one of the finest in NES gaming.

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