GameSpotting

Andrew Park
Senior Editor

Recent Favorites: Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Animal Crossing (GC), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2), Halo (Xbox)
Most Anticipated: Master of Orion III, Doom III, Rise of Nations, Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil

Are You Missing the Point, Here?

I had originally planned to write on this subject last week, so apologies for the delay. Sometimes, when you're talking about your favorite (or not-so-favorite) games, it's easy to play the role of an armchair game designer, and say things like, "Hey, I could have made a better game than this," or, "The developers don't even know what they're doing!" If you've ever visited a game-related message board or subscribed to a game-related e-mail list, you know what I mean.

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So I beat up the guy in front, and hope the guy in back doesn't sucker punch me?
I usually try to avoid passing judgments like these, but there are times when even I have to wonder. Take the recently released trailer for Ninja Gaiden, which makes the game look like some sort of 3D beat-'em-up along the lines of Sega's 2002 game Shinobi, in which the main character is apparently some sort of extremely tough, extremely cool ninja who pummels multiple enemies at a time with a series of canned combination attacks. When I first saw it, I immediately asked myself, "Do these guys know why Ninja Gaiden was a good game?" While the trailer may somewhat resemble the original Ninja Gaiden side-scrolling beat-'em-up arcade game, the series really made a name for itself on the 8-bit NES, and the NES games were nothing like what was in that trailer.

The 8-bit Ninja Gaiden games were side-scrolling platformers that starred a ninja named Hayabusa--a young guy who wore a robin's-egg-blue suit with a neckerchief. If you played the first NES game, you may remember that at certain points in the game, Hayabusa would walk into a bar and get punked from behind by a woman with a tranquilizer gun, or get dropped through a trapdoor like a chump. Hardly the sort of thing you'd expect from a supremely aware, highly skilled, dangerous ninja master. You may also remember that Hayabusa's opposition consisted of such menacing enemies as "knife-throwing guy in pink pants" and "hyperactive bouncing blue-bodied dog-thing." If you got hit too many times, you died. If you fell into a pit, you died. If you got hit while you were jumping over a pit, you were knocked backward and usually fell and died. A lot like most other side scrollers at the time, right? Right, except for one highly innovative and then-unique gameplay mechanic--the fact that Hayabusa could destroy anything with his sword.

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Yes, this is what you looked like.
He didn't look all that impressive, and his sword attack looked totally unassuming and didn't have all that much range to it, but if your timing was impeccable, you could use Hayabusa's sword to swiftly eliminate any threat--enemies, monsters, and even bullets--with a well-timed swipe. I was never able to do it myself, but I've watched some friends run through the entire game using nothing but the sword, without once getting hit or taking damage, by carefully timing jumps and either dodging or swatting away the opposition with well-timed, well-placed sword- strokes. (Sure, you could use Hayabusa's additional ninja weapons, like throwing knives and such, but running through the game using only your sword was the real test of skill.) In other words, in Ninja Gaiden, being skilled was the same thing as being totally invulnerable. It was a remarkable game mechanic that set Ninja Gaiden apart from all other games at the time and made it a bona fide classic. The game's cheesy post-'80s fashion sense and music only added to its charm.

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Say, did you know that the hero of the classic Ninja Gaiden series was in this game?
Then came Ninja Gaiden II and III, which retained the same game mechanics but were much, much easier games because Hayabusa could freely scale walls and acquire a power-up that created multiple images of himself (basically tripling his firepower). He then appeared as a playable character in Tecmo's Dead or Alive fighting series, but trust me--hardly anyone cared (or even noticed) that he was there. Most people played Dead or Alive for...the other characters.

And now, the upcoming Ninja Gaiden game doesn't seem to have anything in common with the classic NES games. In fact, it hasn't even been confirmed that Hayabusa is the star of the new game. Were the NES games a fluke? Tecmo's being extremely secretive about the details on the new Ninja Gaiden game, and to its credit, the company did a decent job with its remake of another classic arcade/NES game, Rygar. I hope Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox turns out well, but I can't help but wonder if somewhere along the way, someone missed the point.

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