Ninja Gaiden Trilogy

Developer: Tecmo     Publisher: Tecmo     Released: 1995     Genre: Action

Ninja Gaiden was a seminal part of my childhood. The amount of hours I spent trying to defeat the Jaquio is practically legendary. The years spent working on beating the game made my eventual victory all the more satisfying. It also made me actively seek out its sequels when they were released. Ninja Gaiden was a big deal on the NES which makes it all the more surprising that the series was ignored during the 16-bit era. Eventually Tecmo announced Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, a compilation of all three NES classics. It should have been cause for celebration. Instead each game has its flaws making the game not the sure fire slam dunk it should be. It is still good but could have been better.

For those new to the series Ninja Gaiden follows Ryu Hayabusa on his many adventures as he fights demons, cyborgs, and even government agents. Ninja Gaiden was notable for being one of the first games to use cutscenes to advance its story, serving as rewards for your hard earned progress. Ninja Gaiden Trilogy packages all three games and features better looking cinemas that look decidedly better than their 8-bit counterpart. I wish I could say the same for the graphics however.

Ninja Gaiden Trilogy more or less features straight ports of Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2. The cutscenes benefit from the SNES’ wider color palette and overall look great. The levels themselves look about the same although they appear a little darker than on the NES. There are only a few stylistic differences between the 8 and 16-bit games. Stage 3-1 in Ninja Gaiden 2 featured flashing lightning that illuminated the stage briefly, allowing you to continue. Here it is permanently bright; whether it is better comes down to preference. Nintendo of America’s censorship have caused the removal of crosses and pentagrams and blood being changed from red to green. It is odd, as they had let up such practices a year prior.

Ninja Gaiden 3 sees the most changes. On the NES Ninja Gaiden 3 is one of the best looking games on the platform. This should have been an easy slam dunk yet it is not. Disappointingly they removed the parallax scrolling in many of the stages which is baffling. Somehow Tecmo managed to get three layers of scrolling out of the NES and it looked fantastic. Certain stages are also missing subtle background effects as well. Some of the music tracks are also missing as well. Compared to the generally great job done with the prior two games Ninja Gaiden 3 reeks of a rush job.

The gameplay of the first two games remains unchanged. That means all item and enemy placement is identical, allowing familiarity to veterans. It is still amazing just how much Ninja Gaiden borrows from Castlevania, from its UI, special weapons, and destroying items such as candles to find power-ups. But while they did borrow from Konami’s classic they improved on it as well. The controls and feel of the game are better overall. While Ninja Gaiden was exceptionally difficult Ninja Gaiden 2 does a great job of making the game less frustrating. Enemy damage never gets out of hand and you can now scale walls natively. The overpowered spin slash is gone but with skill you can use the ninja clones to trivialize most boss battles. The addition of password saves to both games eases the high difficulty, making them very accessible.

Ninja Gaiden 3 went through heavy changes during localization, most of it not for the better. It was made considerably harder through rearranging of item placement and damage scaling. The most egregious was the removal of the password system and limited continues. Thankfully the version here is based on the Japanese version which was the easiest in the series. It makes it the most accessible out of the three titles even though I still feel Ninja Gaiden 2 is the better game.

The controls in Ninja Gaiden 3 were noticeably floaty. The SNES port is even worse in that regard although it is not game breaking. I mention it specifically because it is disappointing that this version on Ninja Gaiden 3 is so flawed. At its core the game Is fantastic and Ninja Gaiden Trilogy had the opportunity to smooth out its rough edges to make it the best in the trilogy. Instead it introduces flaws of its own that are enough to suggest playing the original Famicom version instead.

In Conclusion

While it has its good and bad points Ninja Gaiden Trilogy is still a collection of three fantastic games. My disappointment is that it could have been better. Regardless it is hard to find unfortunately. As a late 1995 released it had a limited print run and can be a little expensive. You might be better off buying the NES games individually.