I played Ninja Gaiden a few years back (not the NES version). I still play it. A lot!

It’s quite simple to understand why someone could be addicted to a game like that. Great graphics, excellent sound, stylistic action and ninja combat, fluid controls and an extremely deep combat system all scream at you to keep playing. Add to that various mutators, such as the Master Ninja Tournaments and you’ve got your killer-app. Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox had it all. At the risk of losing gamer-credibility, I’d go as far as saying that Halo was the overrated game on the Xbox - Ninja Gaiden truly showed the world what the box was capable of and how a game should be made. Ninja Gaiden Black came along and added new enemies, a few twists and the legendary Master Ninja tournaments.

But then news came along that Ninja Gaiden was being developed for the Nintendo DS and I went “Oh fuck! Here goes the coolest looking game back to shitty graphics and kiddy gameplay”.

Oh how wrong I was.

(more…)

While the world hasn’t exactly been going ga-ga over the Xbox 360 Originals service, gamers in India had much to cheer about. When it comes to finding an original Xbox game, it’s probably as easy as finding Altair in a hay-stack. Sure, we don’t have the 120 Gb Elite HDD but that hasn’t deterred us from trying to give ourselves a heartache and download the games on our so-called broadband connections.

The recent addition of Burnout 3 to the Xbox 360 Originals roster meant that Microsoft was serious about “frequently” updating the catalogue. We had hoped that they will use the term “frequently” in a more literal way and it seems like some one is listening!

According to CVG, come 11th January 2008, and the Xbox 360 Original’s game roster will be expanded with three brand new (in a manner of speaking!) Xbox titles in the form of Tecmo’s hit Ninja Gaiden, Criterion’s orgasm-inducing BLACK and Sid Meiers Pirates! The price point is expected to be the same as all the other Xbox 360 Original games i.e. 1200 Microsoft Points which is approximately INR 850.

Ninja Gaiden is one of those few games, after the Halo series, that proved to be system-seller for the Original Xbox. It’s a no-brainer for those who didn’t have the fortune of playing the game on the original Xbox or are looking to own a copy of the game. For those looking for a gun-orgy in completely destructible environments will surely find putting down there moolah for BLACK worth it. And if neither slashing through hordes of ninjas nor blasting your way through baddies is the way you like to relax, then maybe Pirates! is the one which will catch your fancy with it’s open world game play as you merrily sail away sinking merchant ships while romancing the mayors daughter.

Now that we have more choice as far as the Originals game catalogue goes, we have our fingers crossed that Microsoft-India launches the Elite HDD as a separate add-on soon.