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Five minutes.
That’s all it took for me to realize how much I sucked at Ninja Gaiden II. It doesn’t matter how many excuses I could think of to justify dying so quickly and so embarrassingly. “Well, it has been a while since I last played the Xbox original,” I muttered to myself. Right, that was soothing. I should also go on and mention how the sun was in my eye, the check was in the mail, and how the ninja dogs ate my homework. Whatever. Bottom line was, Team Ninja’s grand follow-up to one of the best Action games of 2004 was standing in front of my face, every bit as punishing as it’s predecessor ever was to newcomers and softies. And really, no self-respecting fan would have it any other way.
When Microsoft India’s Sanjoy John gave us the OK to come on over to his office in Gurgaon to give us our Ninja Re-Education Classes, two things became quickly apparent to myself and Reggie. Firstly, nothing was going to get in our way of experiencing Mr. Itagaki’s latest hacker-slasher. Not over-priced shady parking lot “services”, not the blazing heat beating our foreheads like an engineered oven-bazooka, nadda. We had to get our hands dirty, no matter the cost and humiliation. The second thing that became quickly apparent was the fact that we needed someone who was more than experienced in the ways of the Hayabusa clan. Fortunately, we had just the right person: Ren Miranda, Reggie’s younger brother. The pieces were in place and it was go-time.
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.
Ever since Team Ninja’s Tomonobu Itagaki decided to resurrect the Ninja Gaiden franchise, Ryu Hayabusa has risen to fame as the greatest action hero in gaming. Making the transition from the calm seas of 2-D to the vicious 3-D waters was never going to be easy, but Itagaki’s sunglass powered foresight made it happen. It is still a mystery why Itagaki-san bet his chips on Ninja Gaiden instead of making some sort of X-Men game…he is the Japanese cyclops after all (never wondered what was behind those glasses?)
Two remakes later (Black and Sigma), we will finally witness a new chapter in Ryu’s saga until Ninja Gaiden 2 hits the Xbox 360 sometime next year. And who would have thought that the graphically intense, action-heavy, extremely mature Ninja Gaiden will see its next chapter unfold on the Nintendo DS? Doubts fogged my mind as a Ninja Gaiden on the DS seemed almost next to impossible (unless it was another cheap 2-D rendition, that’s what all the other devs do, don’t they…the lazy bastards). But here I am, with an early build of Ninja Gaiden DS tucked neatly in my DSLite. So lets take this Ninja Dog out for a stroll and find out if it only barks or bites as well?
There’s no denying Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden: Black were just awesome (if not ruthlessly unforgiving) on the Xbox, so it pissed quite a lot of people off when Ninja Gaiden Sigma became a PS3 exclusive. However, if GameSpot Korea is right, all that might change with Ninja Gaiden 2, which is rumored to be back for the Xbox 360 and will be showcased at the upcoming Tokyo Game Show. Now our Oriental mumbo-jumbo translations aren’t what they used to be, but it looks like Team Ninja has said that they will demoing the game on the Xbox 360 because of their “strong relationship with Microsoft”. Now the real deal here is that, apparently, there is no news on a PS3 release yet, which means the Redmond boys might be up to their old tricks again, shoving tons of cash into developers’ G-strings to get an exclusive, or at best, a timed exlusive. We’ll have more info for you as this “rumor” takes root in the coming days.