Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos


The box art doesn’t lie: “Hard to Beat” is legit!

The original Ninja Gaiden was stupid hard. So naturally, the developers at Tecmo must’ve called the Mega Man design team to ask for tips on how to make the game even more difficult!

Their suggestions: add more fire, spikes, a wind/rain element (that moves your character left/right on the screen) and snow/ice (that makes you slip to your doom).

Oh, and let’s add a storm act, where lightning flashes intermittently allowing you to see an otherwise completely dark board. Throw in some ancient relics which obstruct your view of enemies and other threats too, and you now have Ninja Gaiden on a cocktail of steroids and crack.

Otherwise, the game is fun. Graphically it’s ahead of its time, and the cut scenes add a dimension rarely seen in Nintendo games. (They’re straight out of the action films of that era and cheesy!)

Definitely, recommend playing this unless you’re on blood pressure pills.

Ninja Gaiden


Holy cow! Yes, this game is very difficult, but I never really remembered much of it due to not being able to progress very far (because, really, a timer?)

The story line and game play were likely second to none way back when. It even pulled me in here in 2018 (the time of this writing).

If I forgot to mention, the game is crazy hard, but I really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it for you classic gamers out there.