Ninja Gaiden Trilogy

[NinjaWarrior]

Why is this frown on?

 

Is it because it's not like Super Mario All*Stars in Graphics?

 

Tecmo didn't go that route on the Game

[Austin]

It's nice having all three games in one spot, but they aren't as consistent/polished as the NES originals, so the whole effort comes off as a bit cash-grabby/lazy.

 

The visual improvements aren't to Mario All-Stars levels, but to be fair they are a slight improvement over the NES games. Some characters that didn't have color before, now do, and the shading is improved on a lot of objects overall. It also has a password system which can be handy for newer players.

 

Sound is a major mixed bag overall with a lot of.. horns and whatnot. It's weird if you're used to the NES games. I dig some of the tunes, but others I could definitely do without. There are some pretty harsh sound effects too.

 

Ninja Gaiden 1 was replicated the best of the three and is the one I revisit the most on this pack. It starts to go downhill with Ninja Gaiden 2. In that one certain visual effects failed to be replicated all together. For instance, Stage 3 lacks the lightning flash effect and is always fully lit. In Ninja Gaiden 3, the bosses don't blink when you hit them and the parallax scrolling at the start of the final stage is completely missing. The background is totally static despite there still being wind physics in play. It's kind of.. questionable at best. There's also slight slowdown in the games exhibited in areas where there is none in the NES games, and Parts 2 and 3 in particular will eat your inputs when things get busy on the screen, which also doesn't happen in the NES games (kind of a big problem in games that are extremely precision-oriented). So, not only are the games a bit gimped aesthetically, but they don't play as well as the NES games either.

 

It doesn't help that the cart itself is ridiculously expensive these days. I still enjoy it for some of the slight touchups and a few of the sound remixes, but it's also inferior in a bunch of ways and so I'd rather just play the NES originals. It's not bottom-of-the-barrel trash and is still enjoyable, but given that the lack of effort applied in its development made itself redundant out of the gate, I think it's deserving of the reputation it has.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Austin

[Tanooki]

You're asking why it's dumped on?  There's layers of reasons for it, and depending on your tastes and tolerances you can check a few boxes.

- Minimal graphics update

- Minimal audio update too

- Password system

- Changes to the difficulty

- Changes to the game mechanics in places

 

For me I'd absolutely concede the top two, they could have really done better with the re-colorization minimally, definitely could have drawn something more 16bit looking like SMAS did.  And the audio, it is not 8bit chiptune music but it's definitely not in the upper half of what was expect on SNES for sampled audio.

Password - I've seen that come up, personally I appreciate it.  I don't have the time to sit there anymore nor have for a good 20 years to plow through a game like that in one sitting.

 

Now the last two, that is the one where things tend to get spicy with people.  I fall on the unpopular side of absolute approval of the changes to the difficulty and mechanics.  Why?  It's a restoration of the original games.  We all know these first came out as Famicom titles.  What some may not be aware but should by now, they made the games notably harder for the US market.  Checkpoints removed, a few more cheapo spots with this or that, and nastier damage on hits.  Why?  REVENGE.  Third parties in Japan didn't have to compete with effectively freeloaders... freeloaders?  RENTERS in the NA market, Blockbuster, Warehouse, mom n' pop, whatever.  You could get a $40-50 game for $3 for 3 nights and likely beat it.  So to middle finger the renters and scare up some sales because you couldn't finish it, they made the games bitterly worse on a range of many third party titles.  By the time this was lightly remastered for SNES as the Trilogy, they took the original Famicom cut of the titles gameplay, challenge, life bar mechanics and restored it to original.

 

While I own either set, I prefer playing the game as they were intended by the company Tecmo and their designers, not the US markets vengeful pricks trying to screw with renters.

[Austin]

7 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

- Changes to the difficulty

- Changes to the game mechanics in places

I am pretty sure both of those statements are false, unless you are mixing up the PCE Ninja Ryukenden, which does have a boatload of changes. The games on the SNES cart match the difficulty of the original US versions, and there are no major mechanical changes that I am aware of. Same amount of enemies all throughout, item placement is the same, bosses are the same, hitboxes basically all feel the same (to the point where NES speedrun strats are replicable in the Trilogy cart), I'm fairly certain the damage output is all the same, etc. The only aspects making the games "easier" at parts is the aforementioned visual downgrades at points (like in Ninja Gaiden 2) and the password system that's implemented.

[Tanooki]

No they're not false.  This was something I saw debated as far back as NintendoAge a decade ago plus.  Specifically NG3 is a good one to point out.  NGT+Famicom have the same difficulty while the NES is worse as it removed multiple checkpoints and put in more enemies to deal with.  NG3 in Japan always had a password system, now it's just applied to all three games which isn't a bad thing and is optional.

[Austin]

55 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

No they're not false.  This was something I saw debated as far back as NintendoAge a decade ago plus.  Specifically NG3 is a good one to point out.  NGT+Famicom have the same difficulty while the NES is worse as it removed multiple checkpoints and put in more enemies to deal with.  NG3 in Japan always had a password system, now it's just applied to all three games which isn't a bad thing and is optional.

Yes, they are. I went to compare gameplay videos just to make sure, and yes, they are the same. Ninja Gaiden 3's Famicom lacks enemies in many spots and places fire shields in many more locations, a power-up that basically makes you invincible. NGT Part 3 is *not* using that Famicom difficulty curve.

[M-S]

Ninja Gaiden was released by Gradiente and came in a black cartridge where I live. And Ninja Gaiden II was released yet again by another company with a different size. But Ninja Gaiden Trilogy was released by Nintendo, so it came in a standard SNES cartridge. This has nothing to do with the games, I just think owning a trilogy of three games that all look different from each other would be funnier than just a single one.