Poll of the Day > GameTok with Lok: Breakdown the game design of NES Ninja Gaidens

(+) Yeah! (+)

Inter:
What was the appeal
How did they compete with their contemporaries
Were they actually good
What were the flaws

Intra:
Which one was the best one
what was the best/worse part of each
what was the best/worse sub weapon or accessory
what was the best/worse boss

GIMME GIMME GIMME!!!!

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side question:

What are them games where you have Shadowstep but, like, it's chain lightning shadowstep. like the Dark Arts ability in Binding of Isaac

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wait, am I barking up the wrong tree?

How many of you are even old enough to have played NES in its prime?

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wait, you're asking me to name these things? i need to do homework for this?

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Kanatteru posted...

wait, you're asking me to name these things? i need to do homework for this?

well, it's more of an opinional so if you didn't play them then whatevs

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Ok, I'll start with an example of progression...

Yasee, it seems very much like Ninja Gaiden was trying to rip off Castlevania - aside from the HUD element being the most egregious there's also the subweapon system as well as the way items are doled out (smashing candlesticks).

It's kinda like how Sonic is trying to rip off Mario... the dev took their favourite part and expounded on it.

In addition, there is a weird change Ninja Gaiden makes in part 3... Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2 both have a pseudo isometric design to their backgrounds to make it look kinda 3d; this is a hold over from the fact the first arcade game was a beat'em up. However, Ninja Gaiden 3 does NOT use this ?trademark? look, instead going for a more traditional direct angle design.

Ninja Gaiden 2 did toy with this in a few levels so it could just be natural progression, but I think it's more about 2 factors: The first being that the platforming could be imprecise since the hitbox of terrain is not perfect (ya right, it was totally the visuals and not the BIRDS that made the platforming hard), and secondly because there are now full vertical sections in almost every level and a static isometric design doesn't look right when you can scroll in multiple directions.....

Note: Contra 3 actually uses this design and solves the problem by cleverly having new floors be mostly offscreen in between vertical segments. For example the Stage 3 miniboss is a vertical segment after a horizontal segment... but it has the rails separating them so it tricks your mind. After the miniboss the new ground is off-screen to the right so you don't dwell on the change in perspective (The final stage's mini-boss also does this)

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