Top 100 NES Games – IGN.com

Developer

Tecmo

Released

1989

17

Tecmo’s long dead and more recently revived series Ninja Gaiden got its start on the NES in 1989 with what’s considered one of the best, most difficult action platformers ever. Main character Ryu Hayabusa wielded a katana with deadly precision, and he had a grouping of special weapons to use as well. In fact, Tecmo took a page from the book of another successful action-platformer of the day, Konami’s Castlevania, and mimicked its special weapon system almost to a tee. What resulted was a crisp experience in NES gameplay that still stands up today. The current-day Ninja Gaidens have a reputation for being overly-difficult, but it was this NES original that initially set the trend. In addition to exceptionally hard feats of platforming, Ninja Gaiden’s fast and furious action was made all the more difficult by its vast army of wily enemies. And talk about difficult – if you were unlucky enough to lose all of your lives in the game’s final stages (which gamers did over and over and over again), you’d have quite the trek in front of you to get back to where you were to try all over again.

Our Fondest Memories

The classic Tecmo-created action game remains etched in my mind for a couple reasons. It featured actual cut-scenes in an era when such things were considered extraordinary. Everyone remembers the simple, but effective cinematic in which series hero Ryu Hayabusa stands atop a mountaintop and stares off into the distant landscape. Primitive by today’s standards, sure, but I remember being blown away when I first set eyes on it. And then, of course, the difficulty – starts off easy enough, but advance through half a dozen areas and you find yourself in a fight for your very life. Funny that both of these defining characteristics have carried over through the years into modern day Gaiden sequels.

– Matt Casamassina, IGN Nintendo Editor-in-Chief