Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

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drauch
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by drauch »

Yeah, guess my understanding of TAS is a bit off. Generally when I've seen it in the past--I usually ignore it completely now--there was no mention on what exactly was being 'assisted', so it rubbed me the wrong way. I can understand the reason why they're used if they're displaying certain things, at least when it's noted as such. I think at this point it's been so burned in my head as a dominate form of speedrunning, which I'm not all that fond of in the first place, although there are obvious exceptions. And I guess that's not even the fault of the TAS-ers themselves, but what's popular on the ol' 'Tube. Unless you're using them in nefarious ways, then that's a different story! :wink:
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

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__SKYe wrote:Absolutely agree with this. Not even when people post here about getting a 1CC/1LC without any screenshot/video (happens all the time). Take your Edmond example -- he's certainly pissed at NG, but even he never made false claims of having cleared it (that I know of).
Simply not the kind of thing I even consider when it comes to this forum/thread's posters.
That's a very good point about ol' Edmond, one I must admit with a hint of regret I never really credited him for. He took absolutely the wrong approach to NG1, for his limited ability and obvious short fuse - you need a wicked pain tolerance to take down a brick wall with your bare forehead :shock: - and he blamed plenty of his mistakes on imagined flaws with the game itself, between taking wild swings at me and various other onlookers. :lol: But I never doubted for one second he was genuinely at those controls busting his ass. Just not busting it very efficiently. Image I'd rather have ten of him than one prancing ponce TASing up the joint.

...I'd rather have neither, obviously, but let's pretend I've a gun to my head here. :wink:

As for Youtube in general, to cap off my input on the matter, this prize twat epitomises why I don't take it very seriously to begin with:

Image

Crapping all over Hurblat's beautiful Contra III Hard Speedrun. No comment needed really, but for the uninitiated, LOL no the st1 burning ground is safe the instant it starts fading, and both your hitbox and those of projectiles are tiny. It's why you can even hope to survive stuff like the last boss's Blue Balls From Salamander, and do stuff like this (st1 wall pointblank + escape - easier than it looks!):
Spoiler
Image
I barely clear one of the fireballs he mentions in my own paltry run, cos I screwed the timing needed to cross the fire pits without stopping (you've got to start moving the very instant the screen unlocks, after the bombing cinematic). At the time I was nailing run after run only to die at the last boss in strange and hilarious ways, so I couldn't be arsed to restart... but seeing the above jagoff's comment, I double couldn't be arsed!
Stevens wrote:Thanks Skye.

After playing both for the better part of a week arcade Renegade definitely feel harder than arcade Kunio. I won't go so far as to say they upped the difficulty by adding bullshit but it certainly feels like they did.
IIRC, wasn't Combatribes a similar case? I think the depleting health was an "Overseas" thing versus the JP board. Double Dragon III AC wasn't actually by Technos (Data West, IIRC) but it's roughly the same in World vs JP. Paying real money for in-game goods, yeah boyeee that's the future right thar. :[

(on this tangent, Konami's Metamorphic Force had a bad case of this, too)
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by Obscura »

"Any legit Contra player would recognize this" is what really sends that comment home, heh.

(When you say dying on the last boss, I take it you mean the brain, not the helicopter chase? Dying to the latter on a good run would be about the most anticlimactic thing I can think of -- horrible to experience, but hilarious to think about someone else experiencing!)
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by BIL »

Obscura wrote:"Any legit Contra player would recognize this" is what really sends that comment home, heh.
I know! Is there something about legit Contra that imparts a keen eye for when burny floors are ok to touch?
(When you say dying on the last boss, I take it you mean the brain, not the helicopter chase? Dying to the latter on a good run would be about the most anticlimactic thing I can think of -- horrible to experience, but hilarious to think about someone else experiencing!)
Yeah, specifically the "roulette wheel" - for some reason, I never figured out why, I went from reliably nailing my pick every time (the EZ-cheeseable "rolling rocks"), to getting completely random picks. Most of which I could deal with, but those fucking blue balls, man. I think I can do it 20% of the time, with heavy bombspam to create slowdown. >_<

This persisted right up until the successful run - I didn't mean to choose the "encirclement" or "meat armour" forms either, but they're quite harmless so I didn't complain. The very last one is meat armour, and I damn near let it hit me, I was feeling so demoralised. Before that, I had a C missile go straight through the wheel and hit the brain itself, absolute horror that netted me a fatal case of blue balls in a previous attempt. :shock:

I think it might be to do with the player character's positioning when you shoot. Last time I played CIII, I was trying to master the BBs and my other problem pattern, the Black Snake (which is technically simple, but very unforgiving). I'd love to know if the BBs were actually a reference to Salamander's infamously bullshit st4 boss... Miki Higashino even composed for both games, haha.

As for the final escape, that was locked down by then, but I did enjoy one prize cockup on previous no-miss attempts. Dropped the game for several months after that happened. :mrgreen:
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

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BIL wrote:As for Youtube in general, to cap off my input on the matter, this prize twat epitomises why I don't take it very seriously to begin with:

Image
drauch wrote:But I guess too, sadly, that most people just watch these wacky wild craaaazy videos of people beating notoriously 'hard' games from their childhood of that dreaded nostalgia bug. Ya know you shouldn't go there, but I play a sick game with myself of checking out the comment section, seeing how fast I can see something say "MAH CHILDHOOD", "This game was impossible when I was a kid!", "I think I beat this as a kid, too", ETC. And it's usually everything, so I guess that's where the apathy comes from, and the subsequent inflated ego of the cheater for getting his couple seconds of backwash fame as the MASTER GAMER.

the two ends of the spectrum - blindly praising obvious cheating and thinking your one attempt at credit-feeding a game makes you keen at picking out cheats in a pro player's run. :B
on what is far from rare occasion, a person will do both! Image

iirc, the runner for actraiser 2 gets a hell of a lot of comments about this kind of stuff because of how technical that game is with i-frames.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by Stevens »

BIL wrote:
IIRC, wasn't Combatribes a similar case? I think the depleting health was an "Overseas" thing versus the JP board. Double Dragon III AC wasn't actually by Technos (Data West, IIRC) but it's roughly the same in World vs JP. Paying real money for in-game goods, yeah boyeee that's the future right thar. :[

(on this tangent, Konami's Metamorphic Force had a bad case of this, too)
I wasn't aware of that in Combattribes - but I will do some research for the good of the thread.

As far as DDIII - they saw the future. I'm glad young me knew that even at the time the game sucked:D NES version was way better.

Regarding Renegade Vs Kunio I would guess they tinkered with hit/hurt boxes a bit before it came here. It feels far easier to connect punches and jump kicks in Kunio.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by Obscura »

There's a really EZ-Modo method of doing Black Snake -- the snake never touches the ground on the same place on consecutive passes. Watch where it touches the ground, and duck in that spot on the next pass. No need to try to read the bounces. Didn't know there was a way to cheese rolling rocks.

My method for that boss involved finding a spot of three balls in a row that weren't very threatening (I don't remember what the exact spot was, it's been too long) and just aiming for the center of that; specifically, I remember that legs *wasn't* in that row of three because even though legs is the theoretical best to get, something next to it was scary enough to dissuade me. That said, I wasn't 1LCing, and so I usually had a machinegun available to me for playing roulette, which makes attack selection easier.

(Also, reading your linked post, JP C3 has unlimited continues?!?! Whaaa?!?!)
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by __SKYe »

BIL wrote:As for Youtube in general, to cap off my input on the matter, this prize twat epitomises why I don't take it very seriously to begin with:

Image

Crapping all over Hurblat's beautiful Contra III Hard Speedrun. No comment needed really, but for the uninitiated, LOL no the st1 burning ground is safe the instant it starts fading, and both your hitbox and those of projectiles are tiny. It's why you can even hope to survive stuff like the last boss's Blue Balls From Salamander, and do stuff like this (st1 wall pointblank + escape - easier than it looks!):
The saddest thing about these kind of comments is that, a single "coming-from-a-seasoned-player"-like comment such as that one, will permanently cast doubt on the player's skill as far as the average gamer is concerned, since I wager they already have their doubts about the player's expert play (or rather, they doubt that they can actually pull off that kind of expert play on-the-fly).
Stevens wrote:
BIL wrote:
IIRC, wasn't Combatribes a similar case? I think the depleting health was an "Overseas" thing versus the JP board. Double Dragon III AC wasn't actually by Technos (Data West, IIRC) but it's roughly the same in World vs JP. Paying real money for in-game goods, yeah boyeee that's the future right thar. :[

(on this tangent, Konami's Metamorphic Force had a bad case of this, too)
I wasn't aware of that in Combattribes - but I will do some research for the good of the thread.
Wasn't aware of the Combatribes differences as well, but then again, I always go for the original release (JP in most cases), so I wouldn't know either way.
Stevens wrote:Thanks Skye.

After playing both for the better part of a week arcade Renegade definitely feel harder than arcade Kunio. I won't go so far as to say they upped the difficulty by adding bullshit but it certainly feels like they did.
Stevens wrote:Regarding Renegade Vs Kunio I would guess they tinkered with hit/hurt boxes a bit before it came here. It feels far easier to connect punches and jump kicks in Kunio.
Are the hits needed to beat enemies the same (ie. do your attacks do more/less damage)? Or are the number of enemies the same?
Thanks for the hint too: I'll try to give them a proper go later, and see if I end up feeling as you do.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by kitten »

Obscura wrote:(Also, reading your linked post, JP C3 has unlimited continues?!?! Whaaa?!?!)
it also gives you the full ending and extra little fight with the last boss on normal, too. contra spirits is probably the better version just for ability to practice troublesome stuff without getting ejected back to the beginning.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

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Obscura wrote:(Also, reading your linked post, JP C3 has unlimited continues?!?! Whaaa?!?!)
Yep - level select cheat, too! Makes practicing st6 a lot simpler on a console.

8/16-bit Contras seemed to consistently get more generous continue+cheat setups in JP, culminating ofc in Hard Corps JP's lifebar. On the US side of things, I remember tasting absolute despair when I quickly resorted to GamePro's cheats ("what are those orange blocks next to the character portraits in their screenshots? never mind!"), only to realise I was doomed to figure out st3's constellations by myself. Glad for the experience now ofc. Image
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by BurlyHeart »

Was it ever revealed why the US Contra's were made that much harder? Was it simply that harder equated to "cooler" in those days? I assume the decision came from the US publishers, rather than Japan.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by Obscura »

The commonly advanced theory is that it was to fight the US game rental market, but I've never seen any reliable citation to support it.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

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__SKYe wrote:Are the hits needed to beat enemies the same (ie. do your attacks do more/less damage)? Or are the number of enemies the same?
Thanks for the hint too: I'll try to give them a proper go later, and see if I end up feeling as you do.
The amount of damage to take down foes seems to be the same, if that's any different I certainly can't tell. Like I said before just seems like the hurt box on your hands and feet are smaller in the US version making it that much harder to hit people.

The number of enemies is the same.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by kitten »

Leviathan wrote:Was it ever revealed why the US Contra's were made that much harder? Was it simply that harder equated to "cooler" in those days? I assume the decision came from the US publishers, rather than Japan.
rentals were a big concern in the US market and a lot of US localizers suggested upping difficulty/removing codes/so on to make sure the game couldn't be beaten in a rental and that people would either rent again or go out and buy it. this sometimes ended up totally screwing a couple of games and also led to things like battletoads being modified to be utterly cruel in its nonstop trial-and-error (kind of funny, given it's a european game). the japanese version is often considered the original and the NA version is somewhat notorious for a stage being completely, literally impossible to beat with two-players because of sweeping and apparently untested difficulty changes. there are two-player speedruns for the game that have the 2nd player game over at the start of clinger winger because of this.

i was reading an article just the other day with someone who worked with localization talking about rentals being the force behind a localization difficulty change, but i can't remember for the life of me what it was. obscura is right in that there's not a lot of open documentation on this and most of what you see is just theorizing, but i've seen it from the horse's mouth a couple of times. apologies for lack of examples! i'm not good at pulling stuff off the top of my head. i believe KID games only had their 3rd quests added in (both regions) thanks to ken lobb's suggestion (he personally thanks you at the end of multiple KID games), which is some possible evidence.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by BurlyHeart »

That's interesting. It's something I would never have thought of, but it makes a lot of sense. I certainly was guilty of that practice as a kid!
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by kitten »

keep in mind nothing is universal, and there were a lot of localized games made easier, too. there are also cases like castlevania III where the game is actually more like a remaster or 2nd quest of its jp version and shaped up a bit in being made harder, too!

always check the cutting room floor for regional differences, if you're curious about them. it's an invaluable resource.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by mycophobia »

Got a Shadow Dancer arcade 1CC on hardest difficulty. The difficulty level primarily affects projectile speed and the frequency with which enemies attack, in contrast to Shinobi where the difficulty level affects enemy layouts. I definitely prefer the latter approach, but I guess either way it's not that hard to adapt to if you're already familiar with the levels. I kinda go over this in the video a little bit.

Anyways I think I'm finally ready to try something new instead of bouncing back and forth between the same five or six games I've already cleared. I've still never beaten Ninja Gaiden so maybe it's time to join the task force
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by Stevens »

Not a WR or anything but my best up to this point.

Image

I've gotten to the end of the 2nd loop a few times only to meet my end in the same spot. Once I cleared the 2nd I was fairly certain that if I didn't clear the 3rd this would be where it ended and it was.

That said the 3rd loop is the first time the difficulty noticeably ramps up. Enemies are far more durable and move faster. The motorcycles are faster and you have to take down eight of them as opposed to five(?) in the 1st loop and I think six in the 2nd.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by FinalBaton »

Japanese Contra carts are for cucks 8)

Real alpha males(and females) go with USA! USA! USA! :)


jk, lol
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by __SKYe »

Stevens wrote:Not a WR or anything but my best up to this point.

Image

I've gotten to the end of the 2nd loop a few times only to meet my end in the same spot. Once I cleared the 2nd I was fairly certain that if I didn't clear the 3rd this would be where it ended and it was.

That said the 3rd loop is the first time the difficulty noticeably ramps up. Enemies are more far more durable and move faster. The motorcycles are faster and you have to take down eight of them as opposed to five(?) in the 1st loop and I think six in the 2nd.
Great job. :wink:

Also, are those stacked boss faces the number of times you've defeated each? That's such a cool way to count loops.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

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mycophobia wrote:Got a Shadow Dancer arcade 1CC on hardest difficulty. The difficulty level primarily affects projectile speed and the frequency with which enemies attack, in contrast to Shinobi where the difficulty level affects enemy layouts. I definitely prefer the latter approach, but I guess either way it's not that hard to adapt to if you're already familiar with the levels. I kinda go over this in the video a little bit.

Anyways I think I'm finally ready to try something new instead of bouncing back and forth between the same five or six games I've already cleared. I've still never beaten Ninja Gaiden so maybe it's time to join the task force
whoa heck this is sure different from the mega drive game, which i've... not played a whole lot of. need to go back to the whole family of shinobi games, sometime. i used to love revenge. anyway, good job! probably! i have no idea how tough this game is :B

- - - - - - - - - -

i've posted a lot of information about power blade and power blazer over in the arcade imperfect thread, in this post and this one. i recommend famicom/nes action fans give those a read.

also, here's quick links to my nomiss plays for power blazer and power blade.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

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mycophobia wrote:Got a Shadow Dancer arcade 1CC on hardest difficulty. The difficulty level primarily affects projectile speed and the frequency with which enemies attack, in contrast to Shinobi where the difficulty level affects enemy layouts. I definitely prefer the latter approach, but I guess either way it's not that hard to adapt to if you're already familiar with the levels. I kinda go over this in the video a little bit.

Anyways I think I'm finally ready to try something new instead of bouncing back and forth between the same five or six games I've already cleared. I've still never beaten Ninja Gaiden so maybe it's time to join the task force
Interesting that the small dog is the same sprite shrunken down rather than a different sprite of a puppy in the AC version.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by Stevens »

__SKYe wrote:
Great job. :wink:

Also, are those stacked boss faces the number of times you've defeated each? That's such a cool way to count loops.
Thanks! I would have stuck with the domestic version if BIL hadn't mentioned it. Enjoying this one more.

Yeah the boss faces are each time you've beaten them.

Stage two and four are the hardest though. Two can be a major time crunch to beat the boss if you take too long with the bikes.

Four is tough because one hit and you're done. Learning how to separate and single out a target becomes essential. The boss ups this cause now there is another one hit kill guy running around with a gun that I'm certain is unregistered and three more mooks. I've a few ways to deal depending on what happens when I enter the room, at least so far. Getting rid of one mook helps a lot as far as space is concerned.

Someone should do a Rom hack of stage two where the gang are the Cobra Kai. Tell me that Shit isn't fitting especially since it starts with the bikes. And William Zabka was everyone's favorite bully back then, I can see him tapping his foot as you beat down his friends.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by __SKYe »

If you enjoyed the original, you should give the FC port a try.

It has 3 levels of difficulty, which not only make the enemies able to take more punishment, but it also spawns more of them, though not usually at once (the game has a limit of 3 enemies on screen). The exception is when you face 2~3 bosses at once on the maze in stage 4.

Stages 1~3 are similar to the arcade game, but stage 4 is a veritable maze (especially if you map if out room by room and don't use a guide, like me) that just gets bigger and more complicated depending on which difficulty level you're playing on.

Can't say much on how the actual controls compare, but from the little I've played the arcade version, they're not that different.
Unlike the arcade version you will only fight the boss after you've defeated all the enemies, and you'll fight them alone.

Difficulty Level-1 is a cakewalk, especially if you're already used to the mechanics. Level-2 is tougher but doable.
Level-3 is maddening in how you must be very, very quick/good to clear some of the rooms on Stage 4, otherwise you will lose due to time out.

Overall it should be easier than the arcade game, with perhaps the FC's Level-3 being about the same difficulty (just an estimation, though).

One of the more interesting points of the FC port is that, even though the game doesn't loop, you can literally play forever (and achieve max score -- whatever it is) by deliberately entering the wrong doors in Stage 4, so that you can redo the stage (or part of it), as the timer resets every time you enter a new room. The downside is that the score ceases to have any function.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by Sumez »

Obscura wrote:The commonly advanced theory is that it was to fight the US game rental market, but I've never seen any reliable citation to support it.
I was actually in a discussion on the subject in some Reddit thread the other day, with some guy who had the same impression as me; that the "rental" explanation has become a sort of end-all be-all explanation nowadays. Sure it does make a lot of sense, and I'm pretty sure that did play a big role, but I think there's a lot more to it than that.

Basically, back then a game's difficulty would be a testament to its quality. Games would proudly boast their tough-as-nails challenges on the back of the box (and some times the front, too), and review magazines would comment on the difficulty not in an "only play this if you're prepared for a challenge" way, but in a more positive light, realizing how a harder game would have more to offer the player in the long run. The one I read listed a rating of the difficulty right next to ratings of the graphics, music, etc. Gamers wanted harder games.

It may seem almost absurd, even in a community such as this where that mentality is already dominant, but back then "game over" was a thing in the mainstream too, and beating a game meant overcoming a challenge. I remember mailboxes in the local magazines where kids would always boast about being "power players" due to having beating X number of games, etc. A completely different mindset than what we see today.
One thing I do regret as a kid was actually being intimidated by a lot of games, and having a bad habit of choosing the "Easy" difficulty setting if one was available. I played games like Mega Man and Zelda II, but never completed them, because I figured they were for poeple who were cooler than me. But even with that mindset I just wasn't interested in games that were too easy - which kind of takes us back to the rental argument. I remember being interested in buying both Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country back in the days, but I never bought any of them, as I managed to beat both of them 100% while renting them (which was always a 24-48 hour period), and figured I wouldn't get enough for my money's worth. An easy game was essentially the same as a short game, which really does make a lot of sense. And if you're gonna own a game you want to be able to play it for months.

So in short, games weren't just difficult because the publishers wanted it - the consumers wanted it, and publishers used it to promote their games.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by Stevens »

I'll throw my hat in the ring on the why games we're hard back in the day - could be totally off but it's a theory.

Games back in the 80's were seen as a kids toy. It isn't like today where adults are the ones purchasing and most likely playing the games. Back then it was parents buying games for their kids (us) and the harder games made it so you got much more play time out of it before you had to bug mom and/or dad for another $50.

Again just an outside the box theory.

Skye - Spent a lot of time with the NES version as a kid. I can still here the jump kick sound in my head. I am curious to try the SMS version though.
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by WelshMegalodon »

So... I finally tried playing Ninja Ryukenden to see what all the fuss was about. Only took me two years. :lol:

Can't really say anything that hasn't already been said... the game is very good about giving you opportunities to learn - I can't think of a single time where an enemy or boss pattern was completely opaque. There are quirks like enemies randomly walking to the right and disappearing, and needless dilly-dallying can get you killed very quickly, but once I got used to the very touchy controls and the surprisingly generous range of my sword I found I could get reasonably far just by paying attention. But I suppose I need to get further than Edmond before I can call myself a decent player? (On that note, the guy got to Act 5 without dying... the fact that he was as adamant as he was about this game being unfair is puzzling.)

FinalBaton's excellent no-death run has also proven an invaluable resource in this endeavor. I didn't even know it was possible to single wall jump in this game.
Last edited by WelshMegalodon on Fri Jan 05, 2018 9:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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__SKYe
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by __SKYe »

You don't need the skills, just a healthy attitude. 8)

Honestly though, just stick at it, playing at your own pace, and you'll clear it in no time.
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kitten
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by kitten »

Sumez wrote:So in short, games weren't just difficult because the publishers wanted it - the consumers wanted it, and publishers used it to promote their games.
the discussion was more about the regional changes - not why games tended to be difficult. i felt games tended to be hard because of a stars-aligning degree of factors - corporations realizing they had to give the little guys at least a little wiggle room, the guys at the bottom having their hearts set on fire by the economy and arcade culture and doing what they wanted, the average consumer looking for novel excitement and addictive challenge in a new medium... japan was pretty much a perfect little bubble to create this stuff, and we're lucky we got what we did. i feel like foreigners didn't "get" classic action game design and it's only during this limited window of the medium being fresh and the factors all lining up that we were blessed with the brief span of wonderful design we got. also, i mean, entertainment providing an addictive challenge is an appeal older than recorded history, it's just natural.
WelshMegalodon wrote:But I suppose I need to get further than Edmond before I can call myself a decent player? (On that note, the guy got to Act 5 without dying... the fact that he was as adamant as he was about this game unfair is puzzling.)
i'd say you've at least got to beat it before saying you're decent! :B getting past stage 6 can be done by credit-feeding and just being persistent, but that at least shows some tenacity, imho. the game is really forgiving if you're using continues up to that point, but you don't slip through that last stage on accident. funnily enough, on practicing for nomiss, i got the last level down relatively ingrained and then most of my slip-ups were at previous points - but it's definitely the biggest hurdle.

i'd still say the game is unfair, but only to learn. once you've spent enough time with it and applied a bit of memorization, any mistake becomes your own fault and the game is definitely way more execution than memorization. my approach to games is generally that the learning should be the most fun part, and my 2nd or 3rd run through a classic game is usually my favorite, especially when i feel i'm able to apply what i learned and very quickly get a 1cc or even nomiss. i then like to forget things and come back to it, going through that process once more. very different from how this forum tends to appreciate games, and something i was failing to understand.
FinalBaton's excellent no-death run has also proven an invaluable resource in this endeavor. I didn't even know it was possible to single wall jump in this game.
i would say BIL's run is probably the most informative because it contains quite a few mistakes and recoveries. it has the cadence of a good player taking a casual run through a favorite. this is by no means a stab at bil - he's said as much that it's a kusoplay, i believe - but rather a testament to its usefulness.

- - -

by the way, here's an interesting comment that was just linked to me, apparently translated straight from hideo yoshizawa, the director of the first ninja gaiden -

https://twitter.com/Zerochan/status/949396577491279872
he thinks the birds were unfair! Image
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Re: Ninja Gaiden [NES] + Scrolling Action Monogatari

Post by FinalBaton »

WelshMegalodon wrote:So... I finally tried playing Ninja Ryukenden to see what all the fuss was about. Only took me two years. :lol:

Can't really say anything that hasn't already been said... the game is very good about giving you opportunities to learn - I can't think of a single time where an enemy or boss pattern was completely opaque. There are quirks like enemies randomly walking to the right and disappearing, and needless dilly-dallying can get you killed very quickly, but once I got used to the very touchy controls and the surprisingly generous range of my sword I found I could get reasonably far just by paying attention. But I suppose I need to get further than Edmond before I can call myself a decent player? (On that note, the guy got to Act 5 without dying... the fact that he was as adamant as he was about this game being unfair is puzzling.)

FinalBaton's excellent no-death run has also proven an invaluable resource in this endeavor. I didn't even know it was possible to single wall jump in this game.
Thanks man :D That means a lot. I'm happy that you're getting informative stuff out of my run! Happy to help.

Yeah as you said : the game is pretty fair for the most part(contrary to popular belief). Every little section of the game can be defused, there's almost always a perfectly safe, or at least a fairly safe way. I've said it before and I'll say it again : your most powerful asset is to know the layout of the game well. Know the spawn points. That's...



...RULE #1 OF THE NINJA GRANDMASTER :
KNOW YOUR ENEMY 8)

and I might as well throw in rule #2 which is just as important :

RULE #2 OF THE NINJA GRANDMASTER :
NEVER GO BACK

those respawns... lol



keep at it, I'm sure you'll clear the game before long
-FM Synth & Black Metal-
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