Ninja Gaiden - Master Collection

is a series of action video games by Tecmo featuring the ninja Ryu Hayabusa as its protagonist. The series was originally known as Ninja Ryukenden (忍者龍剣伝, Ninja Ryūkenden, "Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword") in Japan. The word "Gaiden" in the North American Ninja Gaiden title means “side-story” in Japanese. The original arcade version, the first two Nintendo Entertainment System games, and Game Boy games were released as Shadow Warriors in PAL regions. As of 2008, the series has shipped over 7.7 million copies.^{[n 1]}

The series gained popularity on the 8-bit NES for its tight action-platform gameplay, catchy music, and, according to G4's X-Play, for being the first console game to have the story presented in cinematic cutscenes. The 8-bit trilogy was enhanced for the 16-bit Super NES in 1995. Sega also released two Ninja Gaiden games for the Game Gear and Master System, the latter only for PAL regions. A new game, titled Ninja Gaiden, was released in 2004 as a 3D action game on the Xbox, developed by Team Ninja, the makers of Dead or Alive. The Ninja Gaiden franchise is known for its high degree of difficulty, particularly the original NES version and the Xbox revival.^[3]

According to Eurogamer, the gameplay of the Strider arcade franchise was a vital influence on the modern incarnation of the Ninja Gaiden franchise.^[4]

Video games[edit]

Main article: Ninja Gaiden (arcade game)Arcade game[edit]

The arcade version of Ninja Gaiden (released in 1988, in Japan, North America, and Europe)^[5] was a Double Dragon-style beat 'em up, in which the player controls a nameless blue ninja (red for a second player) as he travels to various regions of the United States (such as New York City, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon) to defeat an evil cult led by a fictional descendant of Nostradamus, who is trying to personally fulfill his ancestor's prophecy of the rise of an evil king in 1999. The player has a variety of techniques, such as a flying neck throw and a back-flip.^[6] The player can obtain power-ups by throwing characters into background objects, such as street lights and dumpsters. The player fights primarily with his bare hands, although a sword can also be used for a limited time as a power-up; he can also use overhead environmental objects as a prop from which he can deliver more powerful kicking attacks. Although the game takes place in different environments, there are primarily only five kinds of enemies, all of which appear on every level (although some levels have extra enemy types). The game is remembered for its infamous continue screen (where the player character is tied to the ground underneath a descending circular saw).^[7]

The original Ninja Gaiden arcade game received several ports for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, and ZX Spectrum computers. The Amiga version, in particular, retained almost all of the graphics and functionality of the original game, including the two-player cooperative gameplay and the introduction. All these versions, developed by Ocean Software, were only released in Europe as Shadow Warriors. An MS-DOS port of the original Ninja Gaiden was also developed by Hi-Tech Expressions, this time for its release in North America as Ninja Gaiden, as opposed to the other computer versions. However, it featured stripped-down play mechanics and a low 16 color palette. Lastly, it was ported to the Atari Lynx handheld system. An emulated version of the arcade game exists in the Xbox version's update Ninja Gaiden Black as a bonus feature and was also available through Nintendo's Wii Virtual Console download service.