History of Ninja Gaiden

With the NES trilogy, such as it was, now complete, the Ninja Gaiden series began to move onto fresh platforms. 1991 saw the release of Ninja Gaiden Shadow for the GameBoy, a prequel game that many believe was actually based on the rival Shadow of the Ninja series. Always a fairly obvious copy of Ninja Gaiden, fans point to the numerous similarities between Ryu's GameBoy outing and Shadow of the Ninja as evidence that Tecmo struck a deal to port Natsume's copycat effort to handhelds, and simply re-skinned the graphics to fit its own franchise.

1991 also saw Ryu leap the console divide and make his first appearance on SEGA hardware, with a Game Gear release simply known as Ninja Gaiden. Predictably, the game had nothing in common with the modern-day story of the NES games, instead finding Ryu apparently back in feudal Japan and on the run from bad guys who wanted to steal his Dragon Sword. A Master System game, also called Ninja Gaiden, followed in 1992 and - you guessed it - once again rebooted Ryu's story for another fresh start. This time he was tracking the evil Dark Samurai and the Sacred Scroll of Bushido, with the help of new abilities such as the Desperation Attack, which could destroy all the enemies on-screen at a cost of a quarter of Ryu's health. Unusually, this game was exclusive to us poor saps in PAL Land, which sort of almost makes up for the shoddy treatment we suffered with the NES games. A further Megadrive instalment was under development, but was unceremoniously axed before release for reasons unknown.

Ryu's final gasp on the 16-bit platforms came in the form of Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, released for the SNES in 1995. A self-explanatory compilation of the three NES games, it included some revamped graphics, more impressive cut-scenes and even restored the infinite continues and password elements excised from Ninja Gaiden III for US players. Even so, it was a pretty shonky port, with sluggish responses and frame-rate. They even monkeyed around with the music, omitting several tracks from Ninja Gaiden III, which is precisely the sort of thing that makes die-hard videogame fans apoplectic with rage.

Now, you may think that it all went quiet on the Ninja Gaiden front for another nine years, until the series was once again rebooted and revived for the Xbox. And you'd be right. Sort of. However, Ryu's rebirth actually began just one year after his ill-fated SNES outing, and found him back in the arcade for the first time since 1988. That's because 1996 was the year that aspiring developer and outspoken breast fetishist Tomonobu Itagaki unleashed his Dead or Alive fighting series on an unsuspecting public. Produced by Tecmo, it numbered our old pal Ryu among its character roster, where he'd remain slugging it out against Bayman and Lei Fang until it was time for Ninja Gaiden to be brought back from the dead.

Almost a decade later, and Itagaki finally got the chance to recreate the series for the Xbox. Never one for humility or tact (this is, after all, a man who declared that certain inferior fighting games "will give your fingers cancer") Itagaki's stated goal was simply to create the greatest action game of all time. No pressure then. In revamping the series, Itagaki first of all cemented Ryu's place in his established Dead or Alive universe, drawing from the back-story developed through the fighting series to come up with a new take on a character that had always been rather vaguely defined. Ayane, the pink-haired jailbait from Dead or Alive, also crossed over to the new Ninja Gaiden, providing a tangible bridge between the series and also offering a way to at least feature some of Itagaki's beloved jiggling boobs without turning Ryu into a she-male. With no convoluted nonsense about evil CIA agents or trans-dimensional warships to worry about, the game was free to serve up an army of monstrous foes for Ryu to decimate as he battled to retrieve his Dragon Sword.

As far as gameplay went, the flamboyant creator was quick to essentially throw everything out and start from scratch. "The previous three games had gameplay that suited that age," Itagaki said in an interview with IGN. "Rather than reflexes, they focused more on remembering the patterns of enemy attacks...It was not about how to kill a group of enemies that fell from the sky all of the sudden; it was about memorising when the group of enemies would fall in order to proceed in the game."

That clearly wouldn't do for Itagaki, whose obsession (apart from realistic videogame breasts) has always been creating effortlessly fluid interactions between player and game. So it was that he set about designing a combat system that transplanted the instant feedback, speed and grace of a one-on-one fighting game into a 3D action experience. "Swift decision-making in every situation is much more important than memorisation," he continued. "For this reason, the response to control input on our game is much quicker. I'm sure everyone knows how Team Ninja games have feather-touch control, and Ninja Gaiden will be no exception."