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Old 03-20-2021, 08:36 PM   #53
Hateandhatred
"The Quebec Steparatist."
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Age: 33
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Default Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge



March 20th

Today's challenge is: Criminally Underlooked.

As hinted yesterday, today will be about my favorite game on my favorite console (the SEGA Master System, to reiterate), which is itself criminally underlooked, unless you live in Europe or in Brazil. Let's get into it.

Most people have heard of Ninja Gaiden. People will usually think of the NES trilogy or maybe the more recent ones when hearing the name. If you're asking for old Ninja Gaiden games not on NES, you might hear about the arcade version, but no one ever mentions the Master System version while that one is easily and by far the best one in the series. THAT should be a retrogaming sin, and therefore I'm gonna talk about SEGA's take on Ninja Gaiden.



So to clarify, this game isn't a port or anything, but a brand new game with a similar design. Everything other than how it remains a ninja platformer has changed, so much so that you could call this Ninja Gaiden 4 or something. The special weapons are mostly different, you have a special move that hurts everything on the screen at the cost of 5 units off your lifebar, you can hang pretty much everything your hands come across, the wall jumping has been rethought into something that feels a whole lot more natural, and the knockback hitstun has been made a lot more fair.



In comparison to the NES games, It's definitely on the easy side, but while some people may complain about that, I don't think this is a bad thing. It's not too easy, you still have to put in the work in order to complete the game, but I'd rather have than than having an unfair experience, like the respawning enemies you'll find in the NES trilogy. Sure, they're not impossible, and difficulty is a good thing when the game gives you means of fighting back, but I still prefer the easier one because of its design.



While the SMS game is visually a LOT superior to the NES games, the same can't be said of the music. Even though it did do a pretty good job overall, the SMS can't compete with the NES there, but that's a console issue, and imo the only area the SMS falls short in the 8bits console war (unless you count the library, but that's not the console's fault). Even with a FM enabled console (and there aren't many compatible games), there's just no way you can compare them. Also, the NES trilogy's music is legendary.



Back to the game itself, it also features those storyboard cutscenes, and in my opinion the story is pretty fun, though the translation seems to have been botched. There are some fun and unique moments in the game too. In the second level, you can see “SEGA” written on some buildings, and the boss of that level is sitting down the whole time as his goons come after you, and he just gets more and more beaten up the more you slash him down. There's also this little bandana animation on your character, which wasn't a very common thing at the time. All the levels are very unique themselves. They're also nice and colorful, and their bosses all work in very unique way. The boss of the waterfall level might be a little disappointing, but at least he has two phases. Other than that, it's just a pleasure to go through them.



When I got this game, I went to visit my friend Phil (always the same people coming back in these stories, huh) so we'd go through it together, and I think it left a great impression on the both of us. About 2 years later, I showed it to his brother Jay (yup, same people), which led him to buy a Genesis SMS adapter which he had ignored up to this point, and which was pretty weird considering he was also a SEGA fan. I ended up gifting him a SMS myself recently, as Felix (oh god can't I stop talking about the same folks) was getting rid of his collection. I know full well that he's going to add this game to his collection eventually, and in the meantime, I'll try to spread the gospel of 8bits SEGA a bit more.

The game is exclusive to the obvious GOAT of retro consoles.

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Last edited by Hateandhatred; 03-20-2021 at 08:53 PM..
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