LUDEX game dossier
Ninja Gaiden
Japan System House · Sega Enterprises, Ltd.
Release
Friday, November 1, 1991
Player score
64/100
Platform families
Not announced
Connected releases
Core game only
Editorial overview
Inside Ninja Gaiden
What it is
Ninja Gaiden is an action video game released for the Game Gear in 1991 by Sega with license from Tecmo. It stars Ryu Hayabusa and is part of the Ninja Gaiden series, although it features a plot not connected to any of the other Ninja Gaiden games.
Gameplay is in many ways similar to the NES and Master System games with minor differences in mechanics. Jumping is more like moon jumping and the sword slash is quicker and has a wider range. Ryu can also scale walls and edges. There four different secondary weapons. Ryu's "spiritual strength" (called Force) can go up to 99.
The premise
At the start of the game, Ryu Hayabusa is responding to an attack in his village as he rushes to a shrine where the leader of the attack was holed up in. Defeating him, the leader reveals that he was hired by a man named Totenkopf who was a smuggler who sells weapons to a variety of clients. Attempting to find out why would someone would steal the Dragon Sword, Ryu infiltrates the boat and kills Totenkopf, revealing a man named Mr. Tsin who he was selling weapons to in Hong Kong. Ryu defeats Mr. Tsin but not without being captured and brought to India where the person who wants the Dragonsword to start World War III reveals himself to be Shiragane, a demon capable of mind control and with the power of the Dragon Sword, can effectively have almost unlimited power in dominating over the minds of others. Ryu kills him and brings an end to another threat of the world.
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