Ninja Gaiden

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Ninja Gaiden is a side-scrolling beat'em up where you play the role of a ninja hero that travels to the US, to find his father. As you roam the streets of the cities you have to fight with plenty of baddies that await to get a piece of you, but luckily you are a well trained ninjitsu fighter and you can eliminate them using your deadly standard punches and kicks. It's strange that the game's intro shows a ninja carrying a katana sword and almost never uses it inside the game! Apart from fighting and beating up the foes, you can also jump onto several platforms to avoid contact or to grab extra power ups that will help you with your quest.
Although there are plenty of better beat 'em up games around, the game remains fun to play plus that it is quite popular.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Ninja Gaiden runs on either CGA or EGA mode (no VGA mode) and thus it has either 8 or 16 simultaneous colors. The stages are fairly detailed and the sprites are quite large but unfortunately there is very little enemy variation compared to the original, but they move quite fast. Although stage details try to keep the original (and the superior Amiga version), the screen flickers constantly which is very annoying and makes the game rather unplayable.
The sound on the DOS version is not impressive, featuring an in-game tune and just a few dull sound effects.