With some incredibly fun games in the franchise's history, Ninja Gaiden has become a cult classic for good reason. Most of the games in this series are known for their insane level of difficulty which has motivated gamers looking for a challenge. We’re not only talking about the difficulty of NES titles either, as the later releases for modern systems are also exceedingly difficult too. Playing the Ninja Gaiden games prepared a generation of gamers for the Dark Souls series, which by comparison are not quite as difficult. Seriously, if you can beat the first Ninja Gaiden for the NES or Ninja Gaiden Black for the Xbox, then Dark Souls should not be a problem. Below are the five best and five worst games in the Ninja Gaiden franchise.
10 Worst - Ninja Gaiden Arcade
This is the game that began the Ninja Gaiden franchise. The original Ninja Gaiden was a side-scrolling beat ‘em up, and not a very good one. If there’s one thing a beat ‘em up needs to avoid it is being repetitive, and Ninja Gaiden fails at this miserably, as the same enemies appear over and over again. The only saving grace is that the levels are well drawn and have lots of cool little details.
This game is best known for the game over scene that asks if you want to continue. The scene has Ryu tied down with a spinning saw-blade slowly lowering toward him. If the player doesn’t continue the blade kills Ryu, which was extremely gory for the time.
9 Best - Ninja Gaiden : Dragon Sword
Dragon Sword was released by Team Ninja in 2008 as an exclusive for the Nintendo DS. This is a great DS game that makes great use of the system's stylus. The player uses the stylus to issue commands to Ryu; a quick series of taps will throw projectiles, a slash with the stylus across an enemy will result in Ryu doing the same. The player activates Ryu’s spells by drawing the appropriate symbols on screen. The game is so much fun that you don’t mind the bad camera angles and holding the DS vertically.
8 Worst - Ninja Gaiden 3
This Ninja Gaiden title was released by Team Ninja in 2012 for the Xbox 360 and PS3. Team Ninja dropped the ball with this one, which is surprising since the previous two were pretty good. The biggest complaint is that the game was over simplified from the previous games.
That is a valid complaint, but by no means the only one. The controls are not good, the enemy A.I. is laughably dumb, and the plot is lame. Lastly, there are way too many quick-time events. It felt like Ninja Gaiden was trying to be like God of War.
7 Best - Ninja Gaiden Black
Ninja Gaiden Black was released by Team Ninja in 2005 for the Xbox. Black was an improved version of the Ninja Gaiden game released a year earlier. It featured new enemies and increased the number of costumes. This is a fun game, but is also so frustratingly difficult, that they had to add an easier difficulty setting.
The game also included DLC content from the original Xbox version and a Mission Mode with 50 missions. When played on the Xbox One X this game is upscaled for better resolution. This is definitely one of the better Ninja Gaiden games. The original Ninja Gaiden for the NES is also included with Ninja Gaiden Black.
6 Worst - Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge
Razor’s Edge was released by Team Ninja in 2012 for the WiiU, and in 2013 for the Xbox 360 and PS3. Take everything bad about Ninja Gaiden, then make those problems only slightly better and you have Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge.
The enemy A.I. is still dumb, the controls are still not quite right, the camera angles are still a problem, and the plot is still lame. Like the previous game the graphics are okay, but the colors are an ugly collection of grays and browns. Razor’s Edge and Ninja Gaiden 3 aren’t the worst games, but an entry in the Ninja Gaiden library deserves better.
5 Best - Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword Of Chaos
Ninja Gaiden II was released in 1990 by Tecmo for the NES. This was the follow-up to the classic original NES game. Ninja Gaiden II continued the tradition established by the first NES title of difficult gameplay, responsive controls, and a great soundtrack. Improvements were made to the controls as well, like Ryu being able to climb walls. There are also new spells for Ryu to cast. A particularly useful new spell allows Ryu to create a shadow clone of himself that mimics his actions. If you don’t mind difficult games you should give Ninja Gaiden II a try.
4 Worst - Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z
Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z was released by Spark Unlimited in 2014 for the Xbox 360 and PS3. This game may look impressive in screen shots and videos, but don’t let the impressive graphics with their nice cell shading fool you as this game is awful. Yaiba gives the original Ninja Gaiden arcade game stiff competition for being the most repetitively boring. You will spend the entire game mindlessly killing wave after wave of enemies that all look the same. To make it worse you aren’t fighting rival ninjas or powerful monsters, but slow-moving zombies that offer no challenge. Yaiba is proof that adding zombies does not make something better.
3 Best - Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Gaiden was released by Tecmo in 1989 for the NES. Back then this was a must own game, and beating it gave you the ultimate of bragging rights on the playground. Sure it’s difficult, famously so in fact, but the difficulty only becomes frustrating in the later levels. The soundtrack for Ninja Gaiden is considered by some to be the best 8-bit soundtrack ever. The game was also one of the first NES games to have cut-scenes to help drive the plot. At the time these cut-scenes were next level, and other game developers began copying them.
2 Worst - Any Ninja Gaiden Game Made By Ocean Software
Ocean software handled the Ninja Gaiden ports to the microcomputers during the late 80s and early 90s. All of these are horrible. It doesn’t matter if it was for the Commodore 64, Amiga, or Atari ST, they were all borderline unplayable. They were also ports of the arcade game too instead of the NES version so they were even worse. The controls in all of these are completely broken and suffer significant lag time. The games also move along at a snail’s pace, and some of them don’t even have scrolling screens. Avoid these titles at all cost.
1 Ninja Gaiden Sigma II
Ninja Gaiden Sigma II was released by Team Ninja in 2009 for the PS3. Sigma II is an improved version of Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360. The game features new bosses, and some of these new bosses are gigantic. Sigma II also incorporated co-op play and three new characters. The controls in Sigma II are responsive and have been improved over the previous game and Xbox 360 vesrion. This game was censored for its North American release however. Much of the blood and gore was either removed or altered making some of the enemies’ blood purple.