Ninja Gaiden Trilogy for SNES = GARBAGE

[figgler]

Why didn't anyone tell me? This compliation had been one of the major missing pieces in my SNES collection until a few days ago. The game is rare enough that I'd never seen it before then. Imagine my excitement right? This is going to be flippin awesome, right? It's going to be Ninja Gaiden given the Suepr Mario Allstars treatment, right? Good god I'm excited...

 

But oh no. Not close by a long shot. I suppose the gameplay is largely unchanged, eventhough the button assignments are unintutive and not customisable. The graphics are pretty much the same as the NES games. Not a bad thing at all, except that I expected a major upgrade here. No upgraded scrolling backgrounds, no improved sprites or colours and even a few graphic glithces that were not present in the originals. Like how the bosses in Ninja Gaiden 1 start to explode when you kill them, then just freeze. Awesome! But here's the real kicker folks - the music has been unlovingly butchered to all hell. The soundtrack from NG1 which I regard as one of the best ever is barely recognisable now and sounds of a much, much worse quality than it did on NES. Like some kid trying to mimmick the tunes and sound effects you loved on a $10 keyboard he bought at Radio Shack.

As a total package it's quite literally disgusting really and man I'm pissed. Love Ninja Gaiden on NES like me? Then avoid the SNES versions at all costs or have your dreams shattered. I mean it. You've been warned..

[+Omegamatrix]

Why didn't anyone tell me?

 

 

You just never asked... Seriously never played it on Snes, but was considering to pick it up like yourself as I thought it would be sweet to have all the games together in one cart. I think now I'll just hunt down Ninja Gaiden II for the Nes and be happy with it.

[Atariboy2600]

Why didn't anyone tell me? This compliation had been one of the major missing pieces in my SNES collection until a few days ago. The game is rare enough that I'd never seen it before then. Imagine my excitement right? This is going to be flippin awesome, right? It's going to be Ninja Gaiden given the Suepr Mario Allstars treatment, right? Good god I'm excited...

 

But oh no. Not close by a long shot. I suppose the gameplay is largely unchanged, eventhough the button assignments are unintutive and not customisable. The graphics are pretty much the same as the NES games. Not a bad thing at all, except that I expected a major upgrade here. No upgraded scrolling backgrounds, no improved sprites or colours and even a few graphic glithces that were not present in the originals. Like how the bosses in Ninja Gaiden 1 start to explode when you kill them, then just freeze. Awesome! But here's the real kicker folks - the music has been unlovingly butchered to all hell. The soundtrack from NG1 which I regard as one of the best ever is barely recognisable now and sounds of a much, much worse quality than it did on NES. Like some kid trying to mimmick the tunes and sound effects you loved on a $10 keyboard he bought at Radio Shack.

As a total package it's quite literally disgusting really and man I'm pissed. Love Ninja Gaiden on NES like me? Then avoid the SNES versions at all costs or have your dreams shattered. I mean it. You've been warned..

 

The main resion we never told you that we are self trying to forget this horror-game but dam the game stinks, thanks for opning up old wound

[chrisbid]

i never played it, but it doesnt surprise me. the snes sound chip in the wrong hands can be uglier than an elevator-music arrangement of lawrence welk

[JB]

But oh no. Not close by a long shot. I suppose the gameplay is largely unchanged, eventhough the button assignments are unintutive and not customisable.

And Ryu lets go of walls when you transition from one scene to another. So hold against the wall while climbing upwards, lest you fall to your doom.

Other than that, I think the actual gameplay is identical. I think it's the exact same code, actually.

 

The graphics are pretty much the same as the NES games. Not a bad thing at all, except that I expected a major upgrade here. No upgraded scrolling backgrounds, no improved sprites or colours and even a few graphic glithces that were not present in the originals.

It's worse than that...

Ninja Gaiden 3 HAD parallax scrolling in one or 2 of the later levels. Trilogy doesn't support parallax(or the SNES doesn't support NG3's method of generating it), so those levels are graphically broken.

 

They did up the color depth, though. The graphics ARE enhanced, just not as much as they could be.

 

 

 

They were probably just doing a quick and dirty port and couldn't be bothered to implement anything "fancy."

 

The glitches are subtle, they didn't add any more frames or effects while they were upping the sprite color depth, and the gameplay feels identical to the NES version.

I think they probably took the NES code, changed it just enough to make it SNES-compatible, and didn't take the time to to bugtest for any errors brought about by the hardware diffrences.

 

But here's the real kicker folks - the music has been unlovingly butchered to all hell. The soundtrack from NG1 which I regard as one of the best ever is barely recognisable now and sounds of a much, much worse quality than it did on NES.

The danger of remixes.

 

They couldn't use the original soundtrack(the SNES audio hardware is totally unrelated to the NES audio hardware, with a fundamentally diffrent approach to sound generation), and the guy composing the new one was of the opinion that more was better. Just because you HAVE 8 voices doesn't mean you need to USE 8 voices, and someone forgot to tell this guy. End result is a lot of instruments going off just for the sake of having instruments going off.

...

It actually sounds sort of like he was trying to rip of Megaman X's sound style for some reason. I shouldn't have to point out why that's insane.

 

i never played it, but it doesnt surprise me. the snes sound chip in the wrong hands can be uglier than an elevator-music arrangement of lawrence welk

That's true of any sound device.

 

The SNES sound hardware is actually pretty hard to misuse, if you have musical talent.

There's not near as much effort involved on the technical side as there is with something like the NES, or even the Genesis(the last major home system without sample-based audio hardware).

 

Bad SNES sound is typically better than bad NES sound. But bad SNES is far worse than good NES, and that's what's going on here.

Edited April 17, 2006 by JB

[chrisbid]

SNES was never really suited for techno music, it did better with midi string sounding stuff. NG had a lot of driving techno beats on the NES, and tecmo ripped it up. the SNES also has the worst mix of the double dragon theme in super double dragon.

[JB]

SNES was never really suited for techno music, it did better with midi string sounding stuff.

SNES did better with real instruments, regardless of whether they were stringed or not.

 

NES hardware is direct waveform generation. With very limited selection of waveforms. There's only so much you can do with 2 square waves, a triangle wave, and a noise channel.

...

Okay, so it had A sample playback channel, but it was low sample size, low sample rate, and pretty much useless for anything resembling accurate playback(Ninja Gaiden used it to add some kick to the "drums," if I recall).

 

You tend to get some interesting effects out of that sort of hardware, but rarely realistic ones.

 

SNES hardware plays back actual samples exclusively, and at a relatively decent quality level.

Makes it a lot more realistic-sounding, but a lot harder to create really distinctive effects.

 

 

 

NG had a lot of driving techno beats on the NES, and tecmo ripped it up.

Like I said earlier, they COULD have done a lot better. They couldn't do a 1:1 duplication, but what they DID do was just crap.

 

 

Among the things they could have done was recorded an NES playing back noise, triangle waves, and square waves, then used those as samples for the SNES version. That would've gotten them fairly close to the original sound.

 

But accurate sound wasn't what they were trying for. They wanted to "improve" the sound, and they went drastically overboard in their overhaul.

 

Mario All-Stars did the same thing, but did it a lot better.

It wasn't the diffrence in musical attitude that facilitated the port, it was that Nintendo actually CARED about the end result.

Edited April 18, 2006 by JB

[Jess Ragan]

For even more "fun," try the PC Engine (Turbografx-16) remake of the very first Ninja Gaiden! It wasn't enhanced at all, except for a little parallax scrolling in the background that adds more confusion than realism to the gameplay.

 

JR

[BrianC]

For even more "fun," try the PC Engine (Turbografx-16) remake of the very first Ninja Gaiden! It wasn't enhanced at all, except for a little parallax scrolling in the background that adds more confusion than realism to the gameplay.

 

JR

 

I tried it out. I think the graphics seemed to be more enhanced than the SNES version, but I found it to be a very odd version. The control is somehow slower than the NES one and the music is almost completely different. I acutally like the different music, though. I didn't like it as good as the NES one, but I found it to be decent. IMO, the worst version of Ninja Gaiden is the Genesis version. It tries to mimic some aspects of the arcade game, but is missing many of the better elements. The Genesis version has some strange auto scrolling that hampers gameplay.

[JB]

For even more "fun," try the PC Engine (Turbografx-16) remake of the very first Ninja Gaiden! It wasn't enhanced at all, except for a little parallax scrolling in the background that adds more confusion than realism to the gameplay.

 

JR

 

I tried it out. I think the graphics seemed to be more enhanced than the SNES version, but I found it to be a very odd version. The control is somehow slower than the NES one and the music is almost completely different. I acutally like the different music, though. I didn't like it as good as the NES one, but I found it to be decent.

I tried it once. Long time ago.All I remember was there were a lot of AC units piled up all over the city for no reason.

I'm assuming that sort of visual flavor carried through to the other stages.

 

 

 

IMO, the worst version of Ninja Gaiden is the Genesis version. It tries to mimic some aspects of the arcade game, but is missing many of the better elements. The Genesis version has some strange auto scrolling that hampers gameplay.

And I didn't even know that one existed.

Now I have to try it...

[Jess Ragan]

Oh good grief, the (Japanese) Genesis version of Ninja Gaiden was a nightmare. It couldn't decide if it wanted to be a side-scrolling platformer or a beat 'em up in the tradition of the arcade game, and failed miserably at both. It ties with the screechy, ugly conversion of Ninja Gaiden III on the Lynx as the worst game in the franchise.

 

JR

[Great Hierophant]

Also, I don't know if anyone ever noticed, but in the NES NG II, the background is almost entirely dark with the occasional lightning flash to guide the player through the stage. In the Trilogy, the background is always clearly visible, reducing the challenge level of that stage considerably.

 

In my opinion, the only good thing about the Trilogy is that the difficulty level of NG III has been restored to the Japanese Famicom level.

[ILA2600]

I tried using Game Genie code for Ninja Gaiden Trilogy for the SNES, and they would'nt even work, and I have not even thought of getting that game ever, thank god I only rented it once years ago!!!!