Ninja Gaiden II is unyielding. It represents my history with video games: a time when I was too stubborn to resist the challenge from an indifferent master that taught the path of practice, patience and persistence. Only a few months ago, the entire gaming community was busy falling over themselves to proclaim that nostalgia and accessibility were the true winners in 2008 (Braid was basically a more forgiving version Super Mario Bros. with a generous layer of whimsy slathered on top). However, they ignored an accomplishment that was just as important in this era of reheated video games disguised as the triumph of independence. Ninja Gaiden II preserves the history of the franchise while reminding us why video games were so irresistible to us all those years ago.

While critics and hobbyists continue to complain about the length, price, and difficulty of modern video games, there is one game that defied this call to submit to the needs of video games’ aging audience. Ninja Gaiden II stands alone, upholding the virtues of its forebears from the 8- and 16-bit generations, challenging players at every turn, taunting them, provoking them to attempt to “beat” the game if they dared. It mocks their frustration at the difficulty, its spartan save points allowing only a brief respite, while complaints continued about the repetition and dependence on button mashing. Apparently, nobody has the inclination to repeat entire stretches of a third-person action game anymore, let alone figure out bosses and actually defeat them. Ninja Gaiden II is born of the Old School: it does not agree with the current philosophy of video games, which states that it must be accessible or have some kind of meaning to be worth playing – let alone be worthy of discussion.

Indeed, Ninja Gaiden II is “Old School”, but not in the ironic or patronizing sense of the word. It is of an Old Philosophy, one that has been lost over the years to improvements in graphics, compromises for accessibility or the obsession with coming up with that ever elusive project that will cement video games in cultural legitimacy. We grew up with the Old Philosophy, because that was the most common way video games could add value to its experience. What kind of production could developers put together when writing music and coding graphics for 8-bit video games? Instead, they made them difficult, taking cues from their cousins in the arcades, where the entire point of an arcade cabinet was to take your money. They wanted you to insert credits to continue, even though you weren’t ready for what would come after. These were games that encouraged players to learn the mechanics to the point where it was like breathing, to appreciate the steady increase in difficulty, and the challenges these games posed. Because at the end of it all, when the bad translations scrolled up the screen in a half-hearted closure to the story, you felt like you accomplished something. There was skill involved – and whoever completed that game clearly had some. Any player that had the patience and perseverance to truly learn the game was rewarded. Even though no person outside of that arcade cabinet, TV screen or the subculture itself would be able to appreciate or acknowledge the feat. This was the life of the video games enthusiast, and the reason why we played them.

The remake of Ninja Gaiden (2004) for the XBox is widely recognized as being one of the most difficult games in the modern generation of consoles. Tecmo even capitalized on this popular opinion by repackaging the original game as Ninja Gaiden Black (2005) with a more forgiving difficulty setting. Except if you choose it Ryu wears a pink ribbon on his wrist. With this obvious contempt shown to gamers not worthy to play his game, it only follows that Tomonubu Itagaki and Team Ninja preserves this ruthless approach in Ninja Gaiden II while dialing up the blood and gore to levels that will inaugurate it as one of the most violent video games ever made.

There is so much blood in this game, it becomes ridiculous. Decapitations and severed limbs are a matter of course in every fight. Ninja hop around on one leg, bodies explode. The blood gushes from the faceless Spider Clan ninja, the green sludge spews from the necks of the demon minions of the Greater Fiends. There is a move that Ryu does if he has been standing still for a while, where he flicks the blood off of his sword into a puddle on the ground. Is this nonchalance towards the violent indulgence exhibited by the game a statement? Are we to laugh with Itagaki, or be shocked by how this little flourish has shown that violence is past the point of being offensive in video games?

However, instead of focusing the game’s design on what it is good at – the slick, faced paced action, the variability in limb removals, the challenge – it tries to work this action through a story. And while what I’m about to say could be applied to most games with terrible writing, Ninja Gaiden II is one of those titles that could have done without. There is no need to explain. Just give me a sword, and I’ll kill every last thing that comes across the screen. So I’m not going to bother explaining the story. It is beyond vacuous, and bears no weight for the action that is presented by the game.

What must be understood early on in Ninja Gaiden II is that unlike most modern video games, it is not set up for the player to succeed. The quicker the player comes to this realization, the easier the rest of the game is to digest. The game wants you to lose. It wants to kick your ass, and break your will to continue. It is up to you to gain the skills to surpass its increasing levels of difficulty, a concept that has been obfuscated by games that coddle players with level grinds or allowing them to carry entire arsenals in their back pocket. Ninja Gaiden II will try and humiliate you at every turn. It will send enemies that do not despair when their comrades are murdered in front of them; instead, they pick up a severed limb and try to beat you with it.

Acknowledging the fact that the odds are stacked against you is an important step in accepting the Old Philosophy as presented in Ninja Gaiden II. There are times where the game is so spectacularly unfair that it appears impossible – but it isn’t. Once you figure this out, there is a natural rhythm to the combat. It will begin to feel comfortable. You defend against attacks, the staccato clanging of swords punctuating the action, but you can’t stay in that position forever. You must time your openings carefully, and inflict as much damage as possible before the process begins again. As the difficulty begins its steady ascent there has to be thought put into attack combinations strung together to cut through mobs without taking heavy damage or using up the meager inventory of healing items. And there are a lot of mobs.

The mechanics of Ninja Gaiden II are everything you would expect from an action game. Starting with the Dragon Sword, there is really no need for the Player to venture out of this zone since additional levels can be purchased to inflict more damage. This is true of every weapon, as long as you have cash to spare. Experimenters might find that the other weapons produce a more dramatic bloodbath or higher damage at the sacrifice of speed, but the game prides itself in providing an extremely straightforward experience. There is often no need for this behavior.

It’s not enough to show the Player how gruesome each enemy’s death is (a design element taken to new heights by the God of War series) – Ninja Gaiden II will score you on it. The game encourages multi-hit combos that defy the laws of physics. Ninja Gaiden II fully integrates an online scoreboard, which brings back arcade-like competition. The Karma scoring system shows that there are games willing to exchange in currency other than frag counts. It also once again reveals Ninja Gaiden II’s foundations in the Old Philosophy.

In the midst of all of the violence the game makes a well-defined point about how it expects you to traverse each level. There is a fair amount of jumping puzzles and wall-running, which made me admire how a game that hinges on the pain players inflict on their enemies can integrate such seamless and satisfying mechanics for movement through its environments.

Yet when you actually pay attention to the game’s incidentals – the manufactured environments, the generic guitar riffs chugging in the background, the bland, plastic textures and boring character designs – it would seem like there was very little inspiration behind it all. There is no way this can be anything other than intentional, to bring the action and difficulty of the game to the very forefront. Just give me a sword.

If only Team Ninja could have let this game’s natural difficulty run its course. There is a point in this game – it is unmistakable – where you will feel like you are being bullied by the designers. After running a gauntlet of enemies and it feels like it’s time for a break, you face a sub-boss that explodes when it dies. After that, you face a new kind of rocket-launcher wielding ninja where you are forced to use your bow regularly. This presents the game’s most fatal flaw: the reliance on distance attacks to defend against enemies that have inhuman accuracy. It’s a wrinkle in the game that may completely alienate players that have been patient up to this point.

This fundamental change goes against everything that had been learned. This isn’t meant to be a game that emphasizes distance attacks. Weapons like the exploding shuriken are meant to keep enemies at bay, not actually deal with them. Ninja Gaiden II gives you a selection of bladed weapons to cut things with. And we should be able to use them without fear of some unseen enemy shooting at us from off-screen.

As a result, this change in pacing creates such a pronounced wall of difficulty that no amount of healing potion spamming or resurrection talisman will allow passage through. At this point, Ninja Gaiden II wanted me to quit. I already had unlocked the “Indomitable Spirit” achievement[1], which was a polite way of letting me know I suck. The game was basically telling me I was not worthy to continue and I should go play Burnout Paradise, growling something under its breath about “fighting spirit.”

During the previous levels, Ninja Gaiden II let me feel good about myself with a challenging but steady progression through each Chapter. But with the recent increase in difficulty, the game was telling me that it is serious about its no mercy philosophy. To succeed, you can’t just memorize the controls of this game. You have to learn them. You are either in, or you are out. My 12 year-old self saw this as a challenge. And that becomes the only reason to finish the game – the pursuit and realization of the Old Philosophy.

To add to the frustration, Ninja Gaiden II is old school in the sense that the camera is absolutely fucking horrible, with swimming controls from 1997 (I’m looking at you, Tomb Raider). The ultimate indignity was a boss battle that required me to stand on a 2 x 2 piece of stone in the middle of a lake while firing the bow, which often gave way to profanity and intense hatred directed toward the game after I fell into the water and had to reposition myself. Both of these mechanical limitations are experienced only for short portions of the game – but they are important portions. If the player cannot see what they are doing in the midst of a boss battle because the camera is stuck behind some rock outcropping instead of Ryu, paralyzing frustration often results.

Still, if you were willing to listen, the game had always been warning you about this. The lowliest minions make you work for each kill. What might seem like a crowd of easily dispatched, faceless ninja often turns into a chaotic display of paraplegics trying to kill you. They are incapable of giving up, of failing their mission. They will run at you with only one arm, sword slashing wildly through the air. If they have no legs they will throw explosive shurikens from the ground. They’re not giving up. Why should you?

There is a part at the end of Chapter 6 where I faced off against Volf, the Ruler of Storms. He is a giant werewolf with four arms. The battle takes place in a coliseum in front of his people, a massive, undulating crowd of slavering werewolves. After Volf is vanquished, a cutscene is shown where the crowd goes berserk and bellows for the blood of Ryu. I thought to myself, “Hey, maybe I’ll do some super ninja jump and get myself the hell out of here.” But as the scene ends, Ryu picks up the newly acquired Crescent Scythe and is expected to fight his way out. A mob of werewolves approached and I got to work cutting through the crowd. My heart sank at the prospect of cutting the limbs off of this tidal wave of hairy beasts while my healing items were slowly depleted. I soon gained a feel for what the weapon could do, and with that a new confidence. Though after a few mobs, my sidekick appeared in her fighter jet to pick me up. Deep down, I wanted to stay. I wanted to face them all.

There are a number of instances like this where Ninja Gaiden II attempts to overwhelm the player with enemies in an act of psychological warfare against the player. An ascent of Mount Fuji starts a sequence where you fight a stream of 200 Ninja in a narrow hallway. This is a perfect example of the essence of the game, and provides some of the most enjoyable action I have ever experienced. After that, I wanted to fight endless waves of ninja for the rest of the night. It’s probably why Team Ninja released the Mission Mode DLC, which features an endless mode that pits you against infinite waves of enemies (not 50). Within the context of this game a test of skill has been created that can easily be extracted into its own game. Ninja Gaiden II deserves recognition for that.

By comparison, then, the bosses in the game seem almost boring. Their design is adequate, but their attacks are relatively similar because most of them are humanoid, or have a very obvious “hot” stpot that must be attacked. To compensate, they usually have one or two attacks that do massive amounts of damage. As a result they are straightforward fights, and require more damage management than actually learning a complex pattern. This inconsistency is further shown by how the sub-bosses and final bosses between the Greater Fiends were actually more challenging than the Greater Fiends themselves. Most of the bosses are re-used later in the game, either by adding another one to fight at the same time, or in the case of the Greater Fiends, have a more powerful attack. Nevertheless, they are easy enough to beat if you have been paying attention.

As if to remind us that he is still running things, Itagaki makes the final showdown with the Archfiend a true test of the player’s worthiness. The endgame sequence consists of four straight Bosses – with the Archfiend, the final boss, taking two forms. With only one save point and whatever money you happen to have on you, it requires management of healing items, and brutal efficiency in correctly executing every single attack. The game’s reliance on the bow manifested itself again in new and painful ways during the fight with the Archfiend’s first form, which was probably the hardest sequence I had to play through in the entire game.

So when I finished Ninja Gaiden II and saw that I had died 244 times while trying to complete it, I could put the controller down in silent appreciation of that very moment, the moment that 14 hours of play prepared me for. Like the fight with RAAM in Gears of War[2], it was the culmination of everything that preceded it. This wasn’t just closing off an arbitrary (and mostly terrible) story, or providing some ominous-looking creature and saying it was the “last boss”. The Archfiend, as ridiculous as the story makes the whole encounter seem, is the biggest and most challenging boss in the game. To survive is to remember what the rest of the game has taught; to be victorious is to have the skill and determination to surmount the challenge. Ninja Gaiden II is an element on the periodic table; you cannot break down its essence any further.

Ninja Gaiden II is the last of a breed, I am sure of it. Video games seem conflicted right now – do we want simple or complex? Short or long? Difficult or accessible? It seems that there is a trend towards creating video games that must be more accessible reinventions of old concepts that capitalize on nostalgia for an aging audience. At 30, I am this aging audience, and while I feel there are benefits to these endeavors, they should not by any means be considered the future of the medium. That would both be short sighted, and incredibly dangerous. What is preserving our history? How can we find the defining moment of the medium if the view only points forward? Some will say that even the original NES Ninja Gaiden (1988) was one of the hardest video games ever created, but to turn to casual recreations of our past and expect them to convey the same impact is purest folly. Let the younger generation learn to appreciate the difficulty of a video game. Ninja Gaiden II may be easily dismissed as “least improved sequel” [3] or “unfairly difficult” [4], but these are excuses. Itagaki and Team Ninja dared to release a difficult game in Ninja Gaiden II – almost for its own sake – in humble devotion to the Old Philosophy of the video game. To ignore that is to ignore the history of the medium and the hobby that established them in popular culture, and the current culture of video games is at a loss for doing it.

1.The “Indomitable Spirit” achievement gives you 5 gamer points for choosing to continue the game 100 times. Kind of a joke, really.
2.Please read my Gears of War review again. It’s obvious that Cliff Bleszinski and Epic learned a lot from Japanese game design.
3. Gamespot nominated Ninja Gaiden II for “Least Improved Sequel” in 2008. The question I have to ask is: what did they expect?
4. In their review, Eurogamer said that Ninja Gaiden II is “unfairly difficult.” I can see this coming from a website that was responsible for most of the unfettered praise I complain about at the beginning of this article.