It must have been the case that I was a glutton for punishment. I can't think of any other explanation as for why I thought it was a good idea to own Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos.
I mean, I wasn't stupid. I knew that it was a sequel to a sadistic action game that I remembered best for how it broke me emotionally and angered me to the point of rage. I was certain that it shared all of the original game's questionable design principles. Yet, still, I couldn't help myself. I couldn't fight my impulses. In that moment, all I could think was, "There's a shiny new game lying before me, so I have to seize this opportunity and buy it!"
So I completely ignored what logic and reason were telling me and decided to make Ninja Gaiden II a part of my collection.
Also, I can't dismiss the lingering impact of Nintendo Power Volume 15, which was dedicated solely to Ninja Gaiden II. I largely ignored that issue because I had no interest in a Ninja Gaiden sequel (I was still so angry about my experiences with the original that I couldn't bear the thought of ever again playing anything like it) and because otherwise I hated the idea of single-game-focused Nintendo Power issues (I felt as though issues of their type were cheating me out of content), but still I was influenced by it. Whenever I'd look at its cover, I'd think to myself, "If Nintendo deems that a game is worth this much attention--that news of its existence should trump everything else that's happening that month--then it must be a big deal, and I should at least be aware of it."
So Nintendo of America's marketing clearly worked to some degree. At the least, it succeeded in planting an idea in my mind.
And as I engage in this process of laying out and reflecting upon this history, I start to see the truth. I start to realize that my purchasing Ninja Gaiden II wasn't really a random occurrence, no. It was destiny.
My continued suffering, I'm now certain, was inevitable.
I have to start, though, by setting the record straight: I didn't actually "purchase" Ninja Gaiden II. Rather, my mother bought it for me. She laid out the cash after I talked her into it.
As the story goes: On that day, I was out with my mother and her friend Audrey, and I was crankily following them around as they shopped the usual local establishments in a painfully slow and leisure manner. As we were browsing one of the stores, I spotted Ninja Gaiden II in a glass display case. And in that moment (for reasons that I've explained), I suddenly had an interest in owning it.
The problem, though, was that I didn't have any money to spend. I'd blown it all on other games. So I was in an unfortunate position.
When I got desperate, I started to consider other options. The prevailing choice was to put the game down on my birthday list for that year and thus wait a few months to get a hold of it, but ultimately I wound up balking at that idea because I was concerned that acting on it could potentially create a situation in which I wasted a valuable birthday-list slot on a game that I couldn't play for more than ten minutes because it was too difficult for me.
So instead I went with the only viable option: I asked my poor, uninformed mother to buy the game for me. And in order to convince her that her parting with $50 would be serving a worthy cause, I pretended as though Ninja Gaiden II was some hot new release that kids everywhere were trying to get their hands on, and I made it seem as though missing the chance to snag the game at this moment--at a point when, by some "miracle," it just happened to be available--would be absolutely heartbreaking for me.
And it worked. In the end, she accepted my claim and agreed to buy me the game.
Oh, she certainly grilled me and tested the sincerity of my plea. She made me put in the work and really go hard in performing. But ultimately she acquiesced and decided that the best thing to do was to simply give in and lay out the cash. (Honestly, though, it's more likely that she did it simply to get me to shut the hell up.)
So I'd done it. I'd weaseled my way into owning Ninja Gaiden II. And I should have been happy about it. But, really, I wasn't. For whatever reason, I felt somehow regretful about the purchase. I found that I was being overcome with the thought that I'd just spent a large amount of money on a game that I was probably going to wind up hating.
At the time, I didn't know how to characterize that feeling. I couldn't even think of a term for it (it was clearly buyer's remorse). All I knew was that it was diminishing my excitement about the purchase of a new game, which wasn't how it should have been.
Still, though, I was eager to get home and play Ninja Gaiden II and find out what it was. There was, after all, a chance that I was wrong about the game. "It might not be exactly like the original," I thought. "It might improve upon Ninja Gaiden's mechanics and level design! Its action might be enjoyable rather than rage-inducing! And I might like it so much that I'll no longer feel regretful about buying it!"
That's what I was hoping.
In the meantime, I had fun reading the game's box-cover descriptions and its manual as we waited for our lunch to be served at the New Parkway Restaurant (over on Bay Ridge Parkway and 13th Avenue). A lot of what they said sounded really cool. "Being able to freely climb walls, gain the assistance of two clone helpers, and use the Invincible Fire Wheel as a sub-weapon?" I thought to myself. "What great new additions!"
But, well, it turned out that my optimism was unfounded. When I got home and popped Ninja Gaiden II into the NES, I learned, right away, that its gameplay style was pretty much identical to Ninja Gaiden's. And I was deeply alarmed by that fact.
"Here we go again," I thought.
At the same time, though, I couldn't help but be impressed by the game's strong visual presentation. On the surface, it looked very similar to the original Ninja Gaiden, yeah, but even the slightest bit of examination revealed that its graphics were actually a huge step above its predecessor's. Its characters and textures were shinier, cleaner and more detailed, and they had much more color depth to them. Its backgrounds were gorgeous-looking, and some of them were formed by multiple scrolling layers and featured parallax effects whose presence created the sense that this game was on the next level technologically. And many of its visual elements--including the HUD--had a wonderfully distinctive animated glow to them and thus a vibrant energy that helped the action to feel more energetic and lively.
Ninja Gaiden II was one of those games that was fun to observe.
Early on, I was actually enjoying the game's action, and the game's visuals were a big reason why. They kept me engaged. They immersed me and filled me with wonder. They were so entrancing that they stole all of my attention and thus helped me to limit the amount of time I spent worrying about the game's noticeable difficulty spikes.
I kept playing because I needed to see what the game would do next. "What other cool graphical effects and inventive stage themes does it contain?" I wondered.
And the game kept delivering. It kept aiming to impress with its visuals. In the following minutes, it hit me with a moving-train section whose surrounding environment was formed from a mesmerizing symphony of scrolling background and foreground layers; a rainy cliff area whose violent winds would suddenly shift from one direction to the other; a dark forest that would become periodically and temporarily illuminated by lightning strikes; a cave that was being consumed by a flaming inferno; a subterranean area whose surfaces were formed from flowing water; ruins whose destroyed, leaning buildings comprised the foreground layer and a bunch of other cool visual and technical treats.
The game's soundtrack, much like the original's, was outstanding. It was filled with rockin' tunes that were both inspiring and evocative. Each one told a great story. It conveyed to you what the situation was, it informed you of the environment's current state, it expressed to you what the mood was like, and it let you know what emotion you should be feeling.
And, of course, all of the tunes sounded great. They were all finely composed, amazingly spirited in tone, superb in audio quality, and just plain fun to listen to. They represented some of the best music ever heard on the NES.
At that point in time, I was still too impatient to watch the cut-scenes, and I always made sure to promptly skip them. So I never had the opportunity to form an opinion on their quality.
Really, I didn't learn much about what was going on in the game's story until the mid-2000s. That was the point in which I realized that you couldn't fully appreciate a Ninja Gaiden game unless you experienced its cinematics and understood how they (a) helped to form the game's DNA and (b) worked to differentiate the game from every other product on the market. You needed to see the game in the proper context.
The cut-scenes' actual content wasn't anything important (the games' stories never rose above "Evil CIA agent blackmails ninja!"), but getting a sense of their craftmanship and ambitious nature certainly was. So I'm glad that I took the time to watch them.
My favorite new gameplay element was the "body split" power, which allowed you to obtain the assistance of phantom helpers who would mimic your movements and basically double and triple your firepower. It was as cool as I imagined it would be.
The power was really fun to put to use, and it was very beneficial. I called it the "the great equalizer," and I did so because it helped me to more effectively deal with enemy swarms. Thanks to this new power, I was able to (somewhat) even the odds.
I had fun putting my orange pals to use in boss battles. What I'd do is find ways to position them in the air, one above the other, and keep myself on the ground and out of attack range. That way, they'd form an impenetrable wall and do all of the work for me! All I'd have to do is hang back and mash the attack button!
It was an effective strategy, and it allowed me to defeat bosses that probably would have given me a lot of trouble under normal conditions.
At the end of the day, though, Ninja Gaiden II was still a Ninja Gaiden game, and even the most beneficial of new powers couldn't help me to reliably overcome its classic challenges. I still struggled to execute pixel-perfect jumps and consistently land strikes (the sword's hitbox was once again indecipherable). I kept getting bounced around by enemies that were endlessly spawning in from very direction at once (even at times when I had the help of one or two phantoms). And, of course, I continued to get destroyed by the series' most terrifying enemies: birds. These winged menaces, as they did in the original game, ceaselessly hounded me, and time and time again, they pinballed me to death and sent me flying into pits.
So Ninja Gaiden II was, as I feared, another torturously difficult series game, and my experience with it almost perfectly mirrored my early experience with the original.
But the difference, this time, was that I knew when to call it quits. I wasn't going to make the same mistake I made a year earlier. I wasn't going to continue subjecting myself to the game's emotionally crushing brand of abuse and inevitably arrive at a point in which I was angered to the point of rage, no. I had zero desire to ever again experience that type of pain. So I decided that the best thing to do was to simply leave the game behind and move on.
Of course, though, that wasn't the end of my story with Ninja Gaiden II. In 1995, after I'd learned to control my emotions and decided that I was never again going to let difficult games get the best of me, I returned to it and finally beat it. Like I did a year earlier, I set aside a boring Sunday afternoon and engaged in an hours-long marathon session. I relentlessly pushed forward and did so until I achieved ultimate victory. And the whole time, I kept my emotions in check. I remained focused and never allowed the game's trademarked shenanigans to evoke anything more than mild annoyance.
Oh, don't be mistaken: The experience was just as stressful and as painful as you would imagine. It certainly entailed a significant degree of suffering. But still I handled it all well. I stayed in control. And that, you could say, was the true victory.
"And the best news," I thought, "is that the series is likely over and I'll never again have to endure another game like it!"
Well, about that.
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