NINJA GAIDEN Enemy and Combat Analysis - A New and Improved "By the Numbers," Episode 1

Channel:

Guilty Gaming

Subscribers:

2,780

Published on June 21, 2023 11:53:13 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWxW5KcnbCs

Game:

Ninja Gaiden Black (2005)

Category:

Show

Duration: 11:43

419 views

32

0:00 Intro
4:00 NGB Chapter 1 [Normal]

Hey everybody, Guilty here with a re-release of Ninja Gaiden: By the Numbers, Episode 1 with better presentation, more thorough analysis, more accurate data, and bonus content you literally will not find anywhere else.

The intention of the “Numbers” project is unchanged: to present concrete data regarding enemy health values and player damage output. Each mainline episode per season will feature one chapter’s worth of analysis, but I intend to intermingle additional episodes that focus on weapon data—such as combos and upgrades—armlets and, in the case of Sigma, costumes and enhancements. There is a wealth of information here that I’m sure any veteran of the Ninja Gaiden community would love to learn, so be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already and join the Guilty Gaming Discord for progress updates.

Analysis presented in this video is from Ninja Gaiden Black, chapter 1, on normal difficulty, with only two distinct enemies excluding the chapter boss: the brown "genin" and the white "jonin." As I stated last time, I have determined that each enemy has a common, "standard" health value and enemies of the same type will spawn with less or more health (seemingly) at random.

In my run of Chapter 1, I encountered 41 Genin and 12 Jonin. The standard health value for the Genin is 240 points. 27 of the 41 (66%) spawned with 240. 5 spawned with 360, a 50% increase in health. 5 spawned with 280, an approximately 16% boost to health. And 4 spawned with 200, an approximately 16% decrease. The standard health value for the Jonin is 400 points. 8 of 12 (75%) spawned at 400. 2 spawned with 340, a 15% decrease in health. 1 spawned with 430, a 7 ½% increase. And 1 spawned with 540, a 35% increase in health.

Additional observations were made and annotated in this episode. For instance, wall damage has been quantified as a debit of 200 points that stacks on top of whatever attack sent them into the wall in the first place. I will use red in this and all subsequent episodes to differentiate wall damage from traditional weapon damage.

And this isn’t breaking—I identified this way back in Episode 0—but enemies can also suffer damage if a body collides with them. If you’ve played NG04, Black or Sigma, you may have noticed a particular animation if you ever threw or kicked an enemy into another. It turns out the latter enemy suffering the collision incurs one singular point of damage in that interaction. I will use yellow to identify this “bump” damage.

Just like the first “first” episode, all this data can be observed in the box on the upper-right corner of your screen. All values default to 65535—FF FF in hexadecimal—until an enemy spawns and occupies that space in the active memory. I do supplement this data with numbers on-screen and color-code them to their respective enemy so they are not confused with the damage data simultaneously presented. For example, the numbers for the Genin are light brown to match their gi. Similarly, the numbers for the Jonin are a sort-of straw color. I feel it’s pretty intuitive, but if I’m mistaken, leave a suggestion for me in the comments.

Well, that’s enough out of me. Be sure to stay to the end for an idea of what else you can expect from these videos in the coming weeks. And of course: like, subscribe, go outside.

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