Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (PC) Playthrough
232A playthrough of GameTek's 1991 action game for Dos PCs, Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos.
Like the first Ninja Gaiden game, Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (https://youtu.be/Q9j6VXf7AqI) was immediately hailed as a classic upon release. Its improvements over the original's graphics, sound, and playability, and its continuation of the story of Ryu Hayabusa made it one of the NES's must-play bestsellers of 1990. Tecmo also remade the game (https://youtu.be/Ppb6EQULeZc) as part of Ninja Gaiden Trilogy for the SNES in 1995.
But did you know that the Trilogy version was not the first "official" remake of Ninja Gaiden II? That distinction instead belongs to this 1991 GameTek published port for IBM-compatible PCs and the Amiga.
It was developed by Manley and Associates, a company known in console circles for SNES games like The Wizard of Oz (https://youtu.be/WSog9X_nQkg), Pink Goes to Hollywood (https://youtu.be/nlluhli-X8M), and WildSnake (https://youtu.be/Wy_T079EfOE).
This version of the game was positioned as a faithful but heavily upgraded port of the NES game, featuring the same levels and gameplay as the original, and now sporting 256-color VGA graphics and a remixed soundtrack that took advantage of the era's most popular sound cards.
That pitch made for a very appealing proposition, but there's a good reason why nobody talks about this one when reminiscing about Ninja Gaiden's good ol' 2D platformer days. Simply put, it wasn't very good.
The core design of the game is indeed "faithful" in that all of the levels, the level designs, enemy placements, power-ups, and cutscenes accurately mirror the NES game's, but the gameplay experience falls well short of the original in every respect.
The graphics, though colorful, aren't appealing. The redrawn cutscenes look amateurish, the choppy scrolling is distracting, and the VGA facelift was done without considering its impact on playability. Enemies are often indistinguishable from the bright and busy backgrounds, making the late game platforming challenges an utter nightmare. If you found yourself frustrated by being knocked into pits by constantly respawning, fast-moving enemies on the NES, then just imagine how it much worse it would be if you couldn't see the them before they hit you. You won't stand a chance in this one until you've become familiar with the location of every single enemy in the last half-dozen stages or so.
And why is Ryu orange?! He's supposed to be a ninja, not a traffic pylon!
The controls aren't great, either. They're less precise and responsive than the NES game's, the jumps feel too floaty, Ryu's wall-cling doesn’t always trigger when it should, and the hitboxes feel off.
And then there's the soundtrack. It has one. It's wrong, but at least it's not playing through the internal speaker.
Overall, Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos on PC is an interesting novelty. It fares better than some NES/PC ports of its time, but for all of its "improvements," it's a comedy of errors and a pale imitation of the masterpiece it's based on.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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