Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (NES) Playthrough
275A playthrough of Tecmo's 1991 action-platformer for the NES, Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom.
Set between the events of Ninja Gaiden ( • Ninja Gaiden (NES) Playthrough ) and Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos ( • Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Ch... ), the final entry in the NES trilogy begins with CIA agent and love interest Irene Lew being murdered by a man posing as Ryu Hayabusa. Upon learning that he has been framed, Ryu heads off to the laboratory that Irene was investigating to see what he can learn.
The Ancient Ship of Doom plays much the same as the previous games, but it has been tweaked and refined to improve the flow of gameplay. You can now see what containers hold before you break them, the Strider-like upgraded sword can cut through anything below Ryu's waist without the need to duck, Ryu can hang from overhead ledges, and the ninja powers have been revamped. Ninja Gaiden II's clone power is gone, but Ryu now has a handy vacuum wave that can hit anything directly above or below him, as well as a fire wave that can be shot downward at a 45° angle. All of these things help to quicken the pace of the action and keep up the forward momentum, though you still have to be mindful of the enemies' spawning patterns.
The graphics and sound have been kicked up yet another notch, and Ninja Gaiden III squeezes a ton of juice out of the NES's aging hardware. The stage backgrounds are full of color and animation and often sport several layers of parallax scrolling, swarms of enemies fill the screen with few signs of slowdown and sprite breakup, and the late-game cutscenes are full of crazy effects that push well beyond what you'd see in any other Tecmo game on the console. The music is great too, and the sampled shouts and orchestra hits give the audio an aggressive, high-energy kick.
The changes made for the North American release weren't ideal - enemies now hit harder, you're limited to five continues, and the time limit for the last stage is ridiculously short - but those changes aside, the challenge feels better balanced and fairer than it did in the first two Ninja Gaidens. It's rarely as overwhelming, and the enemy placements don't abuse the knockback effect to the same extent. The bosses, on the other hand, don't pose much of a threat and would've benefitted from less predictable attack patterns.
Probably due in part to its coming out a month ahead of the Super Nintendo's launch, Ninja Gaiden III wasn't a sales smash like the first two games, and it wasn't nearly as popular. Nevertheless, it's an excellent game and a worthy sequel to one of the console's best action games.
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