I was almost five years old when my little sister was born. It was my first time being a big brother and I did not care! Because I received Ninja Gaiden for the SEGA Game Gear as some sort of big brother present. Okay so it isn’t true that I did not care about my little sister being born, but a ninja game in the hands of a 4 year old on a handheld device was a dream come true in the early 90s. I’ve loved Ninja Gaiden ever since, though sadly the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy released in 1995 on the SNES was the last bit of Ninja Gaiden I’d enjoy for a long time.
Then a full 3D Ninja Gaiden game came out on the XBOX in 2004 and I loved it! For about 5 minutes… then I was certain that it didn’t love me back because it killed me about ten seconds in to every reload after I died. I can’t even remember how many deaths I suffered at the hands of the nunchaku wielding first boss. I thought it was some brutally sadistic game with a sole purpose of destroying my soul with agonizing, crushing, and very frequent defeats. My only comfort was that I at least did better than the rest of my friends trying it out!
Ninja Gaiden was not trying to cause suffering for suffering’s sake, however. I thought the game hated me, and in truth it just wanted to turn me in to a better gamer. I didn’t see that at the time, and NG and I broke up for a time. It tried calling me in 2005 to see if I wanted to get back together, but at the time I had too much else going on and I didn’t think it was going to work out between us. I thought that would be the end of it. Turns out that NG wasn’t satisfied with that, and spent the next two years losing some weight, getting a new look going, and smoothing out some of its rough edges before wowing me all over again with Ninja Gaiden Sigma.
This time things between us were better than ever! I could now watch myself be slaughtered in glorious HD resolutions at a clean 60FPS, and while I did die many times, I quickly got better than ever. Any time problems come up in a relationship it’s good to seek outside help, and I had done that. An action game counselor and trainer by the name of Kratos invited me along on his journeys in God of War 1 and 2 and taught me the ropes — or flesh searing chains — of succeeding in action games. Thanks to Kratos I was able to adapt to the high speed brutality of NGS and eventually conquered the game’s final boss. The ending credits were only the beginning and I spent close to two hundred hours over the coming months seeking to master the ways of the Ninja. I was able to beat most of the challenge levels and even got through the game on the punishing Very Hard difficulty, though Master Ninja proved too much for me.
When Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 came out, I quickly played through it, beat it twice on normal, and hard, though never pushed to go through it further due to competition from numerous other games on my list. I was eagerly awaiting the release of Ninja Gaiden 3 until I saw the excessive use of QTEs (Quick Time Events) and realized that the game was probably going to suck. When the reviews finally came out, it seemed as if I was right and I still pretend the game just does not exist. Who knows what the future of the Ninja Gaiden series will bring!
We still like to enjoy the golden days of our relationship though, and thanks to a Playstation Vita and PS+, we’re now closer than ever. I can take my Ninja Gaiden Sigma with me wherever I go and sneak in a quick and glorious Ninja blood bath when people aren’t looking. The graphics appear just as beautiful on the Vita screen as they did on a huge HD TV, and so far I haven’t noticed any slowdowns. The whole package is there and I’ve been having as much fun as ever, though I admit to being a little out of practice. I have played through the first two missions so far without too much trouble killing my enemies, though I’m not pulling off the OLCs — On Land Charges are a technique where you dodge or jump in to the air and begin charging as you hit the ground, to skip the animation delay of charging while standing on the ground — as well as I used to. I am sure that will come back in short time though!
Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus is an excellent 2012 port of an amazing 2007 HD upgrade to a 2005 enhanced edition of a 2004 relaunch of a 1988 platformer. Considering how it is insane to own the PSVita without the Playstation Plus service, I’m just going to go ahead and say that if you have a Vita and like action and/or ninjas, you should download and play Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus right away!