Initially released on the NES, the first three Ninja Gaiden games were a huge success, boosted in particular by the arcade version of the first opus, which greatly helped to popularise the licence. This success propelled the series, which continued to release titles until 2014.

And the licence has not said its last word! It is about to be reborn with Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, a new opus developed by The Game Kitchen (Blasphemous) and published by Dotemu (Streets of Rage 4, TMNT: Shredder's Revenge). Scheduled for release in summer 2025, this title marks a long-awaited comeback for fans.

Back to retrogaming

Let's focus on the origins of the saga with its first three instalments, released in 1988, 1990 and 1991 respectively. Building on the success of these episodes, Tecmo decided to compile them for the SNES, but the latter was a disappointment. Few improvements had been made to exploit the console's power, and a number of questionable choices had left their mark on gamers.

Among the decisions criticised were

• A modified soundtrack, which moved away from the original compositions.
• The removal of parallax scrolling, a key graphic technique in 2D games. This process, which gives an impression of depth by shifting the speed of different visual planes, was essential to the atmosphere of Ninja Gaiden.

We had to wait 25 years to see these shortcomings corrected thanks to a fan project.

A faithful and improved NES-SNES port

Infidelity's NES-SNES conversion combines the three iconic titles - Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos and Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom - into a single playable ROM for the SNES. Unlike the official 1995 compilation, this port faithfully recreates the original experience while exploiting the capabilities of the SNES to offer notable improvements:

• Elimination of slowdowns and flickering sprites.
• Improved overall fluidity for enhanced playability.
• Ability to switch from one game to another without restarting the console.
• Choice of colour palette directly in-game using the Select button.

All this has been achieved while respecting the legendary spirit and difficulty of the NES opuses.

Where can I play this version?

The ROM for this trilogy, developed by Infidelity, is available free online. Fans can use it with emulators or devices such as the EverDrive to play on an original SNES.

If you're a fan of the saga, you should know that the Ninja Gaiden games can also be played on numerous platforms via Recalbox, including the NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Gear, Master System and many others.