Finally!

Well, it's taken me 15 years, but I've finally beaten Ninja Gaiden for the NES! After watching the Angry Video Game Nerd's latest video, I was inspired to load up the ole' game one more time with the explicit goal of beating it and recording it tonight. I tried to record the entire final stage, but unfortunately most of it was messed up. (EDIT: Apparently, the last few minutes are, too. I'll have to work on using that software.)

Now as the nerd points out, this game is hard. It doesn't seem it at first, either. The first level is pretty simple. I remember playing this when I was a kid and saying to myself, oh, that's pretty easy. Even the second level isn't that bad, apart from the evil football players.

Yes. Evil football players.

But then comes the third level, and while it's not altogether that difficult, it does introduce an enemy that you will come to despise above all others: the eagles. And these aren't some giant, man eating, Lord of the Rings kind of eagles, either. Nope, they're just a plain old every day endangered-species kind of eagles, and they're about the most annoying enemy I can think of in video games. They fly around in patterns that are hard to kill and almost impossible to dodge, and they've got to be some kind of spawn of Satan for two reasons:

First, like everything else in this game (as the nerd points out) whenever one hits you, it sends you flying uncontrollably off in some direction, usually into another enemy or a pit. Second, also like everything else in this game they respawn if you go off the screen and come back to their spot. What this leads to is a ridiculous cycle of getting hit by an eagle that you can't dodge, flying back into some other enemy, then trying to move forward again only to have another eagle fly at you in the same spot, hit you, and repeat the whole thing - AND THE FIRST EAGLE DOESN"T EVEN GO AWAY. Sometimes you'll end up with 3 or 4 eagles on the screen at the same time flying around, and when this happens there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except try to run away as fast as you can, but since they come at you in all directions, you really can't.

It's only a minor problem in the 3rd level. In the 4th level it's starting to get upsetting, and by the 5th level, you'll want to go find some poor helpless creature at your local animal sanctuary and kill it in the most inhumane way possible. It's that bad.

Then there are countless other reasons that this has to be one of the hardest games ever made. The nerd gives good explanation of this in his video, so check it out. But in any case, I've finally beaten the game. So take that, eagles!