(no subject)
Last month I was spurred by some PC problems stranding me on my absurdly capable yet vaguely less comfortable laptop to get my NES cleaned up and operating like it was 1989 again. On a whim, really, because I have so many other games consoles to play should I feel the urge, ones that really deserve some more love (yes, I will get back to you one of these days, Dragon Force, and you too Half Life 2 Episode 2, and I promise I will try you out Team Fortress 2, and I will finish you off for good, Etrian Odyssey...), but for whatever reason I felt like playing this cart I picked up at the thrift store at some unspecified point in the past, one I was completely unaware I even had - Power Blade!?
Power Blade is a perfectly respectable game, a little on the easy side, but it stoked my love for that old gray toaster again. Playing this game on my actual machine felt right somehow, a mingling of appreciation for the classics and a hard dose of nostalgia; this almost sexual gratification of a perverse lo-fi psychological itch - NTSC artifacts and the buzzing of an old Commodore 1084 monitor, the humming of imperfect signal separation, the rigidity of that crusty old controller, the penetrating square waves arpeggiating on top of muted PCM drums - oh, my NES; these HD consoles may be young and cute, but no one can please me like she can.
After I finished Power Blade, I was looking for something else I wanted to play. Ninja Gaiden seemed like a good choice - a few years ago I had tried to get really good at it, or at least to beat it, but didn't go at it with the kind of mad tenacity this game requires to master it. Got to Bloody Malth several times, was unable to discover the trick to beating him without the Jump-And-Slash (sheer attrition), gave up.
This time was different. I was captivated by the game like I hadn't been in God knows how long, and I played through it like it needs to be played, like a nine year old on summer vacation in 1990, his NES collection modest and restricted by parental whims. Within days, I had reached the last boss sequence on a considerable number of continues. Every subsequent day, that number of continues used became smaller and smaller - but I still couldn't beat that flapping fruit Jaquio. I spent a session mapping out every powerup drop in the game so I wasn't waylaid by accidental pickups depriving me of my treasured Jump-and-Slash. I eventually made it continuing once. Then not continuing, but failing to get a handle on Jaquio's rhythm, waging protracted battles of miserable attrition until the timer ran out, plopping me right back to the beginning of the stage in a final, humiliating "Fuck You". Then, at last, getting to him without continuing, beating him, and taking out The Demon on my first try, understanding that I could do this in one go without dying if I could just limit the number of stupid swan-dives of doom you tend to make in this game when you start to get a little cocky.
This is the appeal of becoming good at Ninja Gaiden, and why it is so legendary - it is one of the True Gaming Challenges. On the surface, it's fast, smooth, and graceful; when you watch someone play the game well, nothing seems as if it should honestly be that difficult. The enemies at the end are mostly the same as the enemies you fought in the first two stages. This is where the game could get cheap, and it is often accused of this, but I think this is disingenuous and mostly just levelled by people who just don't like demanding, pattern-heavy games - fair enough, really. Unlike something like, say, a certain series of games about Battling Amphibians, you always have time to react to the constant ambushes the game sets for you - but this is the trap; it gives you time to react, but overwhelms your reasoning ability with attacks from different angles, leaving you unable to discern what your highest priority is, and paralyzing you until you're lighter half a lifebar or tumbling into oblivion. The difficulty progression is smooth, challenge ramps up gradually, and there are multiple ways out of every situation - often not as many as you'd like - and after your twentieth death on That One Screen in 6-2, you'll eventually, hopefully, figure out some ideal way to get through. And, if you have the wherewithal, after your thirtieth or fiftieth or hundredth, you finally figure out how to get through cleanly, smoothly, and without getting hit. But when you can play through every situation in the game in your head, when you can smoothly slice through every situation the game throws at you, you feel like a real Ninja badass; Richard Harrison, Michael Dudikoff, and Lee Van Cleef combined into one. Newer games can superficially achieve this by allowing you to do the things that Ninjas do in films, but I think the simplicity, precision, grace, and absolute control of Ninja Gaiden gives you the feeling of cutting your way through all comers like a black blur of Ninja Awesomeness better than being able to run up walls and performing push-button combos ever could.
So, a dozen more games stymied by some irritating mistake; a knife-thrower's stray blade in 2-2, a mistimed jump in 4-1, the entirety of 6-2's pulsating malice against my Ninja-person. But I did it, I finally fucking did it, and I feel like Gaming's Golden God, to paraphrase myself from elsewhere. Ninja Gaiden is the game that makes men out of boys, teaches them how to swear honestly and forcefully at inanimate objects, to take responsibility for their hurled and broken controllers, to hate the environment and its birds and bats and disadvantageously placed precipices of certain death therein with a fervour to make any Libertarian proud. It doesn't make any excuses, it doesn't make anything any easier on you; it hates you, it doesn't care what you think, and you will bend to it before it bends to you. But it is fair - mostly. I'm calling shenanigans on some of those spawn points.