Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom

About This Game

Gameplay

Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom is a side-scrolling platform game in which the player controls the player character Ryu Hayabusa as he investigates the events behind Irene Lew's death. In the game, Ryu can jump, hang, and climb up and down walls with the control pad; pressing the jump button while holding the control pad the direction away from the wall causes Ryu to spring off the wall. Ryu is also able to attack enemies with secondary weapons while on a wall by pressing the attack button. A new feature introduced in Ninja Gaiden III is the ability for Ryu to hang overhead from pipes or ivy; he can swing up on top or drop from them, and as with walls, he can only attack enemies while hanging with secondary weapons. As with the previous Ninja Gaiden games, Ryu's physical strength is represented by a life meter on the top of the screen; it decreases when Ryu gets hit by enemies or other dangerous objects. Throughout the levels, the player can find "Recovery Medicine" bottles that partially replenish Ryu's physical strength; as with all other items in the game, they are located in crystal balls that Ryu must slash to open.

History

Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom was designed by Masato Kato, who took over Hideo Yoshizawa's main role in the game's development from the previous two titles. In an interview with Kato, he said that Ninja Gaiden III needed "to go into a new direction". The game was given more of a science-fiction motif as opposed to the Cthulhu Mythos motif in the previous two titles; the enemies changed to look more robotic than in the previous games. The original intent from the developers was to make the game easier than the previous titles, "to create a game a normal player can enjoy". However, Tecmo released the game for the NES with a much higher difficulty level than the Japanese version by doubling the amount of damage the player took from 1 health bar per hit to 2 health bars per hit.