“I will get my revenge!”

A very unassuming title screen.

To Beat: Reach the ending
My Goal: Beat the game without continuing
What I Did: Beat the game using three continues
Played: 9/24/17
Difficulty: 9/10
My Difficulty: 3/10
Video: Ninja Gaiden Longplay

Traditionally, ninjas were ancient Japanese fighters trained in martial arts who focused on stealth, espionage, and assassination. With the rise in popularity of the idea of ninjas, and many Japanese game development studios looking for game ideas, it makes sense that ninjas would be well represented in video games. One of the most well-known games on the NES, and perhaps one of the more well-known ninja games altogether, is Ninja Gaiden.

Ninja Gaiden began as two separate games by two different teams from the developer Tecmo. The arcade game is a beat-em-up game in the vein of Double Dragon, while the NES game is a side-scrolling action platformer influenced by Castlevania. While the arcade game fared well, the NES Ninja Gaiden was a huge success, earning high praise and numerous honors. The Famicom version was released first in December 1988 under the name Ninja Ryukenden, meaning Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword. The NES version was released in March 1989. The word gaiden in Japanese means side story, but Ninja Gaiden is not a side story in any way. The developers just like how the name sounded. Ninjas were considered taboo in Europe, and so their version of the game was named Shadow Warriors and was released in August 1991. It was also ported to the PC Engine in Japan in January 1992. Tecmo is both the developer and publisher for all versions.

He will, indeed!

Since the NES game, Ninja Gaiden has become a long running series. The NES got two more installments, and all three games appeared on the SNES compliation cart Ninja Gaiden Trilogy. Ninja Gaiden later had unique games on the Game Boy, Sega Master System, and Game Gear, as well as a cancelled version on the Mega Drive. The series went dormant until 2004 when the mobile game Ninja Gaiden X was released. That year also saw the beginning of the modern series with the 3D action game on Xbox simply titled Ninja Gaiden. That series would spawn two sequels in 2008 and 2012 respectively. There was also a Nintendo DS game called Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword.

Ninja Gaiden is a side-scrolling action platformer where you play the role of Ryu Hayabusa. The Hayabusa family has guarded the legendary Dragon sword for many generations. Ryu’s father, Ken Hayabusa, engaged in battle with another ninja and was defeated. After Ryu learned of his father’s demise, he finds a letter from his father. Ken writes that Ryu must go to America with the Dragon sword if he does not return. Respecting his father’s wishes, Ryu heads for America to take on the danger he surely knows is laid out ahead.

Ninja Gaiden is heavily laden with story and this is the main feature of the game. This was one of the first games to feature cinematic cutscenes to advance the story. The game plays out over six acts, and before each act there are these extended segments detailing Ryu’s adventure. Sometimes there are cutscenes in the middle of acts, but this doesn’t happen often. It was very novel to see this story play out as you go through the game, for the first time through at least. On subsequent playthroughs they might become more of an annoyance. Fortunately, they can all be skipped quickly so you can focus solely on just the action.

Ryu hangs off walls a lot.

You control Ryu with the D-Pad. You can walk with Left or Right and duck by holding Down. Press A to jump. You have full control of Ryu from side to side while airborne. You can cling to walls by jumping onto them and Ryu will hang on indefinitely. Press the directional button away from the wall and jump to kick off the wall. You can jump back and forth between two walls close together to climb. If the wall contains a ladder, you can freely climb up the wall with Up or Down, otherwise you must jump off. The B button slashes your sword. You can attack with the sword while ducking or while in the air. If you slash while standing on the ground, you can’t move until the animation finishes. Attacks go quicker than the whip in Castlevania but it’s a noticeable delay. Hold Up and press B to use special attacks if able. The Start button pauses the game.

The status bar at the top of the screen gives you all the information you need. The top left is your score indicator, and below that is the level timer. Underneath that is P which indicates how many lives you have remaining. The counter next to lives represents your spiritual strength, according to the game manual. This represents your subweapon ammo, and next to it on the status bar is an icon for which special weapon you currently hold. On the right side of the status bar, you see the stage number, your health meter, and the health meter of the boss.

These blue lanterns hold all kinds of stuff for you.

In yet another similarity to Castlevania, each level features a candle or some other stationary object that you can slash with your sword to earn powerups. Enemies don’t drop anything in Ninja Gaiden so this is the only way to power up, but you see them all the time. The most common of these is a square icon that increases your spiritual strength. The common blue item gives you five points of strength, and the red one gives you ten. There is an item that looks like a pot with feet that just gives you points. The blue one is worth 500 points and the red one awards you 1000 points. An hourglass freezes time briefly, causing all enemies and projectiles to stop moving and keeping new enemies from spawning. A potion will restore six points of health. The Ryu emblem gives you an extra life but only appears a few times in the whole game. The icon with the ring of fireballs is called the invincible fire-wheel. As its name suggests, it makes you invincible for a short time while destroying any enemy you touch.

The other item drops you get are your special weapons. You can only hold one at a time and can’t switch back if you collect a new one. These cost spiritual strength points which may vary for each weapon. The weakest weapon is the small blue throwing star. You throw a tiny straight projectile and it costs three points. The windmill throwing star is a large orange shuriken that costs five points. You throw it ahead and it comes back at you like a boomerang. If you jump over or dodge it, it will go behind you and come back. If you keep avoiding it, you can keep it on the screen circling you for a while for maximum effectiveness. The powerup with a single flame on it is the art of the fire wheel. This weapon costs five points and throws large rings of fire up and away from Ryu. Lastly, the blue swirl weapon gives you the jump and slash technique. This deploys by pressing B in the air with no need to hold Up on the D-Pad. It causes you to ball up while slashing constantly, ripping you right through enemies and bosses. It is incredibly powerful. The major downside to this technique is that it replaces your sword attack while jumping, so it burns through your spiritual strength very quickly. But here’s a tip: If you hold Down and press B while in the air, you will always swing your sword, saving you precious strength points.

Poor enemy soldier!

You will travel through many interesting locales and fight different types of enemies throughout the game. You visit the city streets, a mine, snowy mountains, a cliffside, and various temples just to name a few. Enemies often consist of other people who punch, swing swords, fire guns, throw knives, etc. There are also animals that are out to get you like tigers and bats. Anyone who has played this game know that the birds are the worst. They fly at you and turn around to make another pass if they miss, and you need good timing with your sword to defeat them. They often show up near pits and they can easily knock you down to your death, and they drain your health quickly to boot.

There is a boss battle at the end of each act. Each boss gets a full health bar and your sword does one point of damage, so you must keep at it to take them out. The game manual explains that most of the bosses are members of The Malice Four and were hired by the main villain. Defeating the boss awards you points for both time and spiritual strength remaining, and you get to watch the bad guys explode as score is added up for a pleasant bonus!

Ninja Gaiden is a challenging game, no doubt, but there are a few ways the game gives you breathing room. Each act is split up into several levels, and sometimes the levels have checkpoints within them at screen transitions. Ninja Gaiden only scrolls horizontally, but sometimes you need to go up or down a screen and that counts as a checkpoint. Losing a life within a level sets you back to the checkpoint. If you lose all your lives, you can continue from the start of the current level. You get infinite continues which is a great help in beating the game. Dying on the boss, however, sends you back to the start of the previous level. This is a more severe punishment than dying prior to the boss, but it’s bearable.

Action-packed boss fights are always a plus.

The reason why a game with infinite continues like this gets a 9/10 difficulty rating is what happens at the end of the game. I’ll say this is a spoiler, but if you’re reading this you probably already know what happens. The final act in Ninja Gaiden is quite challenging, featuring large sections of bottomless pits with plenty of enemies to knock you into them. The end of the act contains not one, but three final bosses. Contrary to the rest of the game, taking a death at any one of these bosses sends you back to the beginning of the act. This makes the first time through the game very difficult because you have to slog through all these tough levels per each attempt at this final set of bosses. The only solace is that once a boss is defeated, he stays dead and you don’t have to refight him. I know one of you readers has already turned your nose at my rating here, and to you I say that it’s easier for me too because I’ve beaten the game so many times. Undeniably, it’s a steep challenge the first time through!

Ninja Gaiden is one of the games from my childhood collection and I have beaten it countless times. I didn’t read many gaming magazines, but it was all over the ones I had and so I had to own this game. We bought it used somewhere, and that led me and my family to track down the other two games individually. Today it isn’t a hard game to find and it consistently costs around $10 for a copy. I’ve had several copies pass through my hands that I’ve sold, and I still have a few extra copies as of this writing.

I don’t remember the first time I beat Ninja Gaiden. I was probably 9 or 10 years old when I first beat it, and it has been one of those staple NES titles that I replay at least every couple of years. I beat the game this time with little trouble. I had in mind to beat the game without continuing but I wasn’t sure if I would. After all, that final level still trips me up after all these years, and I have only done it once before a few years ago. Lately, I have been playing these NES games through a couple of times just to have a decent enough run for YouTube. I don’t recall the last time I beat a game once and then moved on. The only deal breaker here was that I wouldn’t accept a run where I died on any of the final bosses. On this run, I needed three continues to clear the final area but I did beat the final bosses without dying. That’s good enough for me, and besides, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there that have beaten the game without continues or without dying on YouTube. If you need to witness something closer to perfection, then you can watch someone else do it. I have so many more games to play!

Clearly, I have no chance here!

I have a few streamers on Twitch that I watch regularly. One of my favorites is Arcus87, the current world record holder for speedrunning Ninja Gaiden. He has beaten the game in 11:39.93 as of this writing. In the beginning of this year, I watched him put in hundreds of attempts just to improve upon his own record by a tiny margin. I missed watching him set the record live, but I saw a couple of near misses and some other incredible moments. I learned a lot about this game just by watching, but I can’t say it translated into making me a better player.

Ninja Gaiden is one of those classic, essential NES games that should be considered for any NES collection. It has nice graphics and music, good boss fights and enemies, good control with versatile weapons, and a story that ties it all together. It is also the very definition of Nintendo Hard, with constantly respawning enemies capable of knocking you into pits at any time, especially those birds. The endgame cruelty is quite extreme as well. The difficulty may be a turn off, but the game is relatively kind in the early going and the story might grip you enough to want to grind through it. Ninja Gaiden is fun to play, and if somehow you haven’t given it a chance, I give it my recommendation.

#59 – Ninja Gaiden

Every Gargoyle deserves an adventure.

The dark, foreboding music fits perfectly!

To Beat: Reach the Ending
Played: 3/9/17 – 3/17/17
Difficulty: 6/10
My Difficulty: 3/10
Video: Gargoyle’s Quest II Longplay

The concept of a spin-off in media makes a lot of sense. A spin-off can take a supporting character from an existing TV show or movie and give them their own story while giving the storytellers an already established base to work from. Spin-offs have naturally made their way into video games too. One notable example is the Wario Land series which started as a spin-off of the Game Boy game Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. Wario was the villain of that game but became the protagonist in his own adventure. On the NES, there aren’t very many examples of spin-offs, but today I am going to cover one. The annoying “red devil” enemy from Ghosts ‘N Goblins gets not only an actual name, but also his own adventure in Gargoyle’s Quest II.

The Gargoyle’s Quest series originated on the Game Boy. All games in the series were developed and published by Capcom. Gargoyle’s Quest was initially released in Japan in May 1990. The US would get the game shortly thereafter in July 1990, and it also saw release in the UK in 1991. The game was popular enough to warrant a sequel that jumped platforms to the NES and Famicom. Gargoyle’s Quest II was named Red Arremer II in Japan, seeing release in July 1992. The US received Gargoyle’s Quest II in October 1992, and the European release was in June 1993. The NES game was also ported to the Game Boy in 1993 under the name Makaimura Gaiden: The Demon Darkness, though only in Japan. The third and final game in the series was named Demon’s Crest in both the US and Europe and Demon Blazer in Japan. This Super Famicom and SNES game was nearly released simultaneously in Japan and the US, coming in late October 1994 in Japan and early November 1994 in the US. The European release was also released last, launching in March 1995.

Gargoyle’s Quest II is a hybrid between a platformer and a top-down RPG. You play as the red devil Firebrand, who upon returning from training, finds his home has been wiped out by the mysterious Black Light. Firebrand sets off on a journey to solve this mystery and save the Ghoul Realm. The game initially looks and feels like an RPG. In this top-down view, you can explore towns, enter buildings, collect items, and talk to other ghouls to gain valuable information for your adventure. These towns and other areas in the game are all connected via a large overworld. However, all the action scenes take place in a side-scrolling view. Here you control Firebrand as you jump and fight your way through various stages of action gameplay.

The overworld ties the action sequences together.

During exploration, you can use the D-pad to travel in four directions. You’ll notice right away that Firebrand moves around very quickly in this view. He goes much quicker than the slow, plodding movement in other NES RPGs around this period. Use the A button to talk to other ghouls and interact with some objects. You will also use A to advance the text when talking. The Start button brings up the menu where you can choose from a few options. The Level menu item lets you view your current status. The Tool option lets you look at and choose certain quest items you will find. The Magic option lets you view and choose which attack you can use during the action sequences.

In the side-scrolling sections, use the Left and Right on the D-pad to walk around. Contrary to the other view, Firebrand moves slowly and deliberately. Press the A button to jump. If you press A again while in the air, Firebrand will flap his wings and hover for a short while. While hovering you can move left and right, allowing you to fly and cover much greater distances than just jumping alone. Press B to attack by spewing a small projectile. The Start button both pauses the action and brings up a sub-menu at the bottom of the screen where you can switch between attacks.

There are two mechanics in the side-scrolling areas that complement each other and form the basis for Firebrand’s movement. First is the hover ability briefly mentioned above. In the game, it is referred to as Wing Level. There is a large bar on screen that indicates how long Firebrand can hover in place, and it depletes quickly. When it runs out, Firebrand will fall, or you can choose to fall before it runs out by pressing A again. This wing stamina will restore to full strength as soon as Firebrand lands on solid ground or clings to the wall. This brings me to the second mechanic which is wall climbing. The Wing Level gives Firebrand extended horizontal movement while wall climbing gives him vertical movement. Thus, the levels extend in all directions to accommodate all his movement capabilities, as well as involving spikes and other such hazards in many places to keep Firebrand on course.

Climbing around spike-laden walls is required often.

There are a few items Firebrand can find during the side-scrolling levels. Hearts restore some of Firebrand’s health. There is a life meter on the status bar indicated by small hearts that show how many hits Firebrand can take. There are also red jars called vials that act as the game’s currency. Every now and then you can find a light-colored jar that will expand the maximum number of hearts.

Firebrand can expand his capabilities by items he acquires on the overworld. These are generally given to Firebrand after completion of certain stages or by talking to creatures. They are pretty weird items that slot into a few different categories. There are nail items that increase his Jump Level so that he can jump higher. There are wing items that increase his Wing Level which lets Firebrand hover for a longer time. There are armor items that increase Firebrand’s Life Level which gives him more hearts on his life meter. There are magic items that provide him new attacks. Finally, there are tools which are passive items that are needed to interact with certain characters to advance the story.

The magic items are the most interesting as they both give Firebrand new attacks as well as expand his capabilities in interesting ways. Firebrand starts with the Fire attack that launches a small projectile for attacking enemies. Next is the Buster attack that is a bit stronger than Fire but also can break blocks. The Tornado attack generates a small temporary platform that Firebrand can land on and restore his wing stamina. The Claw attack can form a protective surface against a wall of spikes, giving Firebrand a way to cling to them temporarily. There is also a final magic ability that is useful at the end of the game.

Creating your own platforms sure comes in handy!

I mentioned the vials earlier as the currency in the game. It turns out they are only used for one thing. There are certain creatures throughout the game that will allow you to exchange your vials for the Power of Maelstrom. It is the game’s fancy way of saying an extra life! They do come in handy for tricky areas. However, they get more expensive later in the game.

One more optional item you can find in the game is the Essence of Soulstream. To get it, you have to find two different items in the world and bring them to a person who can combine them into the Soulstream. This item can be used in the platforming levels from the menu. It can only be used once but it lets you restore your health all the way to the maximum. The best place it comes in handy is during one the boss fights that occurs at the end of some stages.

There are some ghouls on the overworld that will provide you with a password if you talk to them. Not only do you get the password, but you also set a checkpoint here that you will return to if you lose all your lives. The passwords are 16-digits, all 0-9, with a mandatory dash in the middle for readability. The passwords have just the right amount of complexity to save all your items and vials, yet they are not unwieldy to use.

Gargoyle’s Quest II has fun boss fights, including this difficult one.

I have played all the way through Gargoyle’s Quest II a few times before this run. Like many late NES Capcom games, it is pretty expensive at around $75 or so. This was one game I bought long before the prices skyrocketed. I had learned of this game in college and I decided to search it out on eBay. It may well be the game that got me to create my eBay account in the first place, I’m not sure. I found a copy for $6, and I even remember the seller was only 30 minutes away from me. I played through the game when I got it and I went back to it periodically over the years.

I’m not incredibly familiar with the game but I was able to work through it without a lot of trouble. The game takes several hours to play through the first time, and I can get through it in around two hours. I played it over three separate nights just due to time constraints. There was only one spot in the game where I lost all my lives and had to restart, but otherwise I think I played well. This is the kind of game where I normally would not record an entire longplay, but I was good enough at the game that I captured one this time. So, if you would like to see the game in its entirety, you may!

Gargoyle’s Quest II is a quality platformer that is fun to play. When you see the Capcom logo on an NES game, chances are it’s a good one and this game is no exception. It has detailed graphics, sprawling stages with good platforming, a haunting soundtrack, and a large overworld that ties it all together. There are only a few things I don’t like about the game. The overworld can be dull to traverse, and there is a bit of a difficulty spike early in the game where you need to cross over a fiery river. There is also some slowdown when many enemies are on the screen. Frankly those are minor complaints. The game is solid and I find it fun to play through every now and again. I’m glad I had the good sense to seek out this game many years ago!

#47 – Gargoyle’s Quest II

Two styles of gameplay collide in this legendary adventure!

A static title screen with some nice music!

To Beat: Reach the ending
To Complete: Beat both the main game and the special mode
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 11/7/16 – 11/19/16
Difficulty: 4/10
My Difficulty: 4/10
Video: The Guardian Legend Special Mode Longplay

In 2012, Mike Matei of Cinemassacre published a now well-known YouTube video listing his top 10 obscure NES gems. The Guardian Legend is the first game I have covered that made his list. Now I won’t tell you exactly where this slotted in on the top 10, but most of the games on that list became instantly more popular overnight, including The Guardian Legend. So the game has a lot of hype surrounding it now, but does it live up to it?

The Guardian Legend was developed by Compile. They are pretty well known for developing shoot-em-up games. The game was first released on the Famicom in February 1988. There it was named Guardic Gaiden and it was published by Irem. The Guardian Legend was released on the NES in April 1989 and published by Broderbund. The game was later released in Europe in 1990 published by Nintendo. The box and label art are unique among all three versions of the game.

Much to my surprise, my research revealed that The Guardian Legend is actually a sequel. There was a trio of games released by Compile on the MSX computer in Japan. The first game was Final Justice which released in 1985 and plays similarly to Galaga. The second is Guardic released in 1986. In this game, each level is a static screen with enemies to shoot. You go to the next stage by flying upward into a scrolling section where you can decide which path and level you want to take next. The third game is Blaster Burn from 1990 which is a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up. The Guardian Legend is the sequel of the middle game Guardic.

There’s a lot going on even in the very beginning.

The Guardian Legend is a shoot-em-up game comprised of vertically scrolling shoot-em-up sections and top-down adventure sections. You play as the Guardian who can transform between a humanoid form and a spaceship form. The goal of the game is to destroy the planet Naju which is filled with monsters and set on a collision course toward Earth. Your mission is to explore the surface of the planet to locate corridors that are buried deep inside the planet. These corridors contain switches that can activate the self-destruct sequence when all of them are set.

The game begins inside the first corridor. Here the Guardian assumes her spaceship form and you play a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up stage. After clearing the stage, the Guardian switches back to her humanoid form and then you explore the surface of the planet from a top-down perspective searching for the next corridor. The game format resembles The Legend of Zelda in that you explore an overworld while looking for dungeons you need to clear.

The controls are pretty much the same in both perspectives. Use the D-Pad to move the Guardian in eight directions. The B button fires the standard weapon. In the shoot-em-up sections you can only fire upward but in the top-down portions you can shoot in any direction. Hold down the B button for a quite generous auto-fire. The A button is used to fire secondary weapons. You can pause the game by pressing Start and you press Select to open up the subscreen.

Information overload!

There is a lot of information available on the subscreen. The top portion of the subscreen contains the same information shown when you are playing and it is comprised of three rows. The top row shows your current score, the number of power chips you currently have, the number of shots for your secondary weapon, and which secondary weapon you have equipped. The middle row contains your health bar. The bottom row shows which area you are located and the X and Y coordinates of where you are located in the overworld. All of that is just the top part of the subscreen!

The left side of the subscreen shows the map. You can see your current location highlighted as well as the location of any reachable corridor. The right side of the subscreen shows which keys you have, the maximum number of chips you can have, your attack and defense power, the power level of the currently selected subweapon, and how many chips it takes to fire the current subweapon. The bottom of the subscreen shows all of the subweapons you have. Use the cursor to select which subweapon you want to equip.

The power chips are very important to your survival. They are the ammunition for your subweapons. Each subweapon uses up a certain number of chips for each time you fire it and you cannot use your subweapons if you run out of chips. The other important mechanic is that the chips also influence the firepower of your normal weapon. When you reach certain chip amounts your weapon will power up, but spending chips and falling below that amount will cause your weapon to downgrade. There is a balancing act between using your other weapons while also maintaining enough chips in reserve to have a more useful normal weapon.

It’s a tiny swarm of overworld enemies.

There are a ton of upgrades and items that you will encounter in the game. The most important items for making progress are the keys. As you explore you will find black circles on the ground next to walls that have some kind of symbol written on them. If you hold the key that matches the symbol, then you can stand on the circle and teleport to the adjacent room. The keys are found in the corridors and they allow access to new areas of the map. Each new area hides more corridors.

You will also gather subweapons. There are twelve unique subweapons and once you have one you can switch to it anytime you want via the subscreen. If you collect the same subweapon again you can upgrade it to a more powerful form. Each subweapon has three distinct power levels. These get really strong later in the game but they cost more chips to deploy. The subweapons have all kinds of different effects and patterns and they are a lot of fun to use. You can get grenades, a laser sword, circular shots, homing shots, and so on. If one of the enemies or bosses is giving you a lot of trouble, it is probably because you are not using the best subweapon for the job. Experiment to see which one is most useful for your situation.

Some items give you other types of permanent upgrades. The Blue Lander is a little creature that will increase your maximum health, and the Red Lander increases the maximum amount of power chips. The gun item increases your attack power, and the shield item increases your defense power. The item that looks like four upward arrows increases the rate of fire for your normal weapon. You can also find an energy tank that fills up your health to your current maximum. It’s worth pointing out here that you can also upgrade your maximum health by reaching certain score thresholds.

Look, a weapon lying on the ground!

Other items are found by defeating enemies. Sometimes when you kill an enemy a little explosion cloud will appear on the ground for a little while leaving behind a power-up block. Shoot the block to reveal the item. You can find a heart that will restore some of your health. The blue orb gives you 20 power chips and a tiny bit of health, and a red orb restores 500 power chips and a little more health than the blue orb. You can also find full energy tanks but they are more uncommon.

There are quite a few ways to find the upgrades and items. On the surface you can find shops where you can exchange power chips for a weapon or upgrade. Some screens contain mini bosses that hold an upgrades. When you walk into one of these screens an alarm will sound and all the screen exits will be blocked off forming an arena for the fight. These can be challenging but the reward is worth it. Some screens contain a powerup freely for the taking although it takes some maneuvering around the map to find them.

There are ten different areas spread out across the map that branch off of the hub area. Each one has its own theme such as a water area and forest area. Each area contains two corridors and they are numbered based on the current area number. Area 1 contains both Corridor 1 and Corridor 11, for example. Corridors 1-10 are required for clearing the game and each one of them is blocked off from entry. There is some kind of puzzle you need to solve to open up the gate. Exploring the area and talking with some Blue Landers will yield the answer for how to open the gate and access the corridor. The remaining Corridors 11-20 are optional but you get upgrades from clearing them that you probably will want.

One of many huge boss sprites!

The corridor stages can pose a challenge. Often they are teeming with enemies and there can be a lot going on at one time. The scrolling speed varies from crawling to crazy fast which can add to the excitement. Each stage ends in a fight with a huge, detailed boss that takes a lot of firepower to defeat. As mentioned before, choosing the right subweapon is critical to taking out the boss successfully.

All throughout the map you will find rooms with Blue Landers that will give you a password to save your progress. The passwords are really complex, consisting of 32 characters of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. The passwords do track all of the items you have acquired as well as your score, but the length and complexity is just too much. Thankfully in the smartphone era a simple picture works wonders for capturing it just right.

This was my first time playing through The Guardian Legend but I have quite a few random memories surrounding this game. Growing up it was one of those games I would often browse at the local video store but never rented. I ended up buying my first copy of the game for $5 during my honeymoon. A couple of years later I got big into NES collecting again and The Guardian Legend kept popping up for me. My local game store chain was slow to update their NES pricing and they sold it for $3 when it was at least a $10 game. I bought several copies of the game just to flip. (Yep, I’m one of those “evil” reseller types.) I even picked up a cheap copy on eBay a couple of years ago when I saw it. Then right before I started playing through the game for my blog, my grandmother came across a lot of NES stuff with yet another copy of The Guardian Legend. This one however was a nice condition complete in box copy that I am keeping!

Such colorful death bubbles!

It took me a little under two weeks to finish playing The Guardian Legend with my normal rate of playing. The game definitely has some meat to it with all the areas and corridors, but I managed to make progress at a good rate every time I played. I didn’t get stuck anywhere for too long and even the most difficult corridors only took a few attempts at most.

The Guardian Legend is extremely generous with powerups. The item drop rate isn’t terribly high, but there are so many enemies around to defeat that you will get powerups on constant rotation. The top-down segments, corridors, and even most boss fights provide you enough to keeping going as long as you are reasonably careful and employ smart subweapon usage. For this reason, I don’t think the game is that difficult overall, but there were a few tricky sections that caused me to give it a 4/10 difficulty rating. One of the recurring minibosses became a war of attrition every time I encountered it, and the final boss was pretty mean and took a few tries to beat. This is the kind of game where you consistently make progress, and you can keep attempting the tough parts until you get it right.

I already spoiled this a little bit, but in case you didn’t pick up on it or don’t want to know, now is the time to skip ahead to the next paragraph! Upon beating the game and sitting through the end credits, you are given a very short password “TGL.” You can use the password to play through a special mode of the game that consists only of the Corridor sections. The levels are identical to the regular game but the big change here is how you are awarded the powerups. After completing each corridor, you are taken to a special screen where you earn powerups for meeting specific score requirements. You can get as many as five powerups after each stage even if you score high enough to be awarded more. This mode shifts the focus on scoring as many points as you can. It is also more difficult than the regular game because the rollout of powerups is slower than in the normal mode. It’s a fun way to play through the game again and a fitting reward for beating the game.

The Guardian Legend handles many enemies pretty well.

There is a very good hack of the game called The Guardian Legend Secret Edition. This is a complete overhaul of the game containing a new overworld, new Corridor stages, new Corridor puzzles, and even some new bosses. The difficulty has also been cranked up quite a lot, but that is to be expected with a hack like this. I started playing through Secret Edition once I completed the game and I got about halfway through before I stopped playing. If you like The Guardian Legend then you will really like Secret Edition. I really need to get back to it and finish it for myself!

The Guardian Legend indeed lives up to the hype. This is a really good NES game that I enjoyed playing a lot. The game controls well, the graphics and music are really nice, the myriad of subweapons gives you a lot of variety and power, the boss fights are well made, and most importantly the game is simply fun to play. I certainly got hooked! The only negative in my mind is the long password system, but if that’s the only thing I can find wrong with the game then Compile did a whole lot more right. I recommended that you give this gem a try!

#37 – The Guardian Legend