Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom

Reviewed by Marc Golding (January 07, 2004)

Ninja Gaiden 2 was as beautiful as NES platformers come! Well, understandably, Ryu hasn’t changed - his sprite is virtually identical in all three games. Most of the enemies are different naturally, and they’re a decent bunch, the mostly mindless menagerie comprised mainly of zombie types and robots. Sadly, there are no high-kicking Karatekas knocking you off cliffs, or afro wearing boxers doing the same. The game has a decidedly futuristic tilt, and as such, it's robots, robots, robots, with a good deal of alien weirdness thrown in for good measure.

Reviewed by joseph_valencia (July 07, 2009)

DISCLAIMER: This review is based on the Japanese version of the game, which is much more lenient than the American one. Differences include enemies inflicting less damage, more lenient re-spawns after you die, more reasonable enemy and power-up placement, infinite continues, and a password system. Since the text is Japanese, I don’t have to waste time on the hack video game storytelling, which no doubt consisted of dialogue like “Hurry!”, “What’s going on?” and “We must continue to fight for ...

Reviewed by psychopenguin (November 02, 2003)

Ever why the Ninja Gaiden series died? There's probably a few reasons for it, mainly company related, but Ninja Gaiden 3 certainly did not help the cause. It's the worst of the 3 Ninja Gaidens by far, as Tecmo tried out these new ideas that just were not suitable for Ninja Gaiden games, as therefore the series bombed. It's still not a horrible game, however, and I enjoyed it for the most part. Just don't expect a high-quality Ninja Gaiden game.