Inspiration - Fresh Out of Ninja Puns

For the latest installment of Inspiration, I want to talk about Ninja Gaiden Black. The Ninja Gaiden series were some of the most games ever released for the NES, and they also broke ground for how they chose to present their stories. Later, the franchise was re-imagined for the Xbox and released to nearly universal praise.

I was addicted to this game for the better part of 2005. This particular version was the culmination of the various releases of the game and the additions made for the free expansion sets called Hurricane Packs. While free, post-release game content was and is prominent in the PC space, this was fairly unprecedented in the console world. They even held competitions for those Master Ninjas that had perfected the games mechanics. Those people, myself included, where actually included in the credits of the following game. Neato ninj-ettio.

I was so inspired by this game, that I wrote up a bunch of documentation for it. At the time, I wanted to do a much better job of business documentation at my actual job. So, to get into the swing of things, I thought I'd practice on a game that I didn't feel had a been given a respectable level of inspection. It was quite clear to me that the people that made this game were deeply committed to it, and I wanted to honor that level of dedication. So, I wrote up some documentation. It is flat, text only format as that ensures that it is viewable on as many platforms as possible.

Ninja Gaiden Documentation

The vast amount of detail present in the game mechanics and animation were never covered in the mainstream press. I'm assuming that since it wasn't a multiplayer competitive game, there was no reason for anyone in the gaming journalism field to pay any particularl attention to it. I won't go into the detail here, as I cover it ad naseum in the above documentation. But, as is the case with all of the things that I cover in Inspiration posts, the developers' attention to detail is what persists even today with this title.