Let's put the Jump from Ninja Gaiden II into Ninja Gaiden III - Behind the Code
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 เม.ย. 2021
- Ninja Gaiden II jumping in Ninja Gaiden III. Collision detection. Sword hitboxes. Enemies do less damage.
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Featured Game Genie Codes:
(Take note that I have not tested all of these with a real cartridge)
Ninja Gaiden II Jump: ZENLYIGA, ZENUPIGA, ZENULIGA, ZENUIIGA, ZENUYIGA, ZAELPTGA, ZAELLTGA, ZAELITGA, YLNPVZAZ, SOSXUPEK, UNSXSOKN
Respawn in Same Room: VXOKXLSA
Enemies do one damage: OXKAEVPX, PEKAOTLA
Crazy Sword (large hitbox): YYXKEGAO, YYXKKGYE
Super Sword by Default: PAXGKGAA, APXKEGAO, APXKKGYA
#BEHINDTHECODE #NES #GAMEGENIE - เกม
Kind of a reminder that the claim that "retro games were typically made harder in Japan" is just an urban legend. A massive number of games were made more difficult in their western ports depending on the developer, the genre, fears of the impact of rental services, or if the game was deemed way too easy by Japanese gamer feedback.
Yeah, I've read pretty much every major work of video game history and this is a myth I just put to bed fairly recently. I think it's part of the weeby notion that Japan must have been superior.
@@genekwagmyrsingh9433 I'd say it was popularized more because of the examples where it was true.
What was the most prominent game on the NES? Super Mario Bros. And what was the sequel? That depends on your country. The fact that Japan had a completely different but much harder game was widely reported. It was mentioned in Nintendo Power and other official Nintendo sources. Eventually the Japanese version was even released to American audiences in Super Mario All-Stars. American gamers widely knew that Japan had a much harder game.
What other examples were people aware of at the time? RPG fans in the US got laughably-easy Final Fantasy Mystic Quest but NOT Final Fantasy V. This also became widely known when Final Fantasy VII was making its debut as the very name of the game was no longer altered.
The simple truth is that the most recognized and known examples of the differences between the two countries were siding on Japan getting the more challenging games.
Besides, no one really cared to talk about the situations where we got the better deal, or Japan missed out on a great game we had. It just isn't "newsworthy" so nobody cares to talk about it, so it doesn't cement in anyone's mind.
That myth really came about because of SMB2 not being localized for the US because it was deemed too difficult at the time. As we all know we got a re-skinned Doki Doki Panic with it's own difficulty reduced. But that was an exception rather than a rule.
It is true that with the popularity of game rentals in the US booming at the end of the 80's a lot of devs were instructed to make games more difficult when localizing them from Japan, especially in light of there not being a legal game rental market in Japan at all at the same time. This is true for many games on the NES released after 1990 and on the Genesis and TG16 as well. Check out the entry for Exile: Wicked Phenomenon on The Cutting Room Floor for a good example of how nuts the difficulty changes were to some games when they were localized for the US in the 90s.
@@marscaleb Don't forget Super Mario Bros. 3; in the Western release getting hit if you have two power ups gets you back to big Mario; in the Japanese release you go back to little Mario just like in the original game.
Or simply to complete development that didn't have time to be finished natively. And, of course, that all applies to making things easier and polish not really intended to affect general difficulty as well.
Which can make things ridiculously inconvenient for hardcore game fans. For example, there's no real "definitive" official release of Castlevania III. The Japanese version has the "proper" music and damage values while the American version has the "proper" font and Grant dagger attacks.
Top tier _Star Trek_ reference, best laugh I had today!
Q
Some kid is watching this right now, getting inspired, and changing his handle (or whatever they call it now) to Crazy Sword.
I always felt Vice: Project Doom is the Ninja Gaiden 3 we all deserved, and the weird floatiness is definitely one of the spots in NG3 that I had Opinions about. I’ll have to give this a shot later.
That game rules!
i'll have to try that out sometime
Vice is one best NES games ever made. The only way I can play it lately though is the Famicom version known as Gun Dec on a multi-cart which also happens to contain all three original Ninja Gaiden games. More than worth the 25 bucks I paid to say the least.
This was amazing! I'm so glad that you decided to tackle all three of the Ninja Gaiden games separately, instead of just doing the first game or just a quick single video to gloss over all three.
Thank you for this great collection of videos!
Now do Mega Man!
What do you want to know about Mega Man
@@DisplacedGamers How about engine optimizations and bugfixes as the series progressed? Those would only be appropriate given that tight code, especially within tech limitations, was a big part of the overall influence on the original Mega Man game's design and that the series was specifically made to be easily sequelized. In a way, refining the engine would be like refining Mega Man himself.
love behind the code. also your voice is butter!
This kind of stuff is why I wish analog *buttons* were a standard feature on more consoles and controllers.
For example… a firmer press of the jump button would result in snappier movement, while a softer press would result in floatier movement. You’d get the best of both worlds!
I like that they put so much effort into the jumping!
Excellent video. I played a lot of Ninja Gaiden III and never noticed the obvious influence of Strider. It is amazing how much the feel of the game changes simply by altering the jump mechanics. A few hacks for the NES Ninga Gaiden trilogy have been uploaded recently that, I believe, might have been inspired by this series of videos. Great work, man. Your videos keep getting better.
2:24 The Cypher sound is one of my favorite sounds full stop.
Ninja Gaiden III is the first NG game I had played and as a child in the 90's, you also might remember that 90's had
the ninja craze with many ninja themed movies and cartoons and then it was followed by the dinosaurs craze.
I thought this was an awesome game with voice sample, cut scenes and challenging gameplay.
Actually Ninja Gaiden III I played was a Japanese version.
Your channel is truly a hidden gem for retro gamers.
All the best, hope you reach to a much wider audience.
Mate I really appreciate your videos. Especially behind the code series.
You've inspired me to learn coding just as a fun hobby and I love that I'm starting to understand the terminology, such as initialising. And why it matters.
The only thing more impressive than a game is seeing how it works. Keep up the good work.
OK. That's it. I can't resist anymore. I'm subscribing. Your videos are just too good to miss out on.
Playing Ninja Gaiden back in the day, 3 always felt "floaty" with the jumping. Makes sense now looking back on it.
Can't go on enough about how much I love this series you've been doing. It's gonna eventually inspire me to make my own classic games in assembly. Keep rockin' these vids, dude! 😎😎👍
The epic conclusion to the trilogy we never asked for, but we’re blessed for receiving regardless. Luckily, I have finally gotten a physical NG3 cart, so I will test the codes you’ve created on physical hardware, and see if they work.
Edit: I’ve tested every code, they work just the same as they do in the video. When testing the NG2 jump code, I realized that, in addition to longer airtime, the jumps in Ninja Gaiden 3 also get a bit more distance. I realized this when hopping between platforms in the second boss’ room. With the NG2 jump, Ryu couldn’t reach the other side, whereas the NG3 jump had a bit easier time. Otherwise, the game fares totally fine with the different controls, enough to make you question why they were changed in the first place.
My theory stems from an interview I read somewhere, in which a producer on The Ancient Ship of Doom said that NG3 was designed to be an easier game, for newcomers to the franchise, which is why enemies are a lot less aggressive (and obnoxious) overall. The jump may have been given a longer hangtime for players with slower reaction speeds, it definitely made aerial combat much more fun.
One thing I’m surprised you never talked about in the video was the knockback in this game. It functions so differently from the first two games, that it feels like something else entirely. What once felt like a great backwards leap is now more akin to a slight pushback with hitstun. This change also supports the theory that NG3 was made for beginners (at least in Japan).
In conclusion, this video series was great, probably the most fun I’ve ever had discussing the mechanics of the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy,
hey nice additional insight, cheers
@@imtilde thanks
There's an issue with the knockback here, though. When you're hit on a rising platform, I think Ryu never registers as leaving the ground, because you simply slide along until you either reach the edge and drop straight down with no hope or at least until the platform stops rising.
@@bfish89ryuhayabusa indeed that is a bizarre quirk, though I’ve only seen it in effect on the platforms in 3-1A.
@@lordlouie3550 it's there for any platforms with upward motion, but that's the main spot where you can actually die (and quite unfairly) from it. There's a spot in (I think) act 5, for instance, but the platforms are over solid ground, so it's annoying, but not fatal there.
Super Sword + Phantom Clones + Jump n' Slash was always my dream nut for the Ninja Gaiden series.
Thanks for these Ninja Gaiden videos! This is one of my favorite game series. It's fascinating to learn more about it.
Yes! A big, big thumbs up for these series. I've enoyed every video and have tried out some of the codes. I didn't even know there were changes made between NG3 versions. Gotta try the JP version now 😁
Great work! I love this kind of videos!
Damn why does this only have 10k? Hope this channel and series starts getting attention soon.
As always, great job! Keep up the
good work!
Big fan of this series! Great work!
Great series! Would love to see more stuff along these lines in the future; I'd love to see you analyze the jump in the Super Mario Bros. series.
I'm really liking these Behind the Code videos! It would be nice to see you do a video on Castlevania 3's partner system or Metroid's power-ups and screen transitions.
I'm so glad I found your channel. I love the "Behind the Code" series!
Also thank you for talking about the differences between the Japanese and US releases. I prefer to play the Japanese version because it's the original developers' intention. I like it so much that I made a ROM hack for the US release that changes all the enemy spawns and item locations to match the Japanese release. It's still not perfect so I'm considering trying to go the other direction and copy the English script and title screen into the Japanese ROM some day. Take care!
I really loved this video.
I think it would making searching for your videos a lot easier if you put 'behind the code' in the title and added a hastag.
The changed jump mechanic in NG III always threw me off. That along with the crazy difficulty always put me off of it. NG II was always my favorite to play. I seemed to have the best mix of everything play control wise for me! I love these videos! I may have to try out the crazy range sword some time just for fun!
Nice video! However, I do think that NG3 is not inspired by Strider but by Shadow of the Ninja for the NES.
That game also has climb mechanics, similar sword animation, a grunt sound while attacking, and it makes a lot more sense knowing that Ninja Gaiden Shadow (the Gameboy game) was initially a Shadow of the Ninja game until they changed it around. The release dates of the games seem to make this plausible.
It could be inspired by both. If Tecmo was in any way worth their salt, they would have been checking out what every other ninja-themed game was doing.
That said, I would think that the arcade scene was more likely to be referenced for inspiration on how to handle mechanics, rather than other NES titles.
Master System's Ninja Gaiden is the best Ninja Gaiden ever.
This video is epic!
Fantastic!
An excellent set of videos, I enjoyed them very much :)
You did a video years ago about the MSDOS version of Turtles, but it would be cool to see you're analysis of the various regional versions of TM(N|H)T on the NES. If there aren't any real substantive changes, just a general tech breakdown would be cool. Like why is the underwater dam level so punishing :)
Ninja Gaiden really is a reference-based franchise.
.
As AVGN said about the Ninja crossovers, makes me appreciate it a whole lot more.
.
.
I like the effect of Ryu losing his vertical acceleration when he stops flipping, opposed to him halting his flip at the peak of his jump.
It makes it feel like he could jump higher if he just spinning.
This is legitimately incredible research.
I think they nailed the jumping on the second game. I really don't like how floaty it is in 3, so I'll have to try it with your modifications.
I have seen romhacks trying to fix the western version of 3 to be like the Japanese version, but they don't take into account the changes in item and enemy placement. I think making a translation patch for the Japanese version would be a better way. Plus, you can then make a better translation under its original name, The Ark of Hades.
I also like the idea of have 3 difficulties:
easy = Japanese version
medium = western version with infinite continues, and maybe with the gravity mod
hard = western version
I love there videos
Great stuff -- and fun codes -- as always!
Thanks for these videos! -- I really enjoy learning how these classics were made! :)
Might be worthwhile to cover the NES Mario Bros. / Megaman games in a similar style! -- I'd love to see some of their techniques! :)
What would you like to see covered for Mega Man?
@@DisplacedGamers Boss patterns / AI, movement, Rush Jet (etc.) spawning / weapon behaviors, those sorts of things. If you go Megaman X series, the armor system and Zero (X3) would be interesting too. I would love to see how some of these were implemented. :)
I always thought the default sword's attack box was a bit smaller than in the previous games.
Love this video. There is some possibility to do a test of the same caliber on Street Fighter 1 and why its controls or response are so bad and how to improve them. Cheers!
So they put in proper subpixel vertical movement precision for the NG sequels despite not actually having subpixel positioning for it. Yay!
And Ninja Gaiden should just straight up be called Thief Gaiden now that it's moved on to pilfering Capcom. Oh, Tecmo.
I love this. But what does the different gravity mean about the planet Ryu is on? Or is each game on a different planet? 🤔
🤔
This is a series where magic is real so you could just chalk it up to A Wizard Did It. That would explain why every enemy ninja can jump so much higher than Ryu can. Maybe they just have magic that helps them get height. Maybe Ryu has been cursed. Maybe the areas the player has to fight in are protected by powerful enchantments that suppress Ryu's ability to move. That could make for an interesting stage hazard: a mage or magical thingee that causes the player's movements and jumps to become slow and labored until the source is destroyed.
I've played both NG 2 and 3, I could instantly tell the look and feel difference in the video. Makes me think the jump physics from 2 would make the game easier, yes, but more responsive, which is far more important to me than just having a difficult game. I might need to try the game all over with the heavier gravity.
lol, great trek shout out . haha
I love this series. Keep up the good work. Ever going to do one for Final Fantasy or the Dragon Quest series?
Definitely
@@DisplacedGamers Faaaaar friggin out. :)
Will be cool to demo this if someone makes a full implementation. I think I’d like the heavier gravity.
I have completed US American NG3, but it was just a non-stop frustration, compared to JP version, which I have played first.
Now I use US version with patch which removes all changes (save non-infinite continues) made to it...
The problem is not that they added enemies, but they also removed some power ups, and since game heavily relies on a Super Sword power up, without it Ryu feels really neutered in many instances.
Ninja Gaiden III really had to have that floatier jump, I think. The vertical sections would have been a huge chore without it. Oh, and NA version all the way for me. The Japanese one was way too soft for a NG game. You'll sleepwalk through it if you're playing the series in order. The limited continues are unfortunate, but all the other changes are fine by me.
Interesting opinion. Very nice to see.
Limited continues is a bit cruel though.
@@lordlouie3550 Yeah, that's one thing the first two games got right. At least there are a couple exploitable 1-Up grind spots.
I don't think it had to have it so much as the levels were designed with that in mind, though it sounds like it plays fine with the tighter/more responsive jump.
I personally think that there could be 3 difficulty modes. Easy is the original version, hard is the western version, and normal is perhaps somewhere between. At least unlimited continues and regular damage, because those are a bit cruel as they are here.
I just played NG3 for the first time and I tried the japanese version. And yeah, it was too easy. Almost disapointing.
But the limited continues took me away from the american release.
Funny how Nintendo didn’t brought the original Super Mario 2 to America since they thought it was too difficult for our audience. However Tecmo made it’s game more difficult here. Different philosophies, I suppose.
By 1990, games were being released in the west with absurd difficulty on purpose, due to the existence of rental stores. It might seem like nothing, but companies such as Rare were genuinely losing a ton of potential profit by the existence of these rentals. Nintendo’s fears of their game being too hard were a realistic concern in 1986, but by the later periods of the NES’ life, difficulty was basically a necessity for third parties. The floodgates have been opened.
Also Super Mario 2 was a disk system game that could save after every level like the version in Allstars but a NES cartridge version wouldn't have had that.
Nintendo really screwed the pooch when it came to game rentals. Rather than seeking a compromise like the film industry did with rental services Nintendo tried to get game rentals banned outright though a lawsuit. They lost and set an anything goes legal precedent for game rentals.
@@lordlouie3550 Very few games got their difficulty tweaked when making it here from Japan where rentals were illegal. When it comes to Rare... European devs were a pretty sadistic bunch, had nothing to do with rentals*... you couldn't rent games for the Spectrum or C64 and those games are with few exceptions _much_ more difficult than games on the NES.
It was the complete opposite of what you hear today... it was Nintendo easy.
*Maybe that is a claim by Rare themselves? Even if it was true it would be impossible for them to know. I guess everyone who rented Wizards and Warriors and kept playing beat it though. To me over half of what they released on the NES were garbage titles, when companies do that they sometimes have a tendency to blame rentals or piracy to explain why nobody bought it.
@@JoypadDivison EU devs really got that bloodthirst doe
That Star Trek reference was "Q"ute
This is cool but can you put the OG physics and the OG music on the snes rom for trilogy? That is all jacked up. Great vid.
I believe there are several MSU-1 patches available for the music.
Tested the code today. It feels weird for the first time but it took a while for me to getting used with it.
Unfortunately there some stage that i need to turn off the game genie code due of a few roadblocks.
5-2A : Not really a roadblock. Flip frame change may cause seizure as the background sprite move faster.
5-2B : One of the wall are unreachable which require me to turn off the gravity and velocity code.
6-1A and 6-1C : Ryu having a hard time to reach the ledge.
6-2 : The Flip Frame code for some weird reason bugged the wall that cause you can't proceed to the next section. It's like there something holding you to climb.
7-3B : Long jump section are not possible due of the higher gravity.
7-3C : The last section of the room is unreachable.
Also with the gravity changed. Aside the bomb that won't triggered, It also make the running enemy and the boss jump lower than it should.
Can you change the scroll rate of the auto-scroll sections to match the Ninja Gaiden II style gravity?
Nice video! But why call the other position byte a fine tuning value, when it's just the fractional position, in the same way as there is the fractional velocity?
This is a great question. I turned it over in my head a few times when I wrote the script.
My concern was that some people may try to interpret the numbers incorrectly by tacking the fractional value onto a negative integer like: -4.25.
Since the fraction is positive and therefore pulling a negative number closer to zero, I didn't want people to combine the fractional value with the integer and get a smaller value when they should technically have a larger value.
I could have just combined it for people, of course! However, I wanted people to remember that the numbers were separate - split into two bytes.
My thoughts as I write: So if the integer value is 0xFC (-4), should I interpret a combined value with the fraction (i.e. -3.63) or illustrate them as two separate bytes and explain it that way? Should people see how two values are two bytes and aren't just a single floating point value?
I've moved into using decimal values instead of hexadecimal values (most of the time) to make things easier to follow in the more recent videos. I could start combining fractions and integers and get further away from the mechanics of the code, of course - it would certainly speed up the videos.
Sometimes the depth of the explanation is based on the subject of the video, other times... it is because "well, there are 7+ videos now... I'm going to continue to push more toward concepts with summarized code blocks with comments and labels vs. line-by-line code walks with opcode explanations."
These are the sort of things I turn over when scripting. If someone starts this series at the beginning, they get a good deal of hand-holding (by design). The further in the video series people watch, the less hand-holding there is (also by design).
There is the super long response to your excellent question. Ha!
@@DisplacedGamers Both the velocity and position can be treated as 16 bit signed fixed point numbers with 8 fractional bits, instead of being treated as two separate numbers.
Explaining how the fractional bits work in a negative number is easier if you first explain how two's complement numbers work. In an eight bit two's complement integer, the most significant bit represents -128. The rest of the bits represent positive numbers like an unsigned integer. So $81 = -128 + 1 = 127. The fractional bits work the same way: $80.80 = -128 + 1/2 = -127.5.
@@DisplacedGamers Thanks for the in depth reply, you clearly thought a lot about this!
In my mind, both the position and velocity are represented by 16 bit integers, which are of course split into two bytes, but also operated on as two bytes because the 6502 is an 8 bit processor. And that in turn makes it handy to let the lower byte count fractional pixels (or fractional pixels per frame for the velocity), while the higher byte counts whole pixels (or whole pixels per frame).
But I've been at this for a long time and I don't have to write a script that's suitable for all kinds of audiences, so I completely respect your decision here!
You already did a video about Super Mario Bros. for NES and for SNES (very good, as always). What about a video in the same way for Ninja Gaiden for NES and for SNES?
I would like to do that at some point. I would need to target specific differences and research both the NES and SNES code. Tough part about that is that it doubles the research time required.
@@DisplacedGamers I understand. I'll be waiting til that happens. I really enjoy your videos. Cheers from México.
What emulator did you use to show hitboxes?
Next up? Ninja Gaiden Trilogy for the Super Nintendo?
I think we need a break from Ninja Gaiden at this point. Did you have something specific in mind?
@@DisplacedGamers Nothing in particular. NGT is notorious for being a pretty bad port of the original games. Setting aside the awful music arrangement and removal of effects from the original games the one thing I've noticed and annoyed by is (or what feels like) input latency which to me makes the whole game(s) unplayable. (well that and the default B-A configuring instead of Y-B.) It would be interesting to see a comparison between NGT and the originals. However if you're all Ninja "Gaidened" out, its understandable. Very informative videos btw.
@@akxmedia0 Dude, the trilogy was so bad that they even added new spelling errors to the in-game text.
But personally, I would rather see another game's mechanics looked at with this level of depth, as opposed to looking at how to fix the broken code in NGT.
Good ole noodle sword. :/
Would it have been possible to double Ryu's health vs modify damage taken?
You could change his default health, but you'd want to update the health bar graphic representation as well.
Why does the Crazy Sword hit things behind Ryu?
And why is it so choosy about which power orb it hits? Does the code always ignore all other orbs after it confirms Ryu hit one of them?
It is rather odd. It is possible that it breaks the loop after finding a collision with one of them for reasons of performance. (Not looking at the code right now - just guessing)
I completely don't understand why tecmo didn't carry the game series to the 16 bit super nes. I'm scratching my head on that one. It seem like it would be a no brainer for the super nintendo.
I was really hoping for one. We got Ninja Gaiden Trilogy... and it was... it was... eeh
@@DisplacedGamers same here, a missed opportunity.
I neve liked Ninja Gaiden 3 because of how different the jumping felt from the other two.
I'd like to see a Behind the Code on Super Mario Bros 2 USA on mechanics speedrunners take advantage of such as the double jump, falling through the floor, holding 2 items simultaneously when exiting the door, etc.
Nintendo: This game is too difficult for Western audiences. Give them an easier one!
Tecmo: This game is too easy for Western audiences. Make it harder!
18:50 what is that amulator?
Mesen
@@DisplacedGamers thanks!
For me 2 and 3 lost some of the charm 1 has because the guy who did the great music in 1, didn't do the music for 2 and 3.
Like *#777**.*
Can someone help me get ninja gaiden 1 to climb walls like part 2 does anyone no the game genie code
Unfortunately this not doable with a few Game Genie codes since this requires adding vertical climbing program code which is not present in the game. The amount of code to add would far exceed the capacity of the Game Genie. Only a ROM hack would allow one to add this amount of code.
@@nekononiaow interesting i read somewhere someone got it to work using the ladder climb code. Do you know of where i could find a rom hack. Ive searced everywhere . This is something ive always wanted to try
15:30 or AND #$01 ?
NG3 without continues was awful.
For more on "passive tutorials", I'd recommend watching Egoraptor's "Megaman Vs Megaman X".
first from china
The bane of Chinese gamers. *Happyness* *noises*
THE GREAT FIREWALL HAS BEEN BROKE!!!!
TAIWAN NUMBER ONE!!!1