Ninja Spirit v2 PC-Engine Mode (0:09:25)

Ninja Spirit (PC-Engine/Virtual Console) completed by Nicholas "Sir VG" Hoppe on May 9th, 2008.

And evil spirit has ravaged the land. Can you lead Tsukikage to victory?

Speed Run Rules
* Single Session
* 1-Player Only
* Takes Damage to Save Time
* Played on PC-Engine Mode
* No Deaths
* Obtains a high score of 390,800 :P

Ninja Spirit was originally an arcade game released in 1988 by IREM, later ported over to the PC-Engine (aka the TurboGrafix-16) in 1990. Recently, it was put on the Wii's Virtual Console.

The game is a short game, about a ninja named Tsukikage (translated means Moonlight) who is avenging the death of his father. Some other aspects of the story are a bit unclear, being that we only see a 10 second intro.

The PC-Engine/Virtual Console release includes two different modes: PC-Engine Mode and Arcade Mode. The game is almost entirely the same between the two modes. The primary difference is that in Arcade Mode, anything that touches you kills you instantly, where PC-Engine mode has a life bar (but still plenty of things to kill you instantly). Arcade Mode also has a different ending (though it still doesn't say much about the story).

Tsukikage has 4 weapons at his disposal: sword, shoruken, bombs, and a grappling hook. Each of them can be powered up to enhance their power. These power-ups are contained in red orbs. If a weapon you're armed with is already powered up, the game will then powerup the next one in line that hasn't been powered up yet. The sword and the hook have an advantage of being able to block projectiles, which will save your butt, especially in Stage 6.

Blue orbs in the game will give you a shadow clone, which act like the ones in Ninja Gaiden 2. You can have two of these.

Yellow orbs will give you a fire barrier, which lasts for a short time.

The pinkish/purple orbs will kill weak enemies on screen.

All 4 of these are dropped from the orange ninjas that are scattered throughout the levels.

I'm not gonna do stage by stage comments, just some general thoughts about the game.

I had heard about this game through the VC and decided to play it, for fun. I started getting a handle on the game fairly quickly, and saw it would be a GREAT candidate for speed running. Having nothing better to do than torture myself with a hard game, I took on the challenge. Most of my restarts were, surprisingly, on Stage 1, mainly to try to get some better spawns with the first 2 orange ninjas (sometimes they both spawn to the right, sometimes both to the left, sometimes one in each direction). After that, it was probably a mix between Stage 6 and Stage 7, as both have plenty of places for you to die in an instant.

This game was very difficult for me to do and I probably made a hundred attempts at getting this time. Undoubtably, it's improvable by a few seconds. Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 7's bosses could both be beaten a second or two faster. Stage 4's 2nd section seems slow, because I have to stop to slash instead of jumping. Jumping sends me back to the bottom portion of the level (I can't jump off the ceiling like I can the floor). Plus if I let too many ninjas get on screen, the game lags...so I simply had to manage the best I was able. (BTW, the bamboo sections of the floor are insta-death.)

Thanks to Toneman on YouTube for his no-kill video that taught me a couple tricks (Stage 6 boss strat and Stage 7 "pit-o-ninjas" strat) and DHouston for his guide on GameFAQs. Both were a great help to learning this game quickly.

This run is Copyright (C) 2008 Nicholas "Sir VG" Hoppe and is allowed for downloading and private viewing. Permissions for hosting this run have been granted to Radix and Speed Demos Archive. Public viewing of this run is prohibited without prior permission from the creator. The selling or distribution of this run for profit in any way, shape, or form including (but not limited to) selling on eBay and television for profit is prohibited without prior permission from the author. Video hosting sites (i.e. YouTube, etc) may host this video in part or in full, as long as full permission is granted from the author. Any violation of the above listed may result in legal action. Ninja Spirit is (C) 1990 IREM Corp.

Sir VG, signing out.

FIN

(This is my rejected submission to SDA.)

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• ninja
• spirit
• speedrun

[zallard1]

Hm, what was the reason this got rejected?

[SirVG]

@zallard1 The verifiers felt it could be much faster. I have a text file somewhere with a list of things they stated that I could dig out again...

[ptracey]

Hmm, the ending seemed a loooot like Twilight Princess.

>_>

Nice speedrun, that was crazy skill man.

5 stars :D

[SirVG]

Technically, it would be the other way around, since this game came out LONG before Twilight Princess.

[TorpedoStooo]

Nice run mate, this is one of my all-time favourite games, oozing with atmosphere! Even the C64 version was pretty tight back in the day!

Every time I fire up Musamasa, I'm reminded of this masterpiece...

[tomamii]

looks harder then it really is, just use the shadow special and the sword & the game is peace of cake

[shaantitus]

final boss raped so hard even his mom heard his cry of pain :O

[magicstik213]

Haha that stupid stage where you fall down and the ninjas like are flying up, yea that took me like 3 hours lol. You got some mad skill

[retronostalgic]

Terrible sound here...

[SirVG]

You're welcome. Your video was such a help, that I had to credit you (and will, whenever I attempt a redo of this for resubmitting it to SDA).

[Toneman]

2 something minutes I mean. I stand corrected