About The Game

Set between the events of the first and second games, the story finds the protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, falsely accused of murdering his ally, Irene Lew. To clear his name, Ryu investigates a laboratory known as the "Castle Rock Fortress," uncovering a plot involving "Bio-noids"—genetically engineered super-soldiers—and a mysterious ancient dimensional warship. The story is told through the series’ signature "Tecmo Theater" cinematic cutscenes.

This entry introduced the ability to hang from and climb along the underside of pipes and vines, adding a vertical layer to the traditional side-scrolling action. There is also a key power-up that increases the range and power of Ryu’s Dragon Sword, which wasn't included in the second series installment. Ryu can once again utilize various magical arts, including the "Windmill Throwing Star" and the "Art of the Fire Wheel", and he gains a new nimpo which allows him to throw blades straight up and down to deal with vertically attacking enemies. As part of the Console Archives (CSA) line, this version includes modern quality-of-life additions such as Save States, a Rewind function, customizable button mapping, and visual filters designed to mimic the glow of a CRT television (I prefer the A1 filter and no wallpaper).

History and Inspiration

Ninja Gaiden III was originally released in 1991 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It represents the peak of late-stage 8-bit game design, pushing the hardware to its limits with complex parallax scrolling and detailed sprites.

Historically, this third entry is famous for its significant regional differences. While the Japanese version featured a standard difficulty and unlimited continues, the North American release was notoriously altered to be much harder—featuring limited continues and increased damage from enemies—as a strategy to prevent players from beating the game during a weekend rental.

This was also the lowest selling of the original trilogy games, which makes it harder to find and significantly more expensive than Ninja Gaiden I or II. Current price charting estimates put a CIB version at ~$350 and a loose copy at ~$100. Unlike Ninja Gaiden I or II, this game is not available yet on the Nintendo Switch Online service, so your only choices to acquire it are this Console Archives version or a physical cart for at least a Benjamin.

Critical Discourse and Player Feedback

Being that Ninja Gaiden III first released on the NES back in 1991, most critical reviews of the game are either found in PDF scans of old gaming magazines, or from the game's rerelease on Nintendo's Virtual Console back in the Wii days. Back when Ninja Gaiden III first released, Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it four 8's, praising the game's graphics, gameplay and toughness (they actually welcomed the challenge - claiming the first two weren't hard enough). When the game rereleased on Virtual Console, IGN reviewed it and gave it an 8/10, but Nintendo Life reviewed it and gave it 5/10. From a player rating perspective, the recent Console Archives release on PS5 currently has a 4.91 out of 5 score from 34 ratings, with 94% of ratings giving it a perfect 5.

My Hands-On Impressions

I had previously picked up Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos when it released as one of the very first entries in the Console Archives series. Oddly, even though I love that game, it wasn't an obvious purchase since Nintendo added it to their NES Nintendo Online service at almost the exact same time. Plus, I already own a physical copy of the original Ninja Gaiden II on NES, and I can just fire it up whenever I want. 

This is not the case for this game, however.

Ninja Gaiden III released later in the NES' lifecycle, and by that time my little kid mind was anxiously awaiting the release of the Super Nintendo, and all its incredible looking games. Plus, the previews I saw in EGM and other gaming magazines at the time really didn't excite me. Ninja Gaiden II's Ashtar really added a level of cool to the second game that the third game just seemed to be missing. (To this day I couldn't tell you who the final boss of Ninja Gaiden III is.)

Since I never owned Ninja Gaiden III, this entry in the series is the least known to me, although I have had the chance to play it a few times on various retro consoles that come preloaded with 20,000-ish roms of questionable legality. You never know the rom quality however, and I don't love the "questionable legality" part either.

Now that Ninja Gaiden III is available through Console Archives I can finally get to properly play the only entry in the NES series I've never gotten a chance to beat. And having convenient save states doesn't hurt either since the English version is notoriously difficult.

From a technical perspective, Console Archives games work much the same way as HAMSTER's previous Arcade Archives series, and pretty much uses the exact same interface with the exact same CRT filter options. I tend to like CRT filters for retro pixel-art games, and after playing around with the various options, I decided on the "A1" filter, which applies the lightest level of scanlines, but does add a bilinear filter which slightly blurs the image. The numbers of each filter just indicate the level of scanline intensity and resulting picture darkening. The A filters use a simple bilinear filter which slightly blurs the picture (which I prefer), and the B filters do what the A filters do, plus it adds a horizontal scan bar (is that the right term?) which I generally find annoying.

Oddly, the only slight technical glitch is a very slight audio difference when compared to the original game. Ninja Gaiden II also had a similar audio difference, so it must be a Console Archives thing. If you haven't played the original in quite a while (or ever), you won't even notice.