NES NINJA GAIDEN > ARCADE NINJA GAIDEN (sorry folks)
They should've kept the
from the arcade version, that was a gyp! The arcade units I played this on had good speakers with kickass bass I recall, so it sounded a lot better on the real thing than from that link. But yeah, the NES "port" lost a lot of points for that in my book...
Rygar/Ninja Gaiden were designed properly for the arcade setting as pure beat-'em-ups. I remember Rygar especially was a quarter-thief like no other... Death could come for you in numerous ways, and often very quickly! Centipedes popping up from the ground, guys getting dropped in by flying terradactals and what not, the clock running out on ya and then getting chased by a special character as a result, etc. That game did operate like the Final Destination movies, if you were supposed to die before when the CPU decided it was time and you barely managed to escape, it'd adjust enemy attack scenarios ensuring death would come regardless (
I exaggerate, but yeah!).. It was rare for me to ever get past the 1st level and it took a lot of quarters... Then came the Internet, the MAME emulator and I could finally get to beat it, but not without cheating via F1 save/load every damn step of the way! There is no "easy" difficulty setting on that game despite the configuration settings, that's for sure...
Anyway, if you just judge the NES versions as pure ports against the arcade versions, then I'd agree with Zeta, they're terrible... But that's limiting your scope and not giving 'em a chance as 8-bit games on their own. The home console allowed developers to take the games in a different direction and of course they couldn't achieve the graphics quality level of the arcades, but at least in Rygar's case (for me), they made a very good 8-bit Action-RPG game that was quite memorable. I can't remember Ninja Gaiden NES very well so I can't speak for it, I know I beat it and the two sequels, but that's about it. I know I had more fun with the arcade version and it wasn't crazy impossible like Rygar was.