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Ninja Gaiden - Death Counter

Original game : Ninja Gaiden

Platform : NES

Author : Binarynova

Release date : 19 March 2022

Category : Improvement

Patch version : 1.0

Modifications : G, O

Downloads : 560

ROM Information

Database match: Ninja Gaiden (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210216-231042)
File SHA-1: CA513F841D75EFEB33BB8099FB02BEEB39F6BB9C
File CRC32: 11F953F6
ROM SHA-1: 15F245161179AB1959B7DC20E82ADD024D23AA3D
ROM CRC32: 7C4A72D8

Hack description

This hack repurposes the life counter in Ninja Gaiden into a death counter. You begin the game with zero deaths, and each time you die the counter increases by 1 (up to 99). This effectively gives you infinite lives but more than just a simple cheat code, it also modifies the in-game UI to help players keep track of deaths and encourage trying to have as few deaths as possible. It also makes a few necessary design changes to make the game a bit more palatable.

[Main Changes]
- Repurposes the lives counter as a death counter.
- Death counter starts at 0.
- Dying increases the counter.
- Added a little skull icon to the UI to indicate deaths instead of lives.
- At 100 deaths the counter loops back to 99 to prevent a Game Over caused by an overflow.

[Additional Changes]
- Dying during the final boss rush sends Ryu back to 6-3 instead of 6-1.
- Birds do minimum damage to Ryu (1) instead of "final boss" damage (3).

Screenshots

Contributions

ContributorType of contributionDescription
BinarynovaHacking

Reviews

I liked it way more than I anticipated!Allen08002022-09-10Version 1.0

It's actually a nice little hack that takes a minimalist approach to fixing some of the more glaring problems with Ninja Gaiden 1. I didn't think I would like a death counter in the game. However, combined with the fix for starting all the way back at 6-1 in Act 6, it serves a couple of purposes as a bugfix ROM hack, too (the other was allowing me to notice that I'd died like 5x more in Act 6 than the rest of the game combined). Definitely a lighter touch to the game than the 2016 'updated' ROM hack by Frédéric Bouix for people wanting a more vanilla experience.