Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos, known in Japan as Ninja Ryukenden II: Ankoku no Jashinken (忍者龍剣伝 II 暗黒の邪神剣?, lit. "Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword II: The Demonic Sword of Darkness") and as Shadow Warriors II: The Dark Sword of Chaos in Europe (alternatively known as Shadow Warriors II: Ninja Gaiden II), is a side-scrolling platforming video game developed and published by Tecmo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). This is the second installment in the Ninja Gaiden trilogy for the NES and it was released in Japan on April 6, 1990 (1990-04-06), in North America in May 1990, and in Europe on October 27, 1994 (1994-10-27). The game was later released for the Commodore Amiga and DOS-based PCs by GameTek in 1991. It was then released for the Wii's Virtual Console service on October 15, 2007 (2007-10-15) in North America.
The events in Ninja Gaiden II take place one year after the events in the first Ninja Gaiden game. It is about an evil emperor named Ashtar who, after hearing of Jaquio's defeat, devises a plan to take over the world and engulf it in darkness through an evil sword called the Dark Sword of Chaos. A U.S. Army agent named Robert T. Sturgeon recruits the game's main protagonist Ryu Hayabusa and tells him that he is the only person who can stop him. The game received positive praise in previews from Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power and continued to receive high ratings and coverage, being nominated for several awards from Nintendo Power in 1991. Overall, reviewers have said that visuals and controls of Ninja Gaiden II improved over its predecessor while maintaining a high level of difficulty for players; the game was criticized for having a more generic and predictable plot. The game maintains lasting appeal among players, with one reviewer saying that Ninja Gaiden II is "a challenging experience the likes of which gamers in the 8-bit era lived and died for".
Read more about Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword Of Chaos: Plot, Gameplay, Reception
Famous quotes containing the words dark, sword and/or chaos:
“While the white man keeps the impetus of his own proud, onward march, the dark races will yield and serve, perforce. But let the white man once have a misgiving about his own leadership, and the dark races will at once attack him, to pull him down into the old gulfs.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast.
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The largest soul that was in all England.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)