Ninja Gaiden Shadow (aka. Shadow Warriors) for GB looks like the mixture of Ninja Gaiden series and Shadow of the Ninja for NES. In the USA, AD 1985, an evil messenger of the fear of mankind fell down to the earth, along with destruction and terrible death. Despite of his slow running speed, our hero, Ryu Hayabusa managed to defeat the evil messenger lurking in the skyscraper and saved mankind within only 12 minutes!
Table of contents
General informations
- Emulator used: VBA 1.72 + Rerecording v19.3
- Aims for shortest input time
- Abuses programming errors
- Takes damage to save time
- Manipulate luck
Comments
This game is quite similar to Ninja Gaiden series and Shadow of the Ninja for NES, while the movements are simlified. Even so, the game still lags at times.
Although this game runs at 60Hz framerate, input is only read every other frame. This is annoying.
There is a 16-frame rule in this game. Every time after a boss is beaten, the white-out screen will always come up at the margin of 16 frames.
Fire Wheels (abbr. FW)[1] are powerful against large enemies. I got all FWs that cost less than 48 frames in this run. Since only bosses took more than 1 hit to destroy, I didn't use them unless neccessary.
Glitches
Very few.
A bad jump/landing glitch?
When you perform a jump, depending on your sub-pixel position and falling speed, you may get stuck for one frame (two frames when considering one dummy frame) when you land on the ground. This was avoided at maximum effort.
One more bad jump/landing glitch?
It's weird that pressing LEFT+A to jump up a platform causes the jump to be a little higher, and thus you'll land on the platform slower. In order to get through the vertical scrolling zone in Stage 4-3 as fast as possible, this glitch was avoided.
A bit wall-sinking and corner-boosting[2]
In this game, you can only get corner-boosted downwards. By pressing the D-Pad towards a corner when you have pre-jumped down to clear it, you can sink into it a little. When you are falling off the bottom corner of the wall, you'll get ejected i.e. (bottom-)corner-boosted downwards a little. It wasn't used sometimes because it would change the sub-pixel positon and trigger the bad jump/landing glitch.
A bit gap-sinking
A trick to sink a little faster into the gap between the conveyor and the obstructions in the beginning of Stage 2-2 was found and used only in Stage 2-2. It is possible to stand up for one frame when Ryu begins to be forced to kneel down to get through the gap. Just press DOWN+RIGHT when he's standing in the gap to move forward a little.
A useless damage sponge-out glitch?
When you get hit by an enemy, you'll get stunned immediately, but the damage won't be taken until the stun is over. If you get a power-up during the stun, you'll get out of the stun instantly and
avoid the damage. It's useless for speed because you can always avoid being hit wherever this trick can be used. I just used it several times in this movie for fun.
Stage by stage comments
Stage 1
The missile launchers were the most annoying things in this stage. Their missiles can only be skipped after you wait for a few frames, but skipping them is faster than kneeling down to avoid them. When the launchers explode, they create some lags, which can be manipulated.
The last FW would take 50 frames to get, and getting it would result in more lags during the explosion of the last missile launcher.
The boss, Spider was manipulated to get down the ceiling as soon as possible.
Stage 2
Sub-pixel precisions were required to perform some movements as fast as possible. HP planning was also neccessary.
The guards with shields were all manipulated not to block attacks.
This extremely slowly walking muscle boss Gregory with his hopping dwarf sidekick Jack was quite easy. Just some slashes, saving FWs.
Stage 3
You must be familiar with this track if you like Ninja Gaiden....
All the rotating flames were skipped by planning the route/time usage carefully.
A FW was used to destroy a droid in the way. By doing this, I didn't need to wait for the rotating flames behind it.
This boss, Colonel Allen was the hardest to manipulated "correctly". His assault attack was difficult and time-consuming to dodge, so I just took damage once to deal with it.
Stage 4
The moving laser turrets were manipulated by holding steps right before the light was out.
A FW was used to eliminate two ninjas in the way.
This boss (maybe a wind rider?) was also manipulated to get down as fast as possible and not to use his ninja stars. It was impossible to beat him in one round, unfortunately.
Stage 5
You must be familiar with this track if you like Ninja Gaiden....
Lots of FWs were available in this stage. However, since lots of (sub-)pixelly precise tricks were used, I didn't need to get all or worry about using one.
The final boss, Emperor Garuda was just manipulated and toasted. You must be familiar with this track if you like Shadow of the Ninja...
Ending
What? A castle collapsed? Not a modern skyscraper? Never mind.
Thanks to...
Thanks to Randil and huzhangyang for their WIPs.
Footnotes
[1] Honestly, I dont' know what is the name of the magic Ryu casts in this game.
[2] I'm not certain if it is real corner-boost. It can even be corner-pull.
Bisqwit: Edit to check if that adds the missing forum thread...
NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots
of this movie and placed them here.
Oh! I also corrected the ROM name.
- You indicated
Ninja Gaiden Shadow (U) [!].gb - I updated it to
Ninja Gaiden Shadow (U) [T+Spa1.0_DJTraducciones].gb
mmbossman: I took the liberty of changing the ROM name to Ninja Gaiden Shadow (U).gb, as this movie syncs with that ROM, and reports a correct checksum in VBA 19.3 (although that factor may be incorrect). In any case,I'm accepting this since this run looks to be high quality, and it has a ninja.
klmz: LOL thanks, mmbossman.
ShinyDoofy: Processing...