1990 · Famicom · Game story
Ninja Ryukenden II: The Screen Learns to Fight Back
In the 1990 Japanese Famicom sequel, Ryu Hayabusa does not merely cross dangerous rooms. He clings to their walls, sends shadows ahead of his own movement, and fights through weather, darkness and a conspiracy that keeps cutting the action like a tense little film.
In this story
The quiet man behind Jaquio
A year after Ryu Hayabusa stopped the first resurrection of an evil god, the sequel begins by revealing that the earlier disaster had a deeper author. Nintendo's Japanese record names Ashtar, the fiendish emperor who had manipulated Jaquio from the shadows, and says he now moves himself. That is a clean, nasty premise for a sequel. Ryu is not simply asked to win a rematch on larger scenery. The story rewinds the meaning of the previous victory: the enemy he beat was an instrument, and the hand holding it has finally stepped into the light. 1
The action understands that revelation as a change in atmosphere rather than a lecture. Rooms hurry Ryu across hostile ground, but the threat is always slightly more theatrical than a list of obstacles. A cutaway, a looming figure, or a sudden hard stop before another run makes the player feel pursued by an intention. That is the useful kind of game melodrama: it does not demand that we study a dossier. It gives the next wall, drop and enemy a darker pressure. Ryu is fast because standing still is exactly what Ashtar's world wants. 1 6
Trivia Ashtar is not introduced as a replacement villain who happens to arrive after Jaquio. Nintendo specifically frames him as the figure who had controlled Jaquio in secret. That small twist changes the sequel's dramatic grammar. The title's dark sword is not merely another collectible-sounding menace; it belongs to a conflict in which Ryu has already won once without seeing the whole board. The first surprise is narrative, but it immediately makes the next burst of movement feel like an answer to an ambush that began before this cartridge's opening scene. 1
See it in action
A wall becomes a route
The sequel's most important new sentence is written on a wall. Nintendo says Ryu can seize a surface, then move up or down it; he can also use a ninja-power attack while hanging. The old reflex of bouncing between surfaces becomes something more deliberate here. A vertical face is no longer only a brief springboard between jumps. It is a strip of contested territory where the player can pause, climb, descend, read an enemy's approach and choose the moment to leave. In a fast game, that extra verb creates a surprising amount of suspense. 1 2
That freedom is not a promise of comfort. A hanging Ryu is visible, committed and constrained by the wall's shape. The player is trading horizontal certainty for vertical possibility, then deciding whether the best answer is a climb, a drop or an attack bought with ninja power. Hardcore Gaming 101's mechanics account likewise notes that climbing is freer but the top of a platform still asks Ryu to wall-jump away. It is a lovely restriction. The game gives the handhold, then refuses to let it become an elevator. Every arrival still needs a leap. 4 1
Trivia The hanging attack is the detail that makes this more than a convenience upgrade. Nintendo's Japanese description says Ryu can spend ninja power on an attack while attached to the wall. It turns an exposed pose into a brief tactical platform, but only at a cost. That exchange is wonderfully specific: the safest-looking place in a climbing sequence can be where a player burns a resource simply to create enough room to continue. Movement, combat and the meter meet in one cramped vertical decision instead of taking turns politely. 1
Two shadows, no rehearsal
Then the game gives Ryu company, but never in the leisurely form of a second player. The shadow technique creates doubles that follow him and attack at the same time. Nintendo puts a hard ceiling on the spectacle: up to two shadows. That number is just enough to make the screen feel haunted by Ryu's previous decisions. His sword is suddenly not a single forward slash but a small moving formation. Approach an enemy cleanly and the copies stretch the danger zone; mistime the route and the formation is simply in the wrong part of the room with him. 1 4
The cleverness is that the doubles make timing visible. A jump is no longer only a way to clear a hazard; it is a way to arrange future attacks. The specialist mechanics descriptions explain that the shadows track Ryu and can linger in the air after a jump, allowing their positions to be shaped. This gives the sequel a faintly choreographic rhythm. The player runs ahead, but also leaves an echo behind, then watches that echo meet an enemy a beat later. It is strategy expressed at full sprint, without opening a menu or slowing the camera. 4 5
Trivia The maximum is exactly two shadows, not an unlimited parade of copies. Nintendo's description is precise on that point, and precision matters because two doubles create a readable triangle of threats: Ryu in front, echoes behind or above, and an enemy caught in the overlap. The same description says the copies follow Ryu and attack in unison, expanding his reach when they are guided well. Their value is therefore not raw multiplication. It is placement: the player has to make a tiny squad out of the last few seconds of movement. 1
Weather is a stage hazard
Ninja Ryukenden II does not reserve hostility for creatures. Its Japanese game reference describes blizzards, darkness, burning fire, water currents, spikes and ice as hazards; each one changes what a safe route even means. Wind turns a jump into an argument with momentum. Snow and ice ask the player to question a landing that would be harmless on plain ground. Flowing water changes the cost of waiting. These are not scenic filters pasted over ordinary rooms. They make the player read the background as an active force, an accomplice that can shove Ryu toward disaster. 3 4
That environmental hostility pairs beautifully with the wall mechanics. A climb is usually a way to regain control, but wind or darkness can make the next exit from the wall uncertain. The sequel keeps flipping a familiar platform-game fantasy: height is not automatically safety, visibility is not automatically knowledge, and a surface that accepts Ryu's hands may still lead to a terrible launch. The result has real pace because it forces observation inside action. A player cannot merely memorize a button rhythm. They must notice what the room is doing to that rhythm. 3 1
Trivia One of the stranger shared hazards is darkness punctured by lightning. Hardcore Gaming 101 identifies a dark area where flashes briefly reveal the scene; the Japanese hazard account separately identifies darkness as part of this game's hostile vocabulary. The idea is more dramatic than a simple black screen. Light becomes an event with its own tempo. A flash offers a fraction of orientation, then takes it away, so the player has to turn a visual interruption into a decision about where Ryu can safely run, jump or cling next. 4 3
Spend the spirit before it spends you
Ninpo is not a decorative supers system. The sequel's new wall attack already makes its basic bargain clear: special force buys a new answer, and the answer consumes a finite reserve. The game therefore keeps asking whether an obstacle is worth solving now. A sword swing is immediate and familiar, but a dangerous angle, a crowded ledge or an enemy positioned beyond ordinary reach may demand something larger. That is why the action can feel so urgent without becoming shapeless. Ryu's speed is always tethered to a resource decision hovering under the next jump. 1 4
The best route is rarely the one that looks most cautious from a still image. A player who never spends power preserves a number while allowing the stage to dictate every engagement. A player who spends wildly can reach the next crisis empty. Ninja Ryukenden II makes this tension visible in motion: a hanging attack can clear a vertical problem, and the shadows can extend a clean line of offense, but neither turns the player into an untouchable hero. The game wants confidence with consequences, the kind that feels like a daring cut rather than a routine command. 1 4
Trivia The Japanese game reference calls out a meaningful change to the Fire Wheel ninpo: it can be used repeatedly while ninja power remains, rather than behaving as a one-shot treasure. That is a small rule with a large emotional effect. A powerful move stops being a museum piece to save forever and becomes a tempo tool. The question shifts from whether to use a rare trick at all to whether this exact wind, wall, enemy or drop is the moment that deserves a slice of the remaining Spirit Points. 3
The camera has a pulse
The sequel's speed is cinematic not because it borrows a movie's surface, but because it treats movement as staging. Masato Kato recalls that, on Ninja Ryukenden II, Hideo Yoshizawa handled the action while Kato took responsibility for story and art; Kato says he wrote the scenario and drew graphics as well. That division helps explain why a platforming crisis and a narrative beat can feel so tightly braided. The screen is allowed to interrupt Ryu, frame a threat, then throw him back into a room whose geography has become charged by what we have just seen. 6
Kato also describes working from a scenario into rough visual material, while recalling Yoshizawa's strong film interest and film-club background. It is tempting to reduce that history to a credits-list anecdote, but the more useful takeaway is practical. The game needs visual scenes because its action is already built from abrupt changes of angle, scale and peril. A wall becomes a close-up problem; a lightning flash becomes a cut; a shadow delayed in midair becomes a second figure crossing the frame. The theatrical feeling grows from the controls rather than floating above them. 6 7 8
Trivia Kato's account gives II an unusually concrete double duty: he says he wrote its scenario and drew its graphics. He does not describe a distant handoff between a writer's room and an art department; he describes a process in which the story became rough visuals and then on-screen material. That is a fine fact to carry back into the game. The dramatic cuts may be brief, but they are not accidental pauses between levels. They are part of how the adventure turns Ryu's physical momentum into a sense of pursuit, revelation and escalation. 6
A fast route through a dark story
What endures about the 1990 Japanese Famicom game is its refusal to let any one idea carry the whole adventure. Ashtar supplies a shadowy, personal menace. Wall movement turns vertical space into a risky route. Two doubles convert the player's recent motion into an attack pattern. Weather and darkness make the scenery answer back. Ninpo offers a way through the pressure, then makes the player feel the cost. None of these systems waits politely for another to finish. They stack, which is why a single leap can feel like plot, choreography and resource management at once. 1 3 6
It is also why the game has such a muscular sense of forward motion. The player does not run because the screen scrolls; they run because the next surface might be a route, the next shadow position might make an enemy vulnerable, and the next flash of light might be the only useful look at a dangerous room. The Famicom hardware is not asked to simulate a film. Instead, every rule creates a clean, readable beat: grab, climb, spend, jump, echo, strike. The scenes between those beats only sharpen the feeling that Ryu is being driven deeper into an enemy's design. 1 4 6
Trivia The sequel's weather list includes both forces that push Ryu around and surfaces that change the confidence of a landing: blizzard and current on one side, ice and spikes on the other. It is a deceptively rich mix because it attacks two different habits. One hazard says the world will move you; another says the world will punish the way you stop. Put that beside climbing and shadows, and the final impression is not of a ninja with an ever-larger bag of tricks. It is of a player learning, at speed, that every part of the screen has learned a trick too. 3
A few more screens
1 official imagesSources & image credits
Facts were checked against the links below. Official media remains the property of Nintendo and the relevant rights holders.
- 忍者龍剣伝Ⅱ 暗黒の邪神剣 Nintendo ↗
- 忍者龍剣伝II 暗黒の邪神剣 ゲームマニュアル集 ↗
- 忍者龍剣伝II 暗黒の邪神剣 ゲームカタログ@Wiki ↗
- Ninja Gaiden II Hardcore Gaming 101 ↗
- Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos Nintendo Life ↗
- 加藤正人インタビュー 電ファミニコゲーマー ↗
- Ninja Gaiden NES Team Discusses Its Origins And Design Approach Nintendo Life ↗
- 吉沢秀雄インタビュー／プロフィール ファミ通 ↗
- Ninja Ryukenden II: Ankoku no Jashin Ken MobyGames ↗
