Every Game in the Ninja Gaiden Series

Since bursting into the arcades in 1988 (and onto the NES mere months later), the Ninja Gaiden franchise has been one of the most enduring and important action gaming franchises. The original trilogy of 2D titles on the NES set the bar for just about every other action platformer that followed in their footsteps, and the series’ 3D reinvention during the 6th console generation, courtesy of Tomonobu Itagaki and Team Ninja, would take the character action genre and Ninja Gaiden name to new heights. In honor of the series’ recent return to the spotlight via this year’s Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound and today’s launch of Ninja Gaiden 4, we’re taking a look back at the history of one of gaming’s best action franchises and the original poster child for difficult games.

• Release Date — October 1988
• Developer — Tecmo
• Publisher — Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — N/A
• Platforms — Arcade

Barely months ahead of the Ninja Gaiden series’ debut on the NES, the first version of the game actually launched in arcades. Surprisingly, the arcade version of Ninja Gaiden is dramatically different from the NES version and is, in many ways, an inferior game despite having more advanced visuals. Aside from both titles being side-scrollers, the NES and the arcade versions of Ninja Gaiden differ greatly in terms of their story and gameplay, with one of the biggest differences between the two being the arcade version’s implementation of co-op. Despite the NES version of Ninja Gaiden being the one most players remember, the arcade release was actually one of the most successful coin-op cabinets of its time.

• Release Date — December 9, 1988
• Developer — Tecmo
• Publisher — Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 80% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — NES

Mere weeks after the launch of Ninja Gaiden in arcades, the legendary NES version of Ninja Gaiden arrived at the end of 1988 and forever changed gaming in the process. The NES release of Ninja Gaiden placed a greater emphasis on platforming than the more beat ’em up-leaning arcade version, and its anime-inspired story and cutscenes were leagues ahead of other narrative techniques used in contemporary video games. While Ninja Gaiden followed the template established by Tecmo’s own Rygar, its influence would be felt in just about every action platformer that followed it on the NES and SNES.

• Release Date — April 6, 1990
• Developer — Tecmo
• Publisher — Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 79% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — NES

Player and critical reception to Ninja Gaiden cemented it as one of the NES’ must-have titles, making a sequel a foregone conclusion. Tecmo was able to quickly churn out a follow-up roughly 18 months after the launch of Ninja Gaiden with Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos, which builds on the general gameplay template and anime-inspired storytelling of the first game to tell a follow-up story centering around Ryu rescuing CIA agent Irene Lew. Gameplay-wise, Ninja Gaiden II is pretty much just “more Ninja Gaiden“, though Ryu does have some new abilities like being able to attack while climbing and a handful of new power-ups that come in handy during some of the new platforming and combat challenges that await.

• Release Date — June 21, 1991
• Developer — Tecmo
• Publisher — Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 82% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — NES

Released just a year after Ninja Gaiden II, Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom is the final entry in the series’ NES trilogy and the first game in the franchise to feature series designer and artist Masato Kato in the director’s chair. Canonically, Ninja Gaiden III takes place between the events of the first and second games, telling a side story about Ryu’s efforts to thwart a CIA plot to recruit and control an army of superhuman mutants via an interdimensional rift. While Ninja Gaiden III arguably has the strongest visuals and performance of the three NES-era Ninja Gaiden games, its story and gameplay are perhaps the weakest in the trilogy. It doesn’t help that the Western NES release of the game is intentionally harder than both the Japanese and PAL versions.

• Release Date — November 1, 1991
• Developer — Japan System House
• Publisher — Sega
• Review Aggregate Score — 70% (Mixed or Average)
• Platforms — Game Gear

While there were plenty of ports of the Ninja Gaiden NES trilogy games to other platforms, Game Gear owners got their own unique Ninja Gaiden title in 1991 with the aptly named Ninja Gaiden. It features gameplay similar to the action-platformer style of the three NES games in the series, but tells a totally unique story not connected to the mainline Ninja Gaiden trilogy. Notably, the Game Gear version of Ninja Gaiden is a good bit easier than the NES trilogy thanks to how differently it controls (Ryu can jump higher and swing his sword faster), which was met with a mixed response from fans expecting more of a challenge.

• Release Date — December 13, 1991
• Developer — Natsume Co., Ltd.
• Publisher — Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 77% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — Game Boy

Just a few months after the release of Ninja Gaiden III on NES and the Game Gear’s unique Ninja Gaiden game, Game Boy owners would get their own exclusive title in the franchise with Ninja Gaiden Shadow. Shadow was actually developed by Natsume, which had previously worked on the very Ninja Gaiden-like (and highly underrated) Shadow of the Ninja, and some of that DNA found its way into the studio’s take on Ninja Gaiden. While Ninja Gaiden Shadow features a simplified version of the series’ NES-era mechanics, some of the platforming enhancements from Ninja Gaiden III do make their way into the game.

• Release Date — June 1992
• Developer — SIMS
• Publisher — Sega
• Review Aggregate Score — 88% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — Sega Master System

As if having three different games with the title “Ninja Gaiden” weren’t enough, the Sega Master System got its own version of Ninja Gaiden in 1992. Like the Game Gear release of Ninja Gaiden, the Sega Master System version is a wholly unique entry in the franchise that features a story not connected to the main trilogy and stars Ryu Hayabusa in a new, original adventure. Notably, the game was never released in North America due to Sega’s discontinuation of Master System support in the territory, resulting in it only being available in PAL territories. But that limited release is by no means an indication of its quality, because the Master System version of Ninja Gaiden is, by all accounts, a great action-platformer title.

• Release Date — August 10, 1995
• Developer — Tecmo
• Publisher — Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — N/A
• Platforms — SNES

After a few years of relative silence, the Ninja Gaiden franchise returned in 1995 not with a new game, but with a compilation that remastered the NES trilogy for 16-bit hardware. Ninja Gaiden Trilogy packages together the three NES Ninja Gaiden games with redone visuals and music, but those are about the only improvements this compilation makes over their original versions. For whatever reason, the performance of Ninja Gaiden Trilogy leaves a lot to be desired, with each game in the trilogy suffering from significant slowdown and input lag compared to its NES counterparts.

• Release Date — March 2, 2004
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 93% (Universal Acclaim)
• Platforms — Xbox

During the gap between 1991 and 2004, a lot had changed within not just the world of action gaming, but the gaming industry as a whole. So when it came time for the Ninja Gaiden franchise to make its triumphant return, it had a lot of different influences to pull from that spanned well beyond the purview of just the original NES trilogy. Under the direction of Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki, Ninja Gaiden returned in 2004 as a 3D character action game that set a new high bar for the genre, earning its rightful place as one of the best games of the generation and influencing a whole host of game designers and players who were blown away by its challenging yet rewarding difficulty.

• Release Date — September 20, 2005
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 94% (Universal Acclaim)
• Platforms — Xbox

Roughly a year after the release of Ninja Gaiden, Team Ninja came back with a remastered version of the title for Xbox that adjusted the game’s balance and added in some new content to serve as a definitive edition. Ninja Gaiden Black is perhaps the “perfect” edition of the first 3D Ninja Gaiden game and easily one of the best action games on the Xbox, and its new adjustments and tweaks to the game’s balance make it far more enjoyable than the original. If there’s one downside to Ninja Gaiden Black, it’s that it removes the unlockable version of the NES Ninja Gaiden in favor of the arcade release.

• Release Date — June 14, 2007
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 88% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — PlayStation 3

Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black‘s Xbox exclusivity was a bit of a blow to PlayStation owners, which made the title’s eventual port to the PS3 in 2007 a long-awaited dream come true. Sigma is a port of Ninja Gaiden Black that carries over just about every aspect of its gameplay and includes all the additional content changes that were part of that re-release, which made it a must-have character action game on the PS3. Notably, though, Ninja Gaiden Sigma features a slightly altered difficulty balance that renders it somewhat easier than Ninja Gaiden Black, which some hardcore fans take issue with.

• Release Date — March 20, 2008
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 83% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — Nintendo DS

You wouldn’t think that a Nintendo DS exclusive Ninja Gaiden game with touch-screen controls would be that fun to play, but Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword goes a long way toward proving that sentiment false. Dragon Sword takes place between the events of Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden II (which, at that point, had yet to be released) and tells a story connecting the two games, and its gameplay is closely modeled after the series’ 3D lineage, albeit with a heavy emphasis on using the stylus to control each of Ryu’s movements, which works great in practice. It’s a little on the shorter side and far more accessible than Ninja Gaiden or Ninja Gaiden II, but that’s arguably perfect for a handheld title.

• Release Date — June 3, 2008
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Microsoft Game Studios
• Review Aggregate Score — 81% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — Xbox 360

From the moment it was revealed at the 2007 Tokyo Game Show to its eventual release, Ninja Gaiden II was one of the more anticipated action games for the Xbox 360, owing largely to the importance that the original Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black had in the Xbox library. Sure enough, Ninja Gaiden II was an almost instantaneous commercial and critical success, upping the ante in terms of the speed and difficulty of its combat and offering up a new dismemberment system that transformed each encounter into an incredibly violent display. Ninja Gaiden II would end up getting several ports to other platforms, but many purists still consider the original Xbox 360 version to be the superior release.

• Release Date — September 29, 2009
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Koei Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 83% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — PlayStation 3

With the original Ninja Gaiden getting a port over to the PS3, it was only a matter of time before Ninja Gaiden II would get the same treatment. Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is the PS3 version of Ninja Gaiden II, and like the original Ninja Gaiden Sigma, it takes the source material and makes some enhancements to have it run better on PS3 hardware, but loses some of the game’s original challenge in the process. Unfortunately, Sigma 2 features almost as much cut content as it does new content, with the biggest change being the reduced enemy counts that make some of the harder sections of the campaign much more manageable.

• Release Date — February 22, 2012
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Koei Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 72% (Mixed or Average)
• Platforms — PlayStation Vita

The PS Vita was one of the first handhelds capable of running PS2 and PS3-era titles, so naturally, Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo saw an opportunity to port the Ninja Gaiden games to the platform. Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus is a handheld version of Ninja Gaiden Sigma that takes the PS3 title and shrinks it down to run on the Vita, and it’s a mostly faithful port that does a good job of translating the experience to portable hardware. That said, there are some significant visual concessions made to Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus to keep its performance at an adequate level.

• Release Date — March 20, 2012
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Koei Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 58% (Mixed or Average)
• Platforms — PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

The unexpected departure of Tomonobu Itagaki from Team Ninja left the studio a bit rudderless when it came to continuing the Ninja Gaiden franchise, but to their credit, Fumihiko Yushida and Yosuke Hayashi stepped in and did a commendable job trying to keep the spirit of the series alive with Ninja Gaiden 3. Compared to both its predecessors, Ninja Gaiden 3 is a far more accessible and forgiving experience, which some found to be to its detriment, transforming what was once one of the more challenging and rewarding franchises in gaming into mindless hack and slash. Thankfully, a lot of the game’s shortcomings would be addressed in a Ninja Gaiden Black-style rework…

• Release Date — November 18, 2012
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Koei Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 69% (Mixed or Average)
• Platforms — PlayStation 3, Wii U, Xbox 360

Released roughly 6 months after the original Ninja Gaiden 3, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge is a port of the game to the Wii U that fixes most of the glaring issues players had and delivers a much more enjoyable experience. Hence, every subsequent re-release of Ninja Gaiden 3 has used the Razor’s Edge version as its source material and not the initial version. While Razor’s Edge initially debuted as a Wii U port of Ninja Gaiden 3, its balance changes and additional content improved the experience so much as to earn it a re-release on the PS3 and Xbox 360 just a few months later, cementing it as the definitive version of the title.

• Release Date — February 26, 2013
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Koei Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 66% (Mixed or Average)
• Platforms — PlayStation Vita

Like its Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus predecessor, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus is the PlayStation Vita port of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, itself a PS3 port of the Xbox 360 version of Ninja Gaiden II. And, as you might expect, a copy of a copy loses some of the original’s impact in translation, with Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus arguably the weakest way to play the second 3D Ninja Gaiden game. At the time, it was great to have Ninja Gaiden II playable in a portable format, but with the existence of better hardware and the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection, this port is nothing more than a historical curiosity.

• Release Date — March 18, 2014
• Developer — Spark Unlimited, Team Ninja, Comcept
• Publisher — Koei Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 50% (Mixed or Average)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

The Ninja Gaiden franchise isn’t one that’s known for having many spin-offs, so the release of Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z came as a bit of a surprise, especially after the mixed reception to Ninja Gaiden 3. Fitting, then, that Yaiba is perhaps one of the worst games in the series and barely deserving of the Ninja Gaiden name when stacked up against the mainline entries. While it does feature some interesting comic book-inspired visuals and a unique premise of ninjas fighting zombies, the gameplay in Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is about as brain-dead as its enemies and a far cry from the mechanically rich combat of the previous 3D titles.

• Release Date — June 10, 2021
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Koei Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 73% (Mixed or Average)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One

The one-two punch of disappointing Ninja Gaiden games prompted Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo to take a break and refocus on other franchises, letting it simmer in the background for years. When Ninja Gaiden finally made its return, it kicked things off in earnest with a new compilation that brought together the trilogy of mainline 3D entries in the franchise under one umbrella, using the Sigma versions of Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden II and the Razor’s Edge version of Ninja Gaiden 3 as the definitive releases of each title in the Master Collection. Thankfully, this somewhat threadbare compilation (that doesn’t even include the best versions of the first two 3D games in the series) was just the start of Ninja Gaiden‘s new era.

• Release Date — January 23, 2025
• Developer — Team Ninja
• Publisher — Koei Tecmo
• Review Aggregate Score — 81% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

To coincide with the surprise reveal of new 2D and 3D games coming to the Ninja Gaiden franchise, Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja went back and remastered Ninja Gaiden II with Unreal Engine 5 visuals, shadow-dropping Ninja Gaiden II Black on the same day. And while Ninja Gaiden II Black does still use the Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 version of the game as its starting point, it actually sits somewhere between Sigma 2 and the original Xbox 360 version in terms of its balance and difficulty, meaning its gameplay is almost as improved as its impressive new visuals. A near-perfect appetizer to prepare fans for the Ninja Gaiden series’ main courses later in the year.

• Release Date — July 31, 2025
• Developer — The Game Kitchen
• Publisher — Dotemu
• Review Aggregate Score — 84% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

A collaboration between Blasphemous developer The Game Kitchen and renowned retro game publisher Dotemu, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound was the first new 2D game in the series in more than 30 years and a fitting return to form for old-school fans of the Ninja Gaiden series. Like the NES trilogy, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is a tough-as-nails action platformer that focuses on lightning-fast movement and attacks, with some new mechanics that transform both combat and traversal to strike a balance between new-school accessibility and old-school challenge. It’s also the first 2D game in the series to feature a protagonist other than Ryu Hayabusa.

• Release Date — October 21, 2025
• Developer — Team Ninja, Platinum Games
• Publisher — Xbox Game Studios
• Review Aggregate Score — 83% (Generally Favorable)
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

The first new 3D Ninja Gaiden game in more than a decade and the first to feature a collaboration between Team Ninja and another studio (in this case, the legendary PlatinumGames), Ninja Gaiden 4 is perhaps the best the franchise has been since Ninja Gaiden Black. Players get to take control of a new protagonist with Yakumo, but Ryu Hayabusa still plays a central role in the game’s story, taking place some time after the events of Ninja Gaiden 3 and setting up a possible new future for the franchise. Ninja Gaiden 4 is both a return to form for the Ninja Gaiden series and a bold new step forward, with PlatinumGames’ undeniable sense of style and flair felt throughout its amazing campaign.