Ninja Gaiden Restoration

What it is

Ninja Gaiden Restoration by Ryu is a pair of patches for the North American release of Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden. The main one moves the game back toward the Japanese Famicom version; the second adds a looser, easier remix on top.

What's restored

• Losing to the final boss trio sends you back to stage 6-3 instead of all the way to 6-1
• Item placements return to the Japanese layout
• Ryu's father is called Joe, as in Japan and the later 3D games, and Ninja Dragon becomes Dragon Ninja
• Typos and grammar slips in the cutscenes are fixed, and a few stronger words from the early script, later used in the SNES Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, are back

The free movement version

The optional second patch makes backward jumps as strong as forward ones, removes horizontal knockback, freezes the timer and adds some new item placements, such as the Jump & Slash art in stage 3.

Playing it

Either patch is applied to your own copy of the US NES Ninja Gaiden, following the included instructions. Credits also go to never-obsolete (NinJax editor) and Displaced Gamers (code breakdown).