Ninja Gaiden II reveal.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
At the time we didn't have an internet connection at home and I would only get the news either from magazines or from my older brother. He was studying in another city, but he would visit us every other weekend and he would bring back CDs containing trailers from new games for me to see. He burned them himself, based on what he thought I might like.
I only had the OG xbox at the time, and since they stopped making games for it at 2005, Ninja Gaiden Black was the only game I would play for 3 years straight. Ninja Gaiden Sigma had just released for PS3 but it was too expensive for me and I felt a little jealous and betrayed because I was a secret Xbox fanboy back then.
One day my brother came and told me he had a surprise for me. He pops in the disk and presses play on the video. It was Ryu in a foggy place in front of a grave or something. I thought it was some kind of promotional material for Ninja Gaiden Sigma, so I was not amazed. But what are these new weapons? the claws, the scythe? Then he jumps and slashes the screen. Ninja Gaiden II shows.
I screamed in confusion. A sequel so close to Sigma caught me completely by surprise. Then the actual gameplay follows in Venice. The new weapons, the graphics, the blood splatter everywhere, the sword animation at the end of the battle to clean the blood. I have never been as excited about anything in my life ever since.
I must have watched it hundreds of times. I knew every word that Itagaki and his translator said. Every move that Ryu would perform and how the enemies would react. I popped the CD in my OG xbox and faked the input on the controller as if I was playing it. One year later eventually I bought the 360 with Ninja Gaiden II, even though that 8.0 review score from Gamespot disappointed me a lot. Had a lot of fun with it in the end, but nowhere near as much as with NG:B.
