Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom

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Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom

Developer(s)	Tecmo
Publisher(s)	Tecmo
Release date(s)	^JPN June 21, 1991 ^NA August 1991
Genre(s)	Action platform game
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	NES, Lynx
Media	Cartridge

Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom is the third installment in the Ninja Gaiden trilogy for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was later ported to the Atari Lynx.

1 Story
2 The Four Great Beasts
3 Gameplay
4 Trivia
5 External links

[edit] Story

The game opens with CIA Agent Irene Lew investigating a secret facility, located in the middle of nowhere. As she investigates, she is confronted by Ryu Hayabusa, the game's protagonist, who threatens to kill her, and chases her. The chase eventually leads to a cliff, where Ryu tells her that no one who has seen that facility will live to tell about it. As she backs away, the cliff under Irene gives, and she plummets to her apparent death.

Shortly thereafter, Ryu approaches the facility, musing to himself that he couldn't have done this, and someone is stealing his identity. Ryu decides to invade the facility, seeking answers. After fighting through waves of robotic enemies, Ryu encounters the Mantis Warrior, a heavily armored android with a concealed flamethrower. After defeating the android, Ryu continues his investigation, but is stopped by a mysterious young man named Clancy. Clancy gives Ryu a lead, asking him to head for the "Castle Rock Fortress", and telling him that his "enemy" will have set traps for him.

The first level boss, Mantis Warrior.

Ryu begins searching for the fortress, and finds himself in a vast desert, discovering an underground hideout, filled with magma, and a network of pipes. Inside, Ryu is ambushed by more robotic foes, led by the Night Diver, an aerial android who attacks Ryu with bombardments of fireballs. After the battle, a giant video screen appears behind Ryu, and a man appears on it; Foster, the CIA executive from Ninja Gaiden, who forced Ryu into helping him, and attempted to double-cross him. Foster wonders if the defenses around Castle Rock were too much for Ryu, indicating that Ryu is on the right track. Ryu begins to accuse Foster of impersonating him, but Foster has no idea what Ryu is talking about, believing that Ryu was the one that killed her. After taunting Ryu a bit, Foster's transmission ends.

Ryu's entry into Castle Rock's perimeter takes him from the desert, into a jungle, where more robots, and bio-engineered foes, await him. After traversing the jungle, and the water-filled catacombs beneath it, Ryu encounters twin creatures called The Great Koganei. Although the creatures show a degree of skill in Ninjutsu, they are no match for Ryu, and are quickly dispatched. Immediately after, however, Ryu is ambushed by someone who is a match; a double of Ryu. Excited to meet his "original", the double attacks Ryu, and defeats him. However, the double has been instructed, by Foster, not to kill Ryu just yet, and after admitting to Ryu that he was the one that killed Irene, he runs off toward Castle Rock. Enduring his injuries, Ryu pursues his clone through an outpost just around the Castle Rock perimeter. Here, Ryu faces off against Sandeater, Castle Rock's final guard. After Ryu defeats it, Clancy appears again, and reveals who he is. Clancy confesses that he's been working with Foster on a secret project, but can't work with him anymore. He then reveals the details of the BIO-NOID project, as well as the details of the Life Energy...

When Ryu defeated the Demon in Ninja Gaiden, the creature's destruction created an open seam between dimensions that was leaking a continuous supply of this energy, which Foster was harvesting as an energy source, after building Castle Rock Fortress on the ruins of the temple Jaquio used as his stronghold. Foster was infusing the Life Energy into humans, creating super-beings called BIO-NOIDs. Clancy reveals that the clone of Ryu is a BIO-NOID, and begs Ryu to stop Foster, as he doesn't have the power to do so. Ryu quickly heads into the fortress, and soon encounters Foster, who intends to kill Ryu, and after considering making a BIO-NOID out of him, Foster instead states his intentions of having Ryu studied, to unlock the secrets of his Dragon Clan power. Ryu's clone enters, and just before the battle can begin, a woman enters and attacks Foster and the double with a sub-machine gun. The woman turns out to be, surprisingly, Irene Lew.

Irene reveals that she faked her death, and had been working with the army after she had already discovered Foster's plan. Irene tells Foster that he has no chance of escape (the fortress is presumably surrounded). The clone of Ryu steps forward, transforms into a large beast, and prepares to kill Ryu and Irene. Irene opens fire with her weapon, but the bullets are ineffective against the BIO-NOID's skin. Ryu, alone, battles his doppleganger, and this time, Ryu is victorious. As the BIO-NOID falls, the complex begins to shake, and Clancy enters. Clancy compliments Ryu and Irene for their "good work", telling Foster that he's not handing the ruins over to anyone. Ryu accuses Clancy of having used them to get the ruins back, and Clancy confesses. After the life-stream seam re-opens, Clancy states that he has to leave, and exits through the seam, into subspace. Foster attempts to follow, but is torn apart by the energy.

Ryu battles across the fifth level.

Ryu gives chase into the seam. Irene wants to follow, but Ryu refuses, as one needs to have a special kind of power to enter without being torn apart. Ryu enters, into a strange world of ice and flesh. Within this world, Ryu encounters the resurrected BIO-NOID, who has been transmutated into a bizarre creature. After defeating the BIO-NOID once again, Ryu reaches the end of the subspace world, and finds himself back in the ruins, where Clancy is waiting. He has absorbed the life energy, and his appearance has begun to change because of it, with his skin having turned blue, and his veins protruding from his skin. Clancy reveals that they are inside a dimensional warship within the ruins, which Clancy intends to use to destroy the world, and reshape it as he sees fit. The warship takes off, with Ryu and Clancy inside. Clancy begins his rampage of destruction with the warship, and drops Ryu through a trapdoor, to fall off the ship. However, Ryu manages to land on the riggings on the ship's belly, and makes his way back to Clancy, who has been fully transformed by the life energy. Clancy reveals his hatred toward humanity, and their warlike tendencies, attempting to justify his actions to Ryu. Clancy attempts to get Ryu to join him, even offering to let him bring a "perfect human" to come along, but Ryu refuses, telling Clancy that he and the ship will be the only things that will be destroyed. After battling Ryu, and losing, Clancy bonds with the ship, transforming two more times before Ryu defeats him, causing the ship to be destroyed along with him.

As the life energy begins to leave the area, Ryu is pulled back to Irene (presumably through the seam), appearing where he left her. The two manage to escape the crumbling Castle Rock Fortress, as Irene questions how someone can strive toward such ambitions all the way to their death. Ryu simply states that people are always striving to achieve their ambitions, but mankind is never foolish enough to be wiped out by their own ambitions.

[edit] The Four Great Beasts

These Four were created by Clancy and Foster, and are used to keep Ryu from entering Castle Rock Fortress. They are believed to have been created through the use of technology, along with combining living things with Life Energy.

♦Mantis Warrior

The beast commander of fire. In reality, he is a robot, equipped with arm sabers, and a hidden flamethrower. The fire that is released from its chest, crawls along the ground, and burns Ryu. Despite having sabers equipped on both arms, he has low manueverability, and lacks close combat skills, thereby making him the lowest rank of the beast commanders.

♦Night Diver

The beast commander of the sky. Being an android, equipped with a jet propulsion pack, he is able to fly freely through the sky. He attacks Ryu by showering him with glowing fireballs. He is third rank of the beast commanders.

♦The Great Kogane

This BIO-NOID is a result of combining a lizard with life energy. He is the beast commander of water, as well as the second rank of the great beasts. Being skilled in Ninjitsu, he can split his body, and use shurikens to plaque Ryu.

♦The Sandeater

Being the beast commander of earth, he is considered the top rank of all four beast commanders. He is able to dig and move freely through the earth. As another beast commander skilled in Ninjitsu, he is able to attack Ryu, using "The Art of the Fire Wheel".

[edit] Gameplay

The game featured the same gameplay mechanics as the first two games, but with noticeable changes and additions...

Powerups could now be seen inside the spherical containers, instead of being hidden until the containers were broken.
The Vacuum Wave Art and Dragon Sword extensions were added.
Ryu could now grab onto horizontal lines, and climb across.
The American release of the game added limited continues, and removed a password feature.
The Ninja clones were removed.

[edit] Trivia

There has been some confusion in regards to the identity of the mutant in the subspace level. While many believe it to be Foster, the creature remarks that it used all its strength, indicating that it had battled Ryu. This, coupled with the fact that the power coming from subspace tore Foster apart, indicated that it was his doppelgänger, and not Foster.
The game seems to take place shortly before the events of Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos, as evidenced in the backstory in the instruction booklet (wherein it only tells Ninja Gaiden's story, and sets up Ninja Gaiden 2, as if the events in that game hadn't yet happened), and the fact that Ryu still has the Dragon Sword, which had vanished at the end of Ninja Gaiden 2.
Ninja Gaiden 3 was noticibly different, graphically, from its predicessors. Not only was it one of the few NES titles to feature parallax scrolling, but the stages were no longer presented in the isometric view seen in Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2.