Description
A playthrough of Taito's 1987 action game for the NES, The Legend of Kage.
In this video, I played through two full loops before getting a game over in the fall of the third.
Loop 2 begins at 16:11, and Loop 3 at 30:05.
The Legend of Kage (影の伝説, _Kage no Densetsu_ ) is a TOSE-developed NES adaptation of Taito's 1985 arcade coin-op of the same name.
Set in 19th century Japan during the waning years of the Edo period, The Legend of Kage casts the player in the role of Kage, a ninja who has to infiltrate a samurai castle and rescue the kidnapped Princess Kiri from the samurai warlord, Yoshi.
You have to make your way through forest to a secret passage, where you'll take on several shinobi before scaling the castle walls. Once you've entered the castle, you'll fight several waves of shinobi and monks on your way to the top floor where Kiri is being held. If you succeed in rescuing her, she'll immediately be kidnapped again, and a new round begins in the next season. There are three distinct stages (summer, fall, and winter) to clear before you reach the ending and move on to the next loop.
The endless score-attack nature of the gameplay follows the typical structure of a mid 80s arcade game, but The Legend of Kage sets itself apart with its unique gameplay mechanics. As an authentic anime-inspired ninja, Kage can leap the height of multiple screens in a single bound and soar between treetops with ease, all the while taking enemies down with carefully aimed shuriken and deflecting their attacks with his sword. When you meet certain conditions, special power-up items will appear that can do things like boost your firepower, speed you up, clear the screen of enemies, and conjure invulnerable clones who mirror your attacks.
(That scroll that plays a sound that makes heaps of dead ninja fall out of the trees is super creepy, don't you think?)
The NES version is a good facsimile of the arcade original. The graphics and sounds are recognizable, the movement is snappy, the jumps are just loose enough to make you feel like you're flying without sacrificing precision, it's balanced to be challenging but fair, and there are plenty of secrets to uncover. It won't keep you playing for hours at a time, but in short doses, it's a lot of fun.
If you're a fan of this one, there were a couple of tangentially related games: The NES-exclusive Demon Sword (https://youtu.be/YcnkhpDirJE) features similar gameplay and was likewise developed by TOSE, and Ninja Hayate (released in North America on the Sega CD as https://youtu.be/pOxmhylUZk0) is essentially The Legend of Kage in the form of a Dragon's Lair-style FMV game. An official sequel, The Legend of Kage 2, was released in 2008 as a Nintendo DS-exclusive.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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