Obliteration Technique A Go-Go!
Ninja Gaiden II Black does not hold back. It actively encourages you to annihilate enemies. Even after you've brutalized an opponent, decapitation is often necessary—otherwise, they'll cling to you with their one remaining arm and turn into a suicide bomber with an exploding shuriken. It feels marvelously excessive when a final tap of the Y button causes Ryu to impale and hurl the headless corpse, but later in the game, there's a logical reason for it: certain enemies will keep fighting even after losing their heads unless you completely obliterate them.
I haven’t reached that part yet in the remake, but I remember it from the original—a game I never actually finished. Not for lack of trying, but because of a game-breaking glitch that would hard freeze my Xbox 360 late in the game. I tried everything: restarting, switching consoles, swapping out my copy, but it always locked up at the same spot. So when they finally put a true version of Ninja Gaiden II on Steam, I was ecstatic.
Other versions have released over the years—Sigma, Master Collection—but those were bastardized editions, the result of Tomonobu Itagaki splitting from Tecmo after they withheld his pay despite his games selling faster than crack in the ’90s. The Sigma versions are still fun, but they pale in comparison to the original vision. The gore was removed and replaced with some purple oil shit, as if all the enemy ninjas were secretly robots. They even threw in some extra, completely unnecessary boss fights—like a giant sentient Buddha statue that shoots laser beams from its eyes, tagged onto the end of the first boss fight.
I posted a version of the comic without words today since they obstructed some of the art. I’ll be doing these periodically, and I’ve also thought about posting versions of some comics with the bubbles intact but no words, so people can fill in their own dialogue if they want.
On Tuesday, I posted the original pencil & ink drawing I did for Pass Into the Iris, and it occurred to me that I never explained that comic. Don’t worry, it’s short and simple. Duncan Trussell frequently communicates with ChatGPT on his podcast and also uses various AI tools when making music and videos. Along with that, I also just wanted to draw Duncan. Lastly, I’ll have a new series to share on Tuesday. I’ll explain more next week after posting the first two pages—though I should probably stop procrastinating and just get back to drawing.
