If you haven't played the game, you wouldn't understand what everyone is going crazy about. If you have played it once or twice, you know exactly what this game does to you. I've played this game over 100 times, and have not yet mastered it. Some say it is the most difficult game ever released unto use pitiful creatures, other say it is the Ninja Gaiden series, but let's be honest, Ninja Gaiden isn't Roguelike-like and you can therefore master it much quicker.

This game did to me what waterboarding did to Christopher Hitchens. It made us into bigger assholes (Although it must have been though to make him a bigger dickhead than he already was, he must have played the NES version as a child). I have become obsessed to just get through it, once that's all I need, I just needed to get through the game's stages once.

Oh I wish it were that easy, if only. Capcom being the gigantic dicks of the gaming industry in their ultimate wisdom have forced us to go through the game twice, and in their infinite wisdom, they have forced us to pick up the worst weapon in the game and get through the game again. In a harder environment in which there are more enemies. Now luckily, I'm not an idiot, not anymore. The crappy weapon was a noob trap, to be taken only at the end of the game before the last boss. But being the trigger happy bastard I am, I forget the locations of all the chests I need, which also contain the damn crappy weapon I need to kill the boss with.

I love this game, I've gotten so good in it that precision jumping is not an issue anymore. Enemies aren't a problem, and after so many years of destroying my childhood, I've had an important realization. This game is important to me, it is one of the games out there that made me a gamer, and I'm grateful. I really am. It has also shaped my musical taste as it contains some of the greatest music in games to date. So what I'm trying to say is that if you haven't played this or the original, it may be far too late for you to understand, give it a go though.

One last thing, get the bow and arrow combo right away by going to the far left of the screen when you start and just jump+double jump in that direction so a chest will appear, you'll need it.