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TGB

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Games You've Played That Redeemed a Series: Legend of Kage

By TGB 2 Comments

The Legend of Kage was a terrible video game. Straight up, it was an action platformer that was released for the NES in 1986 and it was garbage. As a young lad my tolerance for bad gameplay and poor controls was relatively high. As someone who somehow butted their head incessantly into the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles till I beat it I think that my aptitude for pain was relatively high. The purchasing of a video game was a big deal in my household, a huge investment that I was expected to get the most out of, lest I cause the ruin of our finances with my wuss-itude. The Legend of Kage was the one game that I bought or rented during the golden years of the NES that was just too terrible for me to beat, let alone give the time of day to.

UGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!
UGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!
Having loved the sublime but tough as nails gameplay of Ninja Gaiden and as a kid who was situated very deeply in the Pro-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles consumerism camp, I simply had to have more games that involved or touched on the theme of Ninjas doing awesome things. Suffice to say there are numerous cute but damning Halloween photos of me stalking my pray as a ninja master to substantiate my love for all things ninja. The Legend of Kage was the thumb-tack that let the air out of my Ninja loving balloon, the moment that I realized that not all video games were these crazy radically awesome entities. The game is unassailable, its a recalcitrant game that is uninterested in such gaming staples as "Level design" and "Controllability" and throws a fit anytime you attempt to accurately navigate your ninja. The first damning characteristic of the game is that Kage simply jumps too high to be controllable. As anyone who has played TMNT or Mighty Bombjack knows, when characters can jump incredibly high and the developer and has no conception of the affect of gravity and physics the player is ultimately the loser. One of the reasons why Super Mario Bros. is such a great game is its impeccable physics. Every movement, every jump has a certain logic to it, a measurable amount of acceleration thats is very easy to learn and intuit. Legend of Kage unfortunately missed that logic train. When attempting to jump and ultimately avoid enemies controlling Kage is like trying to get a handle of a fish flopping on a trampling. It was ugly, it was merciless, it was garbage.
In my 5 year old mind this cart was awesome
In my 5 year old mind this cart was awesome


The Legend of Kage 2 for the DS was Taito's letter of apology, a playable realization of what the Legend of Kage could have been back in the day. This second major game in this series is not going to rock anyones world. It's a competent, well thought out action platformer where Kage actually responds to the commands given to him. The first game I think was trying to give the player a sense of speed and super human ability, something that was beyond the teams abillities as these aspects made Kage well nigh uncontrollable. The Legend of Kage also had the problem that it was not originally designed for Famicom, it was an arcade game first. While Castlevania, Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden showed that it was possible to bring an arcade game to the Famicom or NES, those games dramatically changed the gameplay in many cases over their arcade iterations to make them fun on the hardware. The Legend of Kage? Not so much. The Legend of Kage 2 succeeds in this measure, the length of the levels, the difficulty level and endless continues make the game very playable in short distinct chunks. Taito put a lot of thought in the creation of the second game, and it shows.
Redeemed!
Redeemed!

Now on to the question at hand. Is there any game that you've played that redeemed a series for you? A game that makes up for the previous transgressions of the previous games of the series, even if only a little.

 

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