Load Our Last Save: Load Our Last Save: Ninja Gaiden

3 minutes in and I've paused it an put some Eels on... probably not want they wanted to happen :)

@ohnooh: I thought so as well! EB Games is pretty much the only dedicated games place I know of - we used to have a Gametraders near me. It was cool seeing retro games for sale on shelves and you used to be able to pay to play games in the back section of the store!

Oh man, this was a great surprise! No personal experience of Ninja Gaiden, but I'm just happy to see LOLS make a comeback. The Psi-Ops one is one of my favourite videos on the site.

Yes! LOLS is back.

Man watching this makes me sad that there's no decent port or that the OG Xbox emu scene is pretty dead. This game will be lost in time :(

The end of this video is incredible.

A-walk with the Chance the Rapper reference. My dude.

Thank you Vinny and GBeast for reviving this series. I'm already looking forward to further instalments.

This first one was already really great.

I think the two different games titled "Full Spectrum Warrior" they saw when taking the tour through game saves might be due to one being for the normal version and the other for the original military-commissioned version that you could access via a code.

I'll admit to enjoying their music in the early 2000s. Their music....has not aged well, and their frontman is apparently in a downward spiral that would impress Axl Rose. Still, "Control" and/or "Blurry" were on a whole lot of people's ipods back then. Might as well own up to it.

EDIT: Just checked my own Xbox, and I'll actually stand behind the music on it. A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step, Audioslave (self-titled), and Audioslave - Out of Exile.

Ninja Gaiden is one of many Xbox games that could be played in 16:9

FUCK YEAH CHERRY LIPS

@monkeyman04: Awesome, I actually found it! thanks!

@cooljammer00: this guy knows. Those fuckers still pop up in my dreams

What's the song name?

The Eels; Weird thing about that band which I had never heard of till recently, was I do believe the front-man or main founder, was also the son of Hugh Everett lll. He who originated the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Watching this show gave me the only 15 seconds or so I actually heard this band.

@jedikv: yeah there's a good number of really good exclusives on that platform that will disappear over time. And there were a few third party games which were markedly better on Xbox than on the other two platforms.

FYI "Chris Kings" full name is Chris Thomas King and he's a multiple time grammy award winner and blues and jazz guitarist, best known for playing Tommy Johnson in the Coen Brothers movie "O' Brother, Where Art Thou".

First video I've liked from GBEAST. Also it's good to see LOLS back.

Hey guys, I'm a premium member

Man, I really wish they would remaster Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2 for Steam. While they were hard (sometimes mostly due to the camera) I had a blast playing them. I would really like to play them again.

So I guess I'll just watch this one again.

Psi-Ops needs to be played in multiplayer if it hasn't already. That game is awesome.

GBE Mailbag and Ninja Gaiden makes for a good time.

And I should play Ninja Gaiden some day. I remember people really liking it when it was new.

@deadstar: Pretty sure it wasn't multiplayer but they did Psi-Ops a couple years back: http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/load-our-last-save-psi-ops-the-mindgate-conspiracy/2300-5731/

One of my absolute favoritest games ever. I will never tire of this gameplay, and the graphics weirdly still hold up in spite of the typical Xbox muddiness. I think it's the 60 frames per second that's saving it... Anyway, well done, Vinny! You truly are some manner of ninja type person.

Haha YES

Vinny's learning curve seems high.

Makes me want to do my own Load My Last Save. Was one of my favorite games, beat it five times, and once on Master Ninja difficulty. I'm probably no where near as good as I was back then though.

Ninja Gaiden is the Dark Souls of the PS2/Xbox generation.

The music in this game is so great and dumb:

@takoyaki: You can get Ninja Gaiden Sigma for PS3 if you don't want to dig up an OG xbox.

Vinny didn't finish Freedom Fighters, right? I'd like to see that get finished before stuff like this.

Gotta say, when they said the end of Ninja Gaiden I didn't think they'd ever finish.

After Devil May Cry's stylish action, my thoughts on Ninja Gaiden can best be summed up by:

Took until the very end after having beaten the game for Vinny to figure out the camera controls. Oh, bless you!

There were a few around here in SoCal but they eventually were transformed into Gamestops. I guess Gamestop wanted to unify all of their branded stores down here.

Don't worry! You're in luck!

Load Our Last Save: Freedom Fighters

Part 2

Part 3

I wonder how much, if any, of an inspiration that second form was on Devil Daggers

@alex@austin_walker: Hell yes. Otogi all day! Damn that was a good series.

Also, since you asked for a save file to go back to @vinny - I say you rope Jeffy B in for some four player Hunter: The Reckoning with Alex, Austin and yourself. That was a great game to play together.

@ohnooh@atomicpineapple: You folks are right about the rebranding. It was an attempt to control the demographic. EB was aimed at an "older" clientele...not that it really mattered. The stores were identical. As someone who worked for the company at the time of the merger (and a good bit afterwards), I can tell you that is wasn't handled very well over here in the U.S. either.

At one point, there was a nearby mall with four locations in it. That building had two Gamestop stores, one EB and one EBX...which basically was what Gamestop/EB has become now: It sold games, of course, but also a bunch of novelties and toys.

The store I worked at, a Gamestop set in a strip mall type location, was across the damn street from the mall. That was five locations less than a quarter mile from one another! We basically all showed up to work every day wondering which one of us was going to close first. Not fun times, obviously.

Xbox games still look pretty good, of course relatively speaking.
Actually feeling a bit nostalgic over that era of gaming now.

The one thing that makes Burnout Paradise my preferred Burnout game is the free roam. Other than that, Burnout 3 is where it's goddamn at.

I wish modern console games were 60fps. Very pleasant to watch.

Hell Yes! I always hoped they'd bring this series back some day.

Oof, that game needs less Vallejo-inspired outfits.

And, uh, Starship Troopers-inspired monster maws?

This seems to not be that great of a game.

I never noticed just how much the menus cribbed off of DMC1.

I loved this game to death. I played through the Xbox version like 6 times and I think I could clear the game in around 6 hours. When I bought my PS3 around 2007, the first game I got was Ninja Gaiden Sigma.

I personally never found this game too difficult. I think one of the keys to this game is you have to be aggressive. You either have to be on the offense or actively move, get up close to the enemies, dodge, block, wall jump, wall run, or roll out of the way. From the few bits I saw of other people playing this game years and years ago, it just seemed like they weren't playing it as fast as they should have.

There were tidbits in this video that featured some of the music, but it is worth linking this song at least. The second Alma fight is perhaps my favorite encounter in the game, and I always liked this theme:

If you want some help beating Alma, check out Gamespot's Boss of Bosses, featuring Matthew Rorie and edited and produced by none other than Vinny Caravella - circa 2006.

http://www.gamespot.com/videos/boss-of-bosses-07-06-06/2300-6153564/