Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword Unlockables III (DS)

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is an action adventure, hack and slash video game developed by Team Ninja and published by Tecmo and Ubisoft exclusively for the Nintendo DS handheld platform. The game follows the adventures of the Dragon Ninja, Ryu Hayabusa, who is the main character in all the titles in the Ninja Gaiden franchise. Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is the first video game developed for a portable console in the series created by Team Ninja. The action adventure title features a third person view on the environment around Ryu, with 3D character models but pre-rendered backgrounds, a pseudo-3D manner.

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is rather interesting as you hold the Nintendo DS sideways when you want to play it, similar to Hotel Dusk: 215 or Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day. The left screen of the DS shows the area map, while the right one displays the main gameplay. This configuration can be switched if you use the left or the right hand to play.

The story of the Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is set six months after the events in the Ninja Gaiden title made for the original Xbox and ported afterwards to the PlayStation 3. Ryu Hayabusa has now rebuilt the village of his clan but after a friend of his, Momiji, is kidnapped by the mysterious Black Spider Ninja Clan, he is forced to find her. During his epic journey, he uncovers the secrets behind the mysterious Dark Dragonstones and how they relate to the Dragon Lineage.

The game received mainly positive reviews from industry critics, achieving an average of 84 points out of a maximum of 100. Reviewers praised the fact that the game had very good visuals and intuitive controls, but didn't really like the fact that it was rather short in length, around six to seven hours and lacked the famous difficulty of previous titles in the Ninja Gaiden series.

UNLOCKABLES

Master Ninja difficulty

Successfully complete the game under the Hard (Head Ninja) difficulty setting. 

Birthday greeting

Set the system date to your birthday. When the game is started, you will hear a special "Happy Birthday" greeting when you tap the option to start the game.

Here's a video of the game: