Ninja Gaiden: Ninja Gaiden - Death Counter

This hack repurposes the life counter in Ninja Gaiden into a death counter. You begin the game with zero deaths, and each time you die the counter increases by 1 (up to 99). This effectively gives you infinite lives but more than just a simple cheat code, it also modifies the in-game UI to help players keep track of deaths and encourage trying to have as few deaths as possible. It also makes a few necessary design changes to make the game a bit more palatable.

[Main Changes]
- Repurposes the lives counter as a death counter.
- Death counter starts at 0.
- Dying increases the counter.
- Added a little skull icon to the UI to indicate deaths instead of lives.
- At 100 deaths the counter loops back to 99 to prevent a Game Over caused by an overflow.

[Additional Changes]
- Dying during the final boss rush sends Ryu back to 6-3 instead of 6-1.
- Birds do minimum damage to Ryu (1) instead of "final boss" damage (3).

[Name]
"Ninja Gaiden - Death Counter.ips" v1.0

[Author]
Binarynova

[Date]
March 18, 2022

[Description]
This hack repurposes the life counter in Ninja Gaiden into a death counter. You begin the game with zero deaths, and each time you die the counter increases by 1 (up to 99). This effectively gives you infinite lives but more than just a simple cheat code, it also modifies the in-game UI to help players keep track of deaths and encourage trying to have as few deaths as possible. It also makes a few necessary design changes to make the game a bit more palatable.

[Installation]
Use your favorite IPS patcher to apply this patch to the US version of the game.

[Main Changes]
- Repurposes the lives counter as a death counter.
- Death counter starts at 0.
- Dying increases the counter.
- Added a little skull icon to the UI to indicate deaths instead of lives.
- At 100 deaths the counter loops back to 99 to prevent a Game Over caused by an overflow.

[Additional Changes]
- Dying during the final boss rush sends Ryu back to 6-3 instead of 6-1.
- Birds do minimum damage to Ryu (1) instead of "final boss" damage (3).


Database match: Ninja Gaiden (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210216-231042)
File SHA-1: CA513F841D75EFEB33BB8099FB02BEEB39F6BB9C
File CRC32: 11F953F6
ROM SHA-1: 15F245161179AB1959B7DC20E82ADD024D23AA3D
ROM CRC32: 7C4A72D8