Ninja Gaiden II vs. Ninja Gaiden NES

It's probably not out of line to say that the Ninja Gaiden series, as gamers know it now on the Xbox platform, is kind of light on story. Even if you're the type to reflexively skip cut-scenes by mashing the Start button every time the screen goes black -- your hands and teeth clenched from having to repeat the last boss battle 38 times -- the plot beneath the games' smooth action isn't the most enthralling or easiest-to-follow stuff in the gaming world.

Relentless action and difficulty are understandable when you have Tecmo's Team Ninja, where head designer Tomonobu Itagaki wants to create the best action game ever made, but it's also odd when you consider that the main reason for Ninja Gaiden's worldwide popularity is that the now 20-year-old NES trilogy did emphasize story, arguably pioneering the use of cinematic-style cut-scenes in Japanese console games, and it even got the young gamers playing those games to actually care about what happened...until their 38th attempt to get past a gauntlet of hyperintelligent falcons.