Interview with Ninja Gaiden Tournament finalist Darren Forman

[Royta]

https://stinger-magazine.com/interviews ... en-forman/

Most of you probably followed this tournament pretty actively when it happened, but I still felt it might be cool to share here too. Managed to get one of the finalists to answer some questions regarding the event, how it all went etc. Still feel the whole idea of the tournament was super cool.

Enfin, enjoy :)

[JTB123]

Looking forward to giving this a read :)

Very good read, shame he doesn't seem to have kept up with the scene since. Do you happen to know what score at the time was considered fake? I can't remember how scores were submitted back then but in theory it would be feasible to work out if the score was legit.

Really cool to see him draw comparisons between NG and Doom/Eternal as well, in many ways I think the new Doom titles are the closest we have to NG style action nowadays.

[Royta]

Glad you enjoyed it! The score of the 'hacked' player was "26,819,978" by player Ryan Martoni (Taibhse). Which is pretty bonkers I think even by today's standards if my knowledge is up to snuff (warning: it isn't haha).

[JTB123]

Is that for HP1 or the regular game? For the normal game that does seem like it'd be way too high.

[Royta]

That's for HP1 if I'm correct. Note that the player in question with that score squashed all scores at the time despite having only 56 hours played and "did it by accident". Which didn't add credability.

[Bigalski]

Thanks for posting this. I love reading the history of the game and veteran players. I came in the game way to late for the MNT but still fortunate to be a part of the community over the years.

From what I can tell, Taibhse has a glitched score. That was actually MNT 1, not HP1. MNT1 was the normal playthrough of the game, MNT2 was HP1, and MNT3 was HP2. I have a breakdown of SnapDragon's run from back in the day and maybe it would be a little different based on what we know from today but I seriously doubt it'd be 5+ million. At the time on the MNT, you could go back and get full bonuses for fighting encounters in previous chapters but they took that out after a short while from I understand. That's the reason Captain Tuttle only had 15+ million instead of one of the top scores like he would be known for later on. Here's SnapDragon's chapter scores which matches is final MNT score.

For reference, here are the Karma totals I had at the end of each chapter:
Ch1 - 421,823 (includes time bonus, of course)
Ch2 - 840,403 (includes time & kill bonus; it's hard to kill all 12 mages AND get the time limit on the boss...)
Ch3 - 1,457,673 (includes time bonus)
Ch4 - 2,067,609 (includes time bonus, although you can probably get around the same score without going for time...)
Ch5 - 3,060,381 (from here on in, no more time bonuses! ...except one)
Ch6 - 4,362,333 (this is the chapter I figured out how the Kill bonus worked, so my score up to here may be somewhat suboptimal)
Ch7 - 5,659,533 (note that I do NOT kill the 60-Zombie challenge until Ch15; I milk it for combo/kill points)
Ch8 - 6,399,576
Ch9 - 7,851,897 (includes the between-chapters encounter)
Ch10 - 9,498,884 (includes the time bonus, since you can't get back to Tauron! Also includes the encounter with the first two fish at the beginning of Ch11)
Ch11 - 10,994,977 (184k on the boss)
Ch12 - 12,976,991 (194k, 7 seconds, on the boss. Note that I milk the 60-Red Fiend challenge and the 60-Fiend challenge just outside Tauron until Ch15)
Ch13 - 14,737,540 (193.3k, 5 seconds, on the boss. Note that I didn't bother with the 60-Fiend challenge from Tauron's portal until Ch15)
Ch14 - 16,916,765 (193k, 5 seconds, on the boss. Includes the encounter with two Fire Fiends in the lava in Ch15)
Ch15 up to Fiend realm - 19,493,485
Ch15 after Fiend realm - 20,125,225
Ch15 after bosses - 20,863,865
Ch16 - 21,261,405! Woohoo!

IberiansNGRealm didn't exist when they held the MNT and most of the players back in the day were going to the Tecmo forums. I think NinjaFortress was before IW's and while it was good, it wasn't at the level of IW's.



Ninja Gaiden Master Ninja Tournament Tokyo finals

Here's a link to the final Xbox Live leaderbords

Bigalski, PSaren, Fejer, Weibull760 wearing/holding Weibull's prizes he won for the NG Master Ninja Tournament.

[Murphy's Ghost]

Really cool that you were able to interview him.

Sort of too bad they didn't keep up with this level of fan / community engagement for the series. Even just maintaining the leaderboards - I haven't checked in years but I'm assuming the NG2 leaderboard is still just a bunch of 999999999's?

[MasonVank]

I joined the NGB community very late, so I never had a chance to meet the veterans of this game. I wish I joined the NGB scene early enough that I can meet some of the old players.

Ch2 - 840,403 (includes time & kill bonus; it's hard to kill all 12 mages AND get the time limit on the boss...)
Ch3 - 1,457,673 (includes time bonus)
Ch4 - 2,067,609 (includes time bonus, although you can probably get around the same score without going for time...)
Ch5 - 3,060,381 (from here on in, no more time bonuses! ...except one)
Ch6 - 4,362,333 (this is the chapter I figured out how the Kill bonus worked, so my score up to here may be somewhat suboptimal)
Ch7 - 5,659,533 (note that I do NOT kill the 60-Zombie challenge until Ch15; I milk it for combo/kill points)
Ch8 - 6,399,576
Ch9 - 7,851,897 (includes the between-chapters encounter)
Ch10 - 9,498,884 (includes the time bonus, since you can't get back to Tauron! Also includes the encounter with the first two fish at the beginning of Ch11)
Ch11 - 10,994,977 (184k on the boss)
Ch12 - 12,976,991 (194k, 7 seconds, on the boss. Note that I milk the 60-Red Fiend challenge and the 60-Fiend challenge just outside Tauron until Ch15)
Ch13 - 14,737,540 (193.3k, 5 seconds, on the boss. Note that I didn't bother with the 60-Fiend challenge from Tauron's portal until Ch15)
Ch14 - 16,916,765 (193k, 5 seconds, on the boss. Includes the encounter with two Fire Fiends in the lava in Ch15)
Ch15 up to Fiend realm - 19,493,485
Ch15 after Fiend realm - 20,125,225
Ch15 after bosses - 20,863,865
Ch16 - 21,261,405! Woohoo![/i]

What difficulty are these scores for?

[Massaca]

I haven't checked in years but I'm assuming the NG2 leaderboard is still just a bunch of 999999999's?

It doesn't matter really, NG2 scoring is so broken you can get a 'legit' (>_>) 99m.

[Bigalski]

I joined the NGB community very late, so I never had a chance to meet the veterans of this game. I wish I joined the NGB scene early enough that I can meet some of the old players.

Ch2 - 840,403 (includes time & kill bonus; it's hard to kill all 12 mages AND get the time limit on the boss...)
Ch3 - 1,457,673 (includes time bonus)
Ch4 - 2,067,609 (includes time bonus, although you can probably get around the same score without going for time...)
Ch5 - 3,060,381 (from here on in, no more time bonuses! ...except one)
Ch6 - 4,362,333 (this is the chapter I figured out how the Kill bonus worked, so my score up to here may be somewhat suboptimal)
Ch7 - 5,659,533 (note that I do NOT kill the 60-Zombie challenge until Ch15; I milk it for combo/kill points)
Ch8 - 6,399,576
Ch9 - 7,851,897 (includes the between-chapters encounter)
Ch10 - 9,498,884 (includes the time bonus, since you can't get back to Tauron! Also includes the encounter with the first two fish at the beginning of Ch11)
Ch11 - 10,994,977 (184k on the boss)
Ch12 - 12,976,991 (194k, 7 seconds, on the boss. Note that I milk the 60-Red Fiend challenge and the 60-Fiend challenge just outside Tauron until Ch15)
Ch13 - 14,737,540 (193.3k, 5 seconds, on the boss. Note that I didn't bother with the 60-Fiend challenge from Tauron's portal until Ch15)
Ch14 - 16,916,765 (193k, 5 seconds, on the boss. Includes the encounter with two Fire Fiends in the lava in Ch15)
Ch15 up to Fiend realm - 19,493,485
Ch15 after Fiend realm - 20,125,225
Ch15 after bosses - 20,863,865
Ch16 - 21,261,405! Woohoo![/i]

What difficulty are these scores for?

The Master Ninja Tournament 1 was on Normal difficulty. Notice he says the "60 Fiend Challenge". In fact, all the MNT's was set to Normal but had different enemies. MNT 2 had the Hard difficulty enemies and MNT 3 was Eternal Legend of NGB but it did have an End of Chapter type score at the end.

I haven't checked in years but I'm assuming the NG2 leaderboard is still just a bunch of 999999999's?

It doesn't matter really, NG2 scoring is so broken you can get a 'legit' (>_>) 99m.

Has anybody even done that though? Only one person broke 90 million but not close to the maxed out 99,999,999 score IIRC. I wonder if anybody has the patience to do it or is that 90 million score pushing the limits? I know I'm not going to try and find out! LOL

[Massaca]

^ Probably not, no. It's just like well how cheap do you want to be and how long do you want to spend on it cause we're all doing these stupid 1-hit KG UTs 13 times per enemy, well you can get 1 hit DS UTs on Fish and if you sit there for 10 hours abusing that then there ya go. It's just so stupid though.

Also Pinnacle with the highest on our leaderboard at 92m got 3.1m in Ch.01. I'm pretty sure Reim got 5.x mill when he ran Ch.01 but I couldn't find it to confirm. It's a real shame they screwed it up so bad. Even just making it stop giving points after the first UT per enemy would have been a million times better.

[weibull760]

Man, those were the good old days for sure. MNT3 is what really got me into this game and going for score. Saryah and I use to talk quite a bit about strategies back then.

Thank for sharing guys!

[Murphy's Ghost]

It's a real shame they screwed it up so bad. Even just making it stop giving points after the first UT per enemy would have been a million times better.

I still think they should've gone all in with Itagaki's gambling theory and just added green essence to the campaign. It would've driven people mad but it would make top scoring runs exciting as hell.