atomicpoet

Before Tetris took over arcades and consoles, it was just a computer game.

Not even a Western one. It started on a Soviet mainframe.

What most people don’t know is that its first home versions were for DOS. The very first DOS port came out in 1986, made by Vadim Gerasimov—a Russian developer who adapted Alexey Pajitnov’s original concept for IBM PCs.

Then came the flood. Lots of other DOS ports followed, some barely licensed, others “licensed” in the Cold War handshake sense.

But the first official DOS release made specifically for the West? That was Spectrum Holobyte’s version in 1988. It beat the NES. It beat the arcade version.

And yes—this version was still based on Gerasimov’s DOS design.

Now, I don’t think it’s the best home version of Tetris. But it’s easily the strangest—and maybe the most interesting.

For starters, Spectrum Holobyte leaned hard into the Cold War theming. One of their print ads straight-up asked: “What are the Three Greatest Things to Come Out of the U.S.S.R.?” The answer? The Bolshoi ballet. Stolichnaya vodka. And Tetris. That was the pitch. The ad featured dancers in mid-leap, a frosty bottle of Stoli on ice, and a red game box with Cyrillic text and Saint Basil’s Cathedral slapped right on the cover. It was less a software ad than a cultural export campaign—equal parts kitsch, nationalism, and Cold War tourism. You didn’t just buy a puzzle game. You bought a Russian moment.

Inside the game, every screen drips with Soviet vibes: fishing vessels, space cosmonauts, Russian folk music, even a reference to the “Miracle on Ice.” The high score list? Labeled “Top Ten Comrades.” That kind of commitment.

This was deliberate. Spectrum Holobyte’s CEO literally asked the devs to preserve the “Soviet spirit,” not tone it down. He wanted Americans to want to buy a Russian product. Which, in 1988, was a pretty wild ask.

There was also a plane that flew across the title screen—an easter egg referencing Mathias Rust’s illegal flight into Red Square, which had humiliated the Soviet military the year before. Elorg, the Soviet licensing agency, didn’t love that. It got patched out. Along with a bunch of other Cold War touches. Fighter jets? Gone. Submarines? Replaced with a man on a horse.

Pajitnov himself insisted that Tetris be “a peaceful game heralding a new era in superpower relations.” Apparently, that meant fewer tanks.

Technically, this version of Tetris is barebones—but in a foundational kind of way. It’s missing a lot of what we now take for granted. There’s no hold piece. No wall kicks. No 180° rotation. Some versions don’t even give you bonus points for clearing four lines. Which, let’s be honest, kind of defeats the point of a Tetris.

Instead, scoring is mostly about how fast you drop pieces and whether you survive. That’s it. There is a hard drop, though. And you can set the starting height and level. Which was a nice touch.

Rotation is basic. Just clockwise and counterclockwise. No fancy adjustments. If a piece doesn’t fit, it just doesn’t. There’s no wall-kick logic to save you. And once a piece touches down? It locks immediately.

No second chances. No little delay. You either commit or you stack badly and panic.

Even visually, it’s oddly compelling. Only CGA and EGA are supported—VGA was still too new—but the artwork is stylized in a way that sticks with you. The backgrounds are moody and distinct. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be flashy. It feels… ideological.

I know the Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST versions had more colors. And some fancier music. But the DOS version has character. It’s a cultural time capsule disguised as a puzzle game.

Also worth noting: this version sold like crazy. Over 100,000 units in its first year. The average player? Mid-30s, probably an engineer or middle manager. Half were women—which, for a PC game in the ’80s, is almost unheard of.

And if you’re running this today? You’ll probably get a divide overflow error. You’ll need a patch just to launch it.

This wasn’t just a game. It was a diplomatic artifact. A licensing mess. A Cold War curiosity. A version of Tetris that, for all its simplicity, tells you more about 1988 than most history books.

Before Tetris took over arcades and consoles, it was just a computer game.

Not even a Western one. It started on a Soviet mainframe.

What most people don’t know is that its first home versions were for DOS. The very first DOS port came out in 1986, made by Vadim Gerasimov—a Russian developer who adapted Alexey Pajitnov’s original concept for IBM PCs.

Then came the flood. Lots of other DOS ports followed, some barely licensed, others “licensed” in the Cold War handshake sense.

But the first official DOS release made specifically for the West? That was Spectrum Holobyte’s version in 1988. It beat the NES. It beat the arcade version.

And yes—this version was still based on Gerasimov’s DOS design.

Now, I don’t think it’s the best home version of Tetris. But it’s easily the strangest—and maybe the most interesting.

For starters, Spectrum Holobyte leaned hard into the Cold War theming. One of their print ads straight-up asked: “What are the Three Greatest Things to Come Out of the U.S.S.R.?” The answer? The Bolshoi ballet. Stolichnaya vodka. And Tetris. That was the pitch. The ad featured dancers in mid-leap, a frosty bottle of Stoli on ice, and a red game box with Cyrillic text and Saint Basil’s Cathedral slapped right on the cover. It was less a software ad than a cultural export campaign—equal parts kitsch, nationalism, and Cold War tourism. You didn’t just buy a puzzle game. You bought a Russian moment.

Inside the game, every screen drips with Soviet vibes: fishing vessels, space cosmonauts, Russian folk music, even a reference to the “Miracle on Ice.” The high score list? Labeled “Top Ten Comrades.” That kind of commitment.

This was deliberate. Spectrum Holobyte’s CEO literally asked the devs to preserve the “Soviet spirit,” not tone it down. He wanted Americans to want to buy a Russian product. Which, in 1988, was a pretty wild ask.

There was also a plane that flew across the title screen—an easter egg referencing Mathias Rust’s illegal flight into Red Square, which had humiliated the Soviet military the year before. Elorg, the Soviet licensing agency, didn’t love that. It got patched out. Along with a bunch of other Cold War touches. Fighter jets? Gone. Submarines? Replaced with a man on a horse.

Pajitnov himself insisted that Tetris be “a peaceful game heralding a new era in superpower relations.” Apparently, that meant fewer tanks.

Technically, this version of Tetris is barebones—but in a foundational kind of way. It’s missing a lot of what we now take for granted. There’s no hold piece. No wall kicks. No 180° rotation. Some versions don’t even give you bonus points for clearing four lines. Which, let’s be honest, kind of defeats the point of a Tetris.

Instead, scoring is mostly about how fast you drop pieces and whether you survive. That’s it. There is a hard drop, though. And you can set the starting height and level. Which was a nice touch.

Rotation is basic. Just clockwise and counterclockwise. No fancy adjustments. If a piece doesn’t fit, it just doesn’t. There’s no wall-kick logic to save you. And once a piece touches down? It locks immediately.

No second chances. No little delay. You either commit or you stack badly and panic.

Even visually, it’s oddly compelling. Only CGA and EGA are supported—VGA was still too new—but the artwork is stylized in a way that sticks with you. The backgrounds are moody and distinct. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be flashy. It feels… ideological.

I know the Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST versions had more colors. And some fancier music. But the DOS version has character. It’s a cultural time capsule disguised as a puzzle game.

Also worth noting: this version sold like crazy. Over 100,000 units in its first year. The average player? Mid-30s, probably an engineer or middle manager. Half were women—which, for a PC game in the ’80s, is almost unheard of.

And if you’re running this today? You’ll probably get a divide overflow error. You’ll need a patch just to launch it.

This wasn’t just a game. It was a diplomatic artifact. A licensing mess. A Cold War curiosity. A version of Tetris that, for all its simplicity, tells you more about 1988 than most history books.

Before Tetris took over arcades and consoles, it was just a computer game.

Not even a Western one. It started on a Soviet mainframe.

What most people don’t know is that its first home versions were for DOS. The very first DOS port came out in 1986, made by Vadim Gerasimov—a Russian developer who adapted Alexey Pajitnov’s original concept for IBM PCs.

Then came the flood. Lots of other DOS ports followed, some barely licensed, others “licensed” in the Cold War handshake sense.

But the first official DOS release made specifically for the West? That was Spectrum Holobyte’s version in 1988. It beat the NES. It beat the arcade version.

And yes—this version was still based on Gerasimov’s DOS design.

Now, I don’t think it’s the best home version of Tetris. But it’s easily the strangest—and maybe the most interesting.

For starters, Spectrum Holobyte leaned hard into the Cold War theming. One of their print ads straight-up asked: “What are the Three Greatest Things to Come Out of the U.S.S.R.?” The answer? The Bolshoi ballet. Stolichnaya vodka. And Tetris. That was the pitch. The ad featured dancers in mid-leap, a frosty bottle of Stoli on ice, and a red game box with Cyrillic text and Saint Basil’s Cathedral slapped right on the cover. It was less a software ad than a cultural export campaign—equal parts kitsch, nationalism, and Cold War tourism. You didn’t just buy a puzzle game. You bought a Russian moment.

Inside the game, every screen drips with Soviet vibes: fishing vessels, space cosmonauts, Russian folk music, even a reference to the “Miracle on Ice.” The high score list? Labeled “Top Ten Comrades.” That kind of commitment.

This was deliberate. Spectrum Holobyte’s CEO literally asked the devs to preserve the “Soviet spirit,” not tone it down. He wanted Americans to want to buy a Russian product. Which, in 1988, was a pretty wild ask.

There was also a plane that flew across the title screen—an easter egg referencing Mathias Rust’s illegal flight into Red Square, which had humiliated the Soviet military the year before. Elorg, the Soviet licensing agency, didn’t love that. It got patched out. Along with a bunch of other Cold War touches. Fighter jets? Gone. Submarines? Replaced with a man on a horse.

Pajitnov himself insisted that Tetris be “a peaceful game heralding a new era in superpower relations.” Apparently, that meant fewer tanks.

Technically, this version of Tetris is barebones—but in a foundational kind of way. It’s missing a lot of what we now take for granted. There’s no hold piece. No wall kicks. No 180° rotation. Some versions don’t even give you bonus points for clearing four lines. Which, let’s be honest, kind of defeats the point of a Tetris.

Instead, scoring is mostly about how fast you drop pieces and whether you survive. That’s it. There is a hard drop, though. And you can set the starting height and level. Which was a nice touch.

Rotation is basic. Just clockwise and counterclockwise. No fancy adjustments. If a piece doesn’t fit, it just doesn’t. There’s no wall-kick logic to save you. And once a piece touches down? It locks immediately.

No second chances. No little delay. You either commit or you stack badly and panic.

Even visually, it’s oddly compelling. Only CGA and EGA are supported—VGA was still too new—but the artwork is stylized in a way that sticks with you. The backgrounds are moody and distinct. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be flashy. It feels… ideological.

I know the Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST versions had more colors. And some fancier music. But the DOS version has character. It’s a cultural time capsule disguised as a puzzle game.

Also worth noting: this version sold like crazy. Over 100,000 units in its first year. The average player? Mid-30s, probably an engineer or middle manager. Half were women—which, for a PC game in the ’80s, is almost unheard of.

And if you’re running this today? You’ll probably get a divide overflow error. You’ll need a patch just to launch it.

This wasn’t just a game. It was a diplomatic artifact. A licensing mess. A Cold War curiosity. A version of Tetris that, for all its simplicity, tells you more about 1988 than most history books.

I love Operation Thunderstorm.

This game did something that almost no other game does. It kept me playing for an entire day.

No alt-tabbing. No checking my phone. Just me, glued to the screen. And I actually beat it. Which is saying something, because I own thousands of games and rarely finish any of them. But this one? I couldn’t stop.

Not because it’s polished. Not because it’s some hidden masterpiece. But because it’s the most bizarrely satisfying budget WWII shooter I’ve ever played.

And I mean budget. This game came out in 2008, right when WWII shooters were collapsing under their own weight. Everyone assumed it was just another Call of Duty clone. But Operation Thunderstorm isn’t that.

What it actually is… is Polish Wolfenstein.

Made by City Interactive—now CI Games—a company that was known, back then, for shoveling out low-cost shooters by the dozen. In fact, this game was released during a very specific and weird moment in their history.

In 2007, City Interactive went public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. And in 2008—the same year this game came out—they announced they were done with “budget-range operations.” They were rebranding. Shifting away from quantity toward quality. Operation Thunderstorm was the last gasp of their old model.

So what you’re playing here isn’t just a weird shooter. It’s a fossil. A transitional relic. The final entry in a dying era before City Interactive pivoted to big-boy games like Sniper: Ghost Warrior and Lords of the Fallen.

And you can feel it.

The game was developed with a team of 111 people. It used LithTech Jupiter EX—the same engine as F.E.A.R. Which is hilariously overpowered for what they made. But it gives the whole thing a crunchy, snappy, almost haunted-house quality that’s impossible to fake.

You play as British MI6 agent Jan Mortyr—practically the Polish B.J. Blazcowicz. He stars in quite a few FPS games—he was an established brand in Poland. Over there, this was Mortyr 4: Operation Thunderstorm.

But since nobody outside Poland had any clue what Mortyr was, we just got stuck with the most generic name in video game history. Operation Thunderstorm.

Which has a similar name to a Capcom arcade shmup, a Wii helicopter shooter, several real-world military operations, and at least one anti-logging initiative. Good luck Googling it.

Anyway, let’s talk about the actual game.

You’re sent behind enemy lines in 1942 to assassinate Goebbels, Göring, and Himmler. Yes, really, that’s the plot.

You just straight-up kill Nazi high command. No moral gray area. No pretense of realism. No problem. Never mind that these people died years later in real life. Operation Thunderstorm doesn’t care. It’s historical fan fiction. And it’s amazing.

Unless you’re playing the German version, where all the names are removed, the swastikas are replaced with “evil symbols,” and the blood is turned off permanently. The German version literally censors its own premise. It becomes a weird mission about killing… unnamed bureaucrats. It’s surreal.

But the actual gameplay? Surprisingly fun.

It’s a corridor shooter. Pure and simple. You walk forward. You shoot Nazis. You move to the next room. You peek around corners. You lean left and right. It’s Wolfenstein with some extra jank. But there’s one mechanic that makes it stand out: blind fire.

You crouch behind cover, and instead of popping up, you can raise your arm just high enough to fire over a box—guided by a little arrow icon. It’s crude. It’s clunky. But it works. And it gives the game a weird, accidental layer of tactics.

Then there’s the Karabiner 98k.

This rifle is absurd. You can shoot a guy in the leg and he dies instantly. Arm shots? Instant ragdoll. It’s one of the most overpowered rifles I’ve ever used in a game. And I love it. Because the ragdoll physics are completely unhinged.

Shoot a Nazi and watch him cartwheel off a balcony. Toss a grenade and send three enemies bouncing like crash test dummies. The game is full of “odd death positions” and physics bugs so wild they start to feel intentional.

And that’s the point. The game’s flaws are what make it good.

You get a broken knife that does nothing. You get a dumb mini-map that’s never needed. You get canned voice lines delivered with the emotional range of a voicemail. And yet—somehow—all of it clicks.

I mean, this game has a “see your own foot” feature. You look down, and there’s your left leg. Why? No reason. It’s just there. One foot. Floating. Always watching.

The campaign’s short. Maybe four hours if you take your time. Maybe two and a half if you sprint through.

And yet, I played it twice. Once on Steam Deck. Once on my TV with a Steam Controller. And shockingly? It’s incredible with a controller.

The gyro aiming on Deck is perfect. You line up shots from across the room and drop enemies before they even react. It was never designed for this kind of control scheme, but it accidentally became one of the best Steam Deck shooters I’ve played.

There’s multiplayer, technically. Deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag. All recycled single-player maps. No one plays it. No one should. It’s clearly a checkbox feature—something slapped on to tick off “multiplayer” on the back of the box.

Now, at launch? Critics hated this game. We’re talking 40–50% scores. Called it cramped. Monotonous. Ugly. Said it looked like a shooter from the ‘90s. Said the AI was dumb. Said the levels were boring.

But the critics were definitely wrong.

Because by 2025, Operation Thunderstorm has clawed its way back. It now holds a “Mostly Positive” rating on Steam. Over 300 reviews. 77% positive. It’s become a cult hit.

People buy it for a dollar during sales and walk away surprised. Not because it’s refined—but because it’s fun.

And not in the way the developers intended.

It’s fun because it’s broken. Because the physics are hilarious. Because the design is dumb in just the right way.

This isn’t “so bad it’s good.” It’s “so weird it’s great.”

A weird little game from a weird little moment in Eastern European game development history. A snapshot of a studio about to evolve. A broken, budget shooter that overshot its limits and became something memorable by accident.

Not many games can say that.

So yeah, I love Operation Thunderstorm. Not despite the mess. Because of it.

I love Operation Thunderstorm.

This game did something that almost no other game does. It kept me playing for an entire day.

No alt-tabbing. No checking my phone. Just me, glued to the screen. And I actually beat it. Which is saying something, because I own thousands of games and rarely finish any of them. But this one? I couldn’t stop.

Not because it’s polished. Not because it’s some hidden masterpiece. But because it’s the most bizarrely satisfying budget WWII shooter I’ve ever played.

And I mean budget. This game came out in 2008, right when WWII shooters were collapsing under their own weight. Everyone assumed it was just another Call of Duty clone. But Operation Thunderstorm isn’t that.

What it actually is… is Polish Wolfenstein.

Made by City Interactive—now CI Games—a company that was known, back then, for shoveling out low-cost shooters by the dozen. In fact, this game was released during a very specific and weird moment in their history.

In 2007, City Interactive went public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. And in 2008—the same year this game came out—they announced they were done with “budget-range operations.” They were rebranding. Shifting away from quantity toward quality. Operation Thunderstorm was the last gasp of their old model.

So what you’re playing here isn’t just a weird shooter. It’s a fossil. A transitional relic. The final entry in a dying era before City Interactive pivoted to big-boy games like Sniper: Ghost Warrior and Lords of the Fallen.

And you can feel it.

The game was developed with a team of 111 people. It used LithTech Jupiter EX—the same engine as F.E.A.R. Which is hilariously overpowered for what they made. But it gives the whole thing a crunchy, snappy, almost haunted-house quality that’s impossible to fake.

You play as British MI6 agent Jan Mortyr—practically the Polish B.J. Blazcowicz. He stars in quite a few FPS games—he was an established brand in Poland. Over there, this was Mortyr 4: Operation Thunderstorm.

But since nobody outside Poland had any clue what Mortyr was, we just got stuck with the most generic name in video game history. Operation Thunderstorm.

Which has a similar name to a Capcom arcade shmup, a Wii helicopter shooter, several real-world military operations, and at least one anti-logging initiative. Good luck Googling it.

Anyway, let’s talk about the actual game.

You’re sent behind enemy lines in 1942 to assassinate Goebbels, Göring, and Himmler. Yes, really, that’s the plot.

You just straight-up kill Nazi high command. No moral gray area. No pretense of realism. No problem. Never mind that these people died years later in real life. Operation Thunderstorm doesn’t care. It’s historical fan fiction. And it’s amazing.

Unless you’re playing the German version, where all the names are removed, the swastikas are replaced with “evil symbols,” and the blood is turned off permanently. The German version literally censors its own premise. It becomes a weird mission about killing… unnamed bureaucrats. It’s surreal.

But the actual gameplay? Surprisingly fun.

It’s a corridor shooter. Pure and simple. You walk forward. You shoot Nazis. You move to the next room. You peek around corners. You lean left and right. It’s Wolfenstein with some extra jank. But there’s one mechanic that makes it stand out: blind fire.

You crouch behind cover, and instead of popping up, you can raise your arm just high enough to fire over a box—guided by a little arrow icon. It’s crude. It’s clunky. But it works. And it gives the game a weird, accidental layer of tactics.

Then there’s the Karabiner 98k.

This rifle is absurd. You can shoot a guy in the leg and he dies instantly. Arm shots? Instant ragdoll. It’s one of the most overpowered rifles I’ve ever used in a game. And I love it. Because the ragdoll physics are completely unhinged.

Shoot a Nazi and watch him cartwheel off a balcony. Toss a grenade and send three enemies bouncing like crash test dummies. The game is full of “odd death positions” and physics bugs so wild they start to feel intentional.

And that’s the point. The game’s flaws are what make it good.

You get a broken knife that does nothing. You get a dumb mini-map that’s never needed. You get canned voice lines delivered with the emotional range of a voicemail. And yet—somehow—all of it clicks.

I mean, this game has a “see your own foot” feature. You look down, and there’s your left leg. Why? No reason. It’s just there. One foot. Floating. Always watching.

The campaign’s short. Maybe four hours if you take your time. Maybe two and a half if you sprint through.

And yet, I played it twice. Once on Steam Deck. Once on my TV with a Steam Controller. And shockingly? It’s incredible with a controller.

The gyro aiming on Deck is perfect. You line up shots from across the room and drop enemies before they even react. It was never designed for this kind of control scheme, but it accidentally became one of the best Steam Deck shooters I’ve played.

There’s multiplayer, technically. Deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag. All recycled single-player maps. No one plays it. No one should. It’s clearly a checkbox feature—something slapped on to tick off “multiplayer” on the back of the box.

Now, at launch? Critics hated this game. We’re talking 40–50% scores. Called it cramped. Monotonous. Ugly. Said it looked like a shooter from the ‘90s. Said the AI was dumb. Said the levels were boring.

But the critics were definitely wrong.

Because by 2025, Operation Thunderstorm has clawed its way back. It now holds a “Mostly Positive” rating on Steam. Over 300 reviews. 77% positive. It’s become a cult hit.

People buy it for a dollar during sales and walk away surprised. Not because it’s refined—but because it’s fun.

And not in the way the developers intended.

It’s fun because it’s broken. Because the physics are hilarious. Because the design is dumb in just the right way.

This isn’t “so bad it’s good.” It’s “so weird it’s great.”

A weird little game from a weird little moment in Eastern European game development history. A snapshot of a studio about to evolve. A broken, budget shooter that overshot its limits and became something memorable by accident.

Not many games can say that.

So yeah, I love Operation Thunderstorm. Not despite the mess. Because of it.

I love Operation Thunderstorm.

This game did something that almost no other game does. It kept me playing for an entire day.

No alt-tabbing. No checking my phone. Just me, glued to the screen. And I actually beat it. Which is saying something, because I own thousands of games and rarely finish any of them. But this one? I couldn’t stop.

Not because it’s polished. Not because it’s some hidden masterpiece. But because it’s the most bizarrely satisfying budget WWII shooter I’ve ever played.

And I mean budget. This game came out in 2008, right when WWII shooters were collapsing under their own weight. Everyone assumed it was just another Call of Duty clone. But Operation Thunderstorm isn’t that.

What it actually is… is Polish Wolfenstein.

Made by City Interactive—now CI Games—a company that was known, back then, for shoveling out low-cost shooters by the dozen. In fact, this game was released during a very specific and weird moment in their history.

In 2007, City Interactive went public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. And in 2008—the same year this game came out—they announced they were done with “budget-range operations.” They were rebranding. Shifting away from quantity toward quality. Operation Thunderstorm was the last gasp of their old model.

So what you’re playing here isn’t just a weird shooter. It’s a fossil. A transitional relic. The final entry in a dying era before City Interactive pivoted to big-boy games like Sniper: Ghost Warrior and Lords of the Fallen.

And you can feel it.

The game was developed with a team of 111 people. It used LithTech Jupiter EX—the same engine as F.E.A.R. Which is hilariously overpowered for what they made. But it gives the whole thing a crunchy, snappy, almost haunted-house quality that’s impossible to fake.

You play as British MI6 agent Jan Mortyr—practically the Polish B.J. Blazcowicz. He stars in quite a few FPS games—he was an established brand in Poland. Over there, this was Mortyr 4: Operation Thunderstorm.

But since nobody outside Poland had any clue what Mortyr was, we just got stuck with the most generic name in video game history. Operation Thunderstorm.

Which has a similar name to a Capcom arcade shmup, a Wii helicopter shooter, several real-world military operations, and at least one anti-logging initiative. Good luck Googling it.

Anyway, let’s talk about the actual game.

You’re sent behind enemy lines in 1942 to assassinate Goebbels, Göring, and Himmler. Yes, really, that’s the plot.

You just straight-up kill Nazi high command. No moral gray area. No pretense of realism. No problem. Never mind that these people died years later in real life. Operation Thunderstorm doesn’t care. It’s historical fan fiction. And it’s amazing.

Unless you’re playing the German version, where all the names are removed, the swastikas are replaced with “evil symbols,” and the blood is turned off permanently. The German version literally censors its own premise. It becomes a weird mission about killing… unnamed bureaucrats. It’s surreal.

But the actual gameplay? Surprisingly fun.

It’s a corridor shooter. Pure and simple. You walk forward. You shoot Nazis. You move to the next room. You peek around corners. You lean left and right. It’s Wolfenstein with some extra jank. But there’s one mechanic that makes it stand out: blind fire.

You crouch behind cover, and instead of popping up, you can raise your arm just high enough to fire over a box—guided by a little arrow icon. It’s crude. It’s clunky. But it works. And it gives the game a weird, accidental layer of tactics.

Then there’s the Karabiner 98k.

This rifle is absurd. You can shoot a guy in the leg and he dies instantly. Arm shots? Instant ragdoll. It’s one of the most overpowered rifles I’ve ever used in a game. And I love it. Because the ragdoll physics are completely unhinged.

Shoot a Nazi and watch him cartwheel off a balcony. Toss a grenade and send three enemies bouncing like crash test dummies. The game is full of “odd death positions” and physics bugs so wild they start to feel intentional.

And that’s the point. The game’s flaws are what make it good.

You get a broken knife that does nothing. You get a dumb mini-map that’s never needed. You get canned voice lines delivered with the emotional range of a voicemail. And yet—somehow—all of it clicks.

I mean, this game has a “see your own foot” feature. You look down, and there’s your left leg. Why? No reason. It’s just there. One foot. Floating. Always watching.

The campaign’s short. Maybe four hours if you take your time. Maybe two and a half if you sprint through.

And yet, I played it twice. Once on Steam Deck. Once on my TV with a Steam Controller. And shockingly? It’s incredible with a controller.

The gyro aiming on Deck is perfect. You line up shots from across the room and drop enemies before they even react. It was never designed for this kind of control scheme, but it accidentally became one of the best Steam Deck shooters I’ve played.

There’s multiplayer, technically. Deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag. All recycled single-player maps. No one plays it. No one should. It’s clearly a checkbox feature—something slapped on to tick off “multiplayer” on the back of the box.

Now, at launch? Critics hated this game. We’re talking 40–50% scores. Called it cramped. Monotonous. Ugly. Said it looked like a shooter from the ‘90s. Said the AI was dumb. Said the levels were boring.

But the critics were definitely wrong.

Because by 2025, Operation Thunderstorm has clawed its way back. It now holds a “Mostly Positive” rating on Steam. Over 300 reviews. 77% positive. It’s become a cult hit.

People buy it for a dollar during sales and walk away surprised. Not because it’s refined—but because it’s fun.

And not in the way the developers intended.

It’s fun because it’s broken. Because the physics are hilarious. Because the design is dumb in just the right way.

This isn’t “so bad it’s good.” It’s “so weird it’s great.”

A weird little game from a weird little moment in Eastern European game development history. A snapshot of a studio about to evolve. A broken, budget shooter that overshot its limits and became something memorable by accident.

Not many games can say that.

So yeah, I love Operation Thunderstorm. Not despite the mess. Because of it.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is, at the very least, ambitious.

Is it good? Debateable.

It suffers from what I like to call Poochie syndrome. If you don’t know what that is, it’s when a franchise tries so hard to be cool and edgy that it ends up alienating everyone. Poochie was a character on The Simpsons added to The Itchy & Scratchy Show to make it more “youth-oriented.” It backfired. Spectacularly.

This game is the Poochie of Ninja Gaiden.

You play as Yaiba Kamikaze—an undead ninja who got sliced in half by Ryu Hayabusa, then resurrected as a cyborg with a robot arm and unresolved anger issues. The story? He wants revenge. Also, zombies exist now.

So yeah. Not your typical Ninja Gaiden.

This isn’t a tight, serious action game like the NES classics or the 2004 reboot. This is a loud, cel-shaded beat-’em-up where you chain combos, dismember clown zombies, and occasionally say things like “BOOM, baby” while swinging from grappling hooks.

It’s ridiculous by design.

But weirdly, it’s not that far off from the original arcade Ninja Gaiden, which was more of a side-scrolling brawler than a precision platformer. In that sense, Yaiba feels like a spiritual detour—not a betrayal, just a case of missed execution.

And to say this game wasn’t received well is an understatement.

Critics hated it. Players hated it. Metacritic slapped it with a “generally unfavorable” rating. Polygon gave it a 3. The most common complaints? Repetitive gameplay, terrible camera, sloppy controls, and painfully unfunny writing. Fair.

But I’m going to make the case that Yaiba isn’t as bad as people say. It’s just weird. And weird games don’t always land, especially when they carry a legacy name.

Spark Unlimited handled the development. They weren’t exactly industry royalty. Team Ninja helped out. So did Keiji Inafune—yes, that Inafune, the guy behind Mighty No. 9. He designed Yaiba and pitched the whole zombie-cyborg-ninja concept. The idea was East-meets-West. Japanese combat with American humor. The problem is: it leaned too hard into the West part.

The visuals are the one thing that really works. The cel-shaded “living comic book” look still holds up. Blood flies in huge red arcs. Enemies explode into color-coded gore. Yaiba himself looks like a pissed-off character from a graphic novel you’d find in a Hot Topic clearance bin. I mean that as a compliment.

Unfortunately, once the game starts, the wheels start coming off.

Combat is fast but shallow. You get a sword, a cybernetic punch, and a few environmental executions. There’s a rage mode called Bloodlust that lets you tear through enemies, but it takes forever to charge and burns out too quickly. Enemies come in waves. Then more waves. Then more. It doesn’t evolve.

There’s an elemental system layered on top—some zombies explode, some zap, some poison. If you get two types near each other, you can cause secondary effects like electric tornadoes or poison crystallization. It sounds cool but plays like a checklist. The game doesn’t reward experimentation. It just wants you to solve the puzzle its way.

Boss fights are worse. Giant sponges. They kill you in three hits, and you fight them in arenas where the camera actively works against you.

Speaking of: the camera. It’s fixed. You can’t control it. It’s bad. It hides enemies behind geometry and cuts off parts of the screen during fights. No lock-on. No recentering. Just vibes.

Also, the platforming. There isn’t any. You don’t jump. Seriously—there’s no jump button. Movement sequences are QTEs. That’s it. No room for improvisation, no exploration, just press A when prompted.

PC performance is another mess. The game is hard-capped at 62 FPS, and if you try to lift that cap by editing the config files, the game starts breaking. Physics glitches. Soft locks. Entire levels stop working. The framerate is literally tied to game logic. You’d think someone would’ve caught that.

Controls aren’t much better. Dodge is mapped weird. Block is inconsistent. Inputs sometimes just don’t register. It feels like you’re fighting the engine more than the enemies.

There’s a skill tree, but it’s shallow. You unlock new combos and passive buffs, but nothing that dramatically changes the way you play. Some users even reported skill points not saving properly unless you exit the menu a certain way.

And then there’s the humor. The writing aims for B-movie irreverence and lands somewhere between 2007 YouTube and straight-to-DVD energy drink ad. It’s all juvenile innuendo, “cool guy” one-liners, and grotesque slapstick. One scene has a truck fly through a pair of giant mannequin legs. Another has you beating zombies to death with their own intestines. And Yaiba himself? He never shuts up. It gets old fast.

But I’ll give the game this—it commits.

It doesn’t half-ass the tone. It full-asses it. The voice acting is bad on purpose. The plot makes no sense. And every single thing feels like it was made by someone yelling “more awesome!” into a headset. That kind of confidence, even when misplaced, is rare.

Length-wise, it’s short. Maybe 6 hours. Eight if you’re bad. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, which is honestly a blessing.

There are bugs. Tons of them. Cutscenes sometimes run at 30 FPS even if gameplay is smooth. Loading screens are long and repetitive. Collectibles bug out and vanish. Some levels don’t load properly if you die in the wrong spot. There’s a DLC where you can play as Beck from Mighty No. 9. It adds nothing.

So yeah. Yaiba is janky, shallow, crude, and annoying.

But also: kinda fun.

It’s not a good Ninja Gaiden game. But it’s not trying to be. The problem is it shares the name. If this had just been called Yaiba: Zombie Slayer 2099 or something, I don’t think anyone would’ve cared. The expectations wouldn’t have crushed it.

What you get here is a loud, dumb, cartoonish splatterfest with a lot of rough edges and a couple moments of actual brilliance—mostly in its visuals and sense of identity. When it’s not glitching out or annoying the hell out of you, it can be strangely entertaining.

Buy it on sale. Don’t take it seriously. And absolutely don’t go in expecting Ninja Gaiden.

It’s not good. But it’s definitely not boring.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is, at the very least, ambitious.

Is it good? Debateable.

It suffers from what I like to call Poochie syndrome. If you don’t know what that is, it’s when a franchise tries so hard to be cool and edgy that it ends up alienating everyone. Poochie was a character on The Simpsons added to The Itchy & Scratchy Show to make it more “youth-oriented.” It backfired. Spectacularly.

This game is the Poochie of Ninja Gaiden.

You play as Yaiba Kamikaze—an undead ninja who got sliced in half by Ryu Hayabusa, then resurrected as a cyborg with a robot arm and unresolved anger issues. The story? He wants revenge. Also, zombies exist now.

So yeah. Not your typical Ninja Gaiden.

This isn’t a tight, serious action game like the NES classics or the 2004 reboot. This is a loud, cel-shaded beat-’em-up where you chain combos, dismember clown zombies, and occasionally say things like “BOOM, baby” while swinging from grappling hooks.

It’s ridiculous by design.

But weirdly, it’s not that far off from the original arcade Ninja Gaiden, which was more of a side-scrolling brawler than a precision platformer. In that sense, Yaiba feels like a spiritual detour—not a betrayal, just a case of missed execution.

And to say this game wasn’t received well is an understatement.

Critics hated it. Players hated it. Metacritic slapped it with a “generally unfavorable” rating. Polygon gave it a 3. The most common complaints? Repetitive gameplay, terrible camera, sloppy controls, and painfully unfunny writing. Fair.

But I’m going to make the case that Yaiba isn’t as bad as people say. It’s just weird. And weird games don’t always land, especially when they carry a legacy name.

Spark Unlimited handled the development. They weren’t exactly industry royalty. Team Ninja helped out. So did Keiji Inafune—yes, that Inafune, the guy behind Mighty No. 9. He designed Yaiba and pitched the whole zombie-cyborg-ninja concept. The idea was East-meets-West. Japanese combat with American humor. The problem is: it leaned too hard into the West part.

The visuals are the one thing that really works. The cel-shaded “living comic book” look still holds up. Blood flies in huge red arcs. Enemies explode into color-coded gore. Yaiba himself looks like a pissed-off character from a graphic novel you’d find in a Hot Topic clearance bin. I mean that as a compliment.

Unfortunately, once the game starts, the wheels start coming off.

Combat is fast but shallow. You get a sword, a cybernetic punch, and a few environmental executions. There’s a rage mode called Bloodlust that lets you tear through enemies, but it takes forever to charge and burns out too quickly. Enemies come in waves. Then more waves. Then more. It doesn’t evolve.

There’s an elemental system layered on top—some zombies explode, some zap, some poison. If you get two types near each other, you can cause secondary effects like electric tornadoes or poison crystallization. It sounds cool but plays like a checklist. The game doesn’t reward experimentation. It just wants you to solve the puzzle its way.

Boss fights are worse. Giant sponges. They kill you in three hits, and you fight them in arenas where the camera actively works against you.

Speaking of: the camera. It’s fixed. You can’t control it. It’s bad. It hides enemies behind geometry and cuts off parts of the screen during fights. No lock-on. No recentering. Just vibes.

Also, the platforming. There isn’t any. You don’t jump. Seriously—there’s no jump button. Movement sequences are QTEs. That’s it. No room for improvisation, no exploration, just press A when prompted.

PC performance is another mess. The game is hard-capped at 62 FPS, and if you try to lift that cap by editing the config files, the game starts breaking. Physics glitches. Soft locks. Entire levels stop working. The framerate is literally tied to game logic. You’d think someone would’ve caught that.

Controls aren’t much better. Dodge is mapped weird. Block is inconsistent. Inputs sometimes just don’t register. It feels like you’re fighting the engine more than the enemies.

There’s a skill tree, but it’s shallow. You unlock new combos and passive buffs, but nothing that dramatically changes the way you play. Some users even reported skill points not saving properly unless you exit the menu a certain way.

And then there’s the humor. The writing aims for B-movie irreverence and lands somewhere between 2007 YouTube and straight-to-DVD energy drink ad. It’s all juvenile innuendo, “cool guy” one-liners, and grotesque slapstick. One scene has a truck fly through a pair of giant mannequin legs. Another has you beating zombies to death with their own intestines. And Yaiba himself? He never shuts up. It gets old fast.

But I’ll give the game this—it commits.

It doesn’t half-ass the tone. It full-asses it. The voice acting is bad on purpose. The plot makes no sense. And every single thing feels like it was made by someone yelling “more awesome!” into a headset. That kind of confidence, even when misplaced, is rare.

Length-wise, it’s short. Maybe 6 hours. Eight if you’re bad. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, which is honestly a blessing.

There are bugs. Tons of them. Cutscenes sometimes run at 30 FPS even if gameplay is smooth. Loading screens are long and repetitive. Collectibles bug out and vanish. Some levels don’t load properly if you die in the wrong spot. There’s a DLC where you can play as Beck from Mighty No. 9. It adds nothing.

So yeah. Yaiba is janky, shallow, crude, and annoying.

But also: kinda fun.

It’s not a good Ninja Gaiden game. But it’s not trying to be. The problem is it shares the name. If this had just been called Yaiba: Zombie Slayer 2099 or something, I don’t think anyone would’ve cared. The expectations wouldn’t have crushed it.

What you get here is a loud, dumb, cartoonish splatterfest with a lot of rough edges and a couple moments of actual brilliance—mostly in its visuals and sense of identity. When it’s not glitching out or annoying the hell out of you, it can be strangely entertaining.

Buy it on sale. Don’t take it seriously. And absolutely don’t go in expecting Ninja Gaiden.

It’s not good. But it’s definitely not boring.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is, at the very least, ambitious.

Is it good? Debateable.

It suffers from what I like to call Poochie syndrome. If you don’t know what that is, it’s when a franchise tries so hard to be cool and edgy that it ends up alienating everyone. Poochie was a character on The Simpsons added to The Itchy & Scratchy Show to make it more “youth-oriented.” It backfired. Spectacularly.

This game is the Poochie of Ninja Gaiden.

You play as Yaiba Kamikaze—an undead ninja who got sliced in half by Ryu Hayabusa, then resurrected as a cyborg with a robot arm and unresolved anger issues. The story? He wants revenge. Also, zombies exist now.

So yeah. Not your typical Ninja Gaiden.

This isn’t a tight, serious action game like the NES classics or the 2004 reboot. This is a loud, cel-shaded beat-’em-up where you chain combos, dismember clown zombies, and occasionally say things like “BOOM, baby” while swinging from grappling hooks.

It’s ridiculous by design.

But weirdly, it’s not that far off from the original arcade Ninja Gaiden, which was more of a side-scrolling brawler than a precision platformer. In that sense, Yaiba feels like a spiritual detour—not a betrayal, just a case of missed execution.

And to say this game wasn’t received well is an understatement.

Critics hated it. Players hated it. Metacritic slapped it with a “generally unfavorable” rating. Polygon gave it a 3. The most common complaints? Repetitive gameplay, terrible camera, sloppy controls, and painfully unfunny writing. Fair.

But I’m going to make the case that Yaiba isn’t as bad as people say. It’s just weird. And weird games don’t always land, especially when they carry a legacy name.

Spark Unlimited handled the development. They weren’t exactly industry royalty. Team Ninja helped out. So did Keiji Inafune—yes, that Inafune, the guy behind Mighty No. 9. He designed Yaiba and pitched the whole zombie-cyborg-ninja concept. The idea was East-meets-West. Japanese combat with American humor. The problem is: it leaned too hard into the West part.

The visuals are the one thing that really works. The cel-shaded “living comic book” look still holds up. Blood flies in huge red arcs. Enemies explode into color-coded gore. Yaiba himself looks like a pissed-off character from a graphic novel you’d find in a Hot Topic clearance bin. I mean that as a compliment.

Unfortunately, once the game starts, the wheels start coming off.

Combat is fast but shallow. You get a sword, a cybernetic punch, and a few environmental executions. There’s a rage mode called Bloodlust that lets you tear through enemies, but it takes forever to charge and burns out too quickly. Enemies come in waves. Then more waves. Then more. It doesn’t evolve.

There’s an elemental system layered on top—some zombies explode, some zap, some poison. If you get two types near each other, you can cause secondary effects like electric tornadoes or poison crystallization. It sounds cool but plays like a checklist. The game doesn’t reward experimentation. It just wants you to solve the puzzle its way.

Boss fights are worse. Giant sponges. They kill you in three hits, and you fight them in arenas where the camera actively works against you.

Speaking of: the camera. It’s fixed. You can’t control it. It’s bad. It hides enemies behind geometry and cuts off parts of the screen during fights. No lock-on. No recentering. Just vibes.

Also, the platforming. There isn’t any. You don’t jump. Seriously—there’s no jump button. Movement sequences are QTEs. That’s it. No room for improvisation, no exploration, just press A when prompted.

PC performance is another mess. The game is hard-capped at 62 FPS, and if you try to lift that cap by editing the config files, the game starts breaking. Physics glitches. Soft locks. Entire levels stop working. The framerate is literally tied to game logic. You’d think someone would’ve caught that.

Controls aren’t much better. Dodge is mapped weird. Block is inconsistent. Inputs sometimes just don’t register. It feels like you’re fighting the engine more than the enemies.

There’s a skill tree, but it’s shallow. You unlock new combos and passive buffs, but nothing that dramatically changes the way you play. Some users even reported skill points not saving properly unless you exit the menu a certain way.

And then there’s the humor. The writing aims for B-movie irreverence and lands somewhere between 2007 YouTube and straight-to-DVD energy drink ad. It’s all juvenile innuendo, “cool guy” one-liners, and grotesque slapstick. One scene has a truck fly through a pair of giant mannequin legs. Another has you beating zombies to death with their own intestines. And Yaiba himself? He never shuts up. It gets old fast.

But I’ll give the game this—it commits.

It doesn’t half-ass the tone. It full-asses it. The voice acting is bad on purpose. The plot makes no sense. And every single thing feels like it was made by someone yelling “more awesome!” into a headset. That kind of confidence, even when misplaced, is rare.

Length-wise, it’s short. Maybe 6 hours. Eight if you’re bad. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, which is honestly a blessing.

There are bugs. Tons of them. Cutscenes sometimes run at 30 FPS even if gameplay is smooth. Loading screens are long and repetitive. Collectibles bug out and vanish. Some levels don’t load properly if you die in the wrong spot. There’s a DLC where you can play as Beck from Mighty No. 9. It adds nothing.

So yeah. Yaiba is janky, shallow, crude, and annoying.

But also: kinda fun.

It’s not a good Ninja Gaiden game. But it’s not trying to be. The problem is it shares the name. If this had just been called Yaiba: Zombie Slayer 2099 or something, I don’t think anyone would’ve cared. The expectations wouldn’t have crushed it.

What you get here is a loud, dumb, cartoonish splatterfest with a lot of rough edges and a couple moments of actual brilliance—mostly in its visuals and sense of identity. When it’s not glitching out or annoying the hell out of you, it can be strangely entertaining.

Buy it on sale. Don’t take it seriously. And absolutely don’t go in expecting Ninja Gaiden.

It’s not good. But it’s definitely not boring.

The NES version is one of the greatest titles of all time. The DOS version? Decidedly not.

It starts like a bait-and-switch. You see the name Ninja Gaiden—and your brain lights up with nostalgia: the cinematic cutscenes, the frantic wall-jumping, that savage, surgical difficulty.

But this? This is something else entirely. A freak of nature. A shadow of a shadow. Like someone described the original game to a committee over a bad phone connection, and the committee was made up of interns with insomnia and a shared allergy to fun.

Made by Hi-Tech Expressions—a company whose entire business model seemed to be "take beloved franchises and make them worse for DOS"—this port wasn’t so much developed as it was extruded. They didn’t craft games. They manufactured obligations. And what they slapped together here was less a port than a low-rent hallucination of the arcade version, which itself was already the dumber cousin of the NES masterpiece. So now what we’ve got is a port of a knockoff of a spin-off of a legend. A Xerox of a Xerox with ketchup on it.

You’re Ryu Hayabusa, allegedly.

You shuffle from left to right like you're late for work in a pool full of molasses. Your enemies? Identical mime-goons in red jackets, looking like rejected extras from a community theatre production of West Side Story. The punch button makes a noise. Not a satisfying thud—just the PC speaker trying its best to simulate impact and accidentally triggering your fight-or-flight reflex. You’ve got a life bar, but really it’s more of a countdown to when you give up.

Technically, it has graphics. EGA support, sure, if you’re feeling brave. But everything is drawn in migraine-vision. Sprites blend into the background like camouflage designed by a prankster. Choppy scrolling turns the act of walking into an act of protest. The cutscenes? Redrawn from scratch, probably by someone who only heard about the NES cinematics second-hand and thought, “Eh, I’ll just wing it.”

Audio is a crime scene. The entire soundtrack is piped through the PC speaker, which is like asking a kazoo to perform Beethoven. Every track is a remix in the same way banging two forks together is a remix of jazz. Worse still, the wrong songs often play in the wrong places.

Compatibility is its own boss fight. The game only runs properly on a CPU slower than time itself—an 8086. Try it on anything faster, and it plays at hyperspeed like someone sat on the fast-forward button. Unless you’re lucky enough to own a Tandy 1000—and if you are, bless your vintage heart—you’ll spend more time configuring slowdown utilities than actually playing. Assuming you even get that far.

Even the disks were garbage. Cheap floppies that degraded like bread in the sun. The physical media was actively trying to forget it existed.

Yes, they included environmental interaction. Throw an enemy into a phone booth and it explodes. Because... why not? But the animations are stiffer than taxidermy. You can’t tell if that pixel smear is a dude, a trash can, or your own disappointment rendered in 16 colors.

Critics tried to be diplomatic. Players didn’t. One called it “a slap in the face.” Another said “avoid it like the plague”—which is putting it gently. This isn’t just a bad game. It’s an experiment in how low expectations can go before they punch through the floor. It’s a warning label masquerading as software. Proof that even iconic franchises can be fed through a woodchipper if you give the license to the wrong team.

It belongs in a museum, sure. But only in the kind of museum that’s attached to a condemned strip mall. With a flickering light. And carpet that smells like old ketchup.

This is not Ninja Gaiden.

This is Ninja Gaiden’t.

The NES version is one of the greatest titles of all time. The DOS version? Decidedly not.

It starts like a bait-and-switch. You see the name Ninja Gaiden—and your brain lights up with nostalgia: the cinematic cutscenes, the frantic wall-jumping, that savage, surgical difficulty.

But this? This is something else entirely. A freak of nature. A shadow of a shadow. Like someone described the original game to a committee over a bad phone connection, and the committee was made up of interns with insomnia and a shared allergy to fun.

Made by Hi-Tech Expressions—a company whose entire business model seemed to be "take beloved franchises and make them worse for DOS"—this port wasn’t so much developed as it was extruded. They didn’t craft games. They manufactured obligations. And what they slapped together here was less a port than a low-rent hallucination of the arcade version, which itself was already the dumber cousin of the NES masterpiece. So now what we’ve got is a port of a knockoff of a spin-off of a legend. A Xerox of a Xerox with ketchup on it.

You’re Ryu Hayabusa, allegedly.

You shuffle from left to right like you're late for work in a pool full of molasses. Your enemies? Identical mime-goons in red jackets, looking like rejected extras from a community theatre production of West Side Story. The punch button makes a noise. Not a satisfying thud—just the PC speaker trying its best to simulate impact and accidentally triggering your fight-or-flight reflex. You’ve got a life bar, but really it’s more of a countdown to when you give up.

Technically, it has graphics. EGA support, sure, if you’re feeling brave. But everything is drawn in migraine-vision. Sprites blend into the background like camouflage designed by a prankster. Choppy scrolling turns the act of walking into an act of protest. The cutscenes? Redrawn from scratch, probably by someone who only heard about the NES cinematics second-hand and thought, “Eh, I’ll just wing it.”

Audio is a crime scene. The entire soundtrack is piped through the PC speaker, which is like asking a kazoo to perform Beethoven. Every track is a remix in the same way banging two forks together is a remix of jazz. Worse still, the wrong songs often play in the wrong places.

Compatibility is its own boss fight. The game only runs properly on a CPU slower than time itself—an 8086. Try it on anything faster, and it plays at hyperspeed like someone sat on the fast-forward button. Unless you’re lucky enough to own a Tandy 1000—and if you are, bless your vintage heart—you’ll spend more time configuring slowdown utilities than actually playing. Assuming you even get that far.

Even the disks were garbage. Cheap floppies that degraded like bread in the sun. The physical media was actively trying to forget it existed.

Yes, they included environmental interaction. Throw an enemy into a phone booth and it explodes. Because... why not? But the animations are stiffer than taxidermy. You can’t tell if that pixel smear is a dude, a trash can, or your own disappointment rendered in 16 colors.

Critics tried to be diplomatic. Players didn’t. One called it “a slap in the face.” Another said “avoid it like the plague”—which is putting it gently. This isn’t just a bad game. It’s an experiment in how low expectations can go before they punch through the floor. It’s a warning label masquerading as software. Proof that even iconic franchises can be fed through a woodchipper if you give the license to the wrong team.

It belongs in a museum, sure. But only in the kind of museum that’s attached to a condemned strip mall. With a flickering light. And carpet that smells like old ketchup.

This is not Ninja Gaiden.

This is Ninja Gaiden’t.

The NES version is one of the greatest titles of all time. The DOS version? Decidedly not.

It starts like a bait-and-switch. You see the name Ninja Gaiden—and your brain lights up with nostalgia: the cinematic cutscenes, the frantic wall-jumping, that savage, surgical difficulty.

But this? This is something else entirely. A freak of nature. A shadow of a shadow. Like someone described the original game to a committee over a bad phone connection, and the committee was made up of interns with insomnia and a shared allergy to fun.

Made by Hi-Tech Expressions—a company whose entire business model seemed to be "take beloved franchises and make them worse for DOS"—this port wasn’t so much developed as it was extruded. They didn’t craft games. They manufactured obligations. And what they slapped together here was less a port than a low-rent hallucination of the arcade version, which itself was already the dumber cousin of the NES masterpiece. So now what we’ve got is a port of a knockoff of a spin-off of a legend. A Xerox of a Xerox with ketchup on it.

You’re Ryu Hayabusa, allegedly.

You shuffle from left to right like you're late for work in a pool full of molasses. Your enemies? Identical mime-goons in red jackets, looking like rejected extras from a community theatre production of West Side Story. The punch button makes a noise. Not a satisfying thud—just the PC speaker trying its best to simulate impact and accidentally triggering your fight-or-flight reflex. You’ve got a life bar, but really it’s more of a countdown to when you give up.

Technically, it has graphics. EGA support, sure, if you’re feeling brave. But everything is drawn in migraine-vision. Sprites blend into the background like camouflage designed by a prankster. Choppy scrolling turns the act of walking into an act of protest. The cutscenes? Redrawn from scratch, probably by someone who only heard about the NES cinematics second-hand and thought, “Eh, I’ll just wing it.”

Audio is a crime scene. The entire soundtrack is piped through the PC speaker, which is like asking a kazoo to perform Beethoven. Every track is a remix in the same way banging two forks together is a remix of jazz. Worse still, the wrong songs often play in the wrong places.

Compatibility is its own boss fight. The game only runs properly on a CPU slower than time itself—an 8086. Try it on anything faster, and it plays at hyperspeed like someone sat on the fast-forward button. Unless you’re lucky enough to own a Tandy 1000—and if you are, bless your vintage heart—you’ll spend more time configuring slowdown utilities than actually playing. Assuming you even get that far.

Even the disks were garbage. Cheap floppies that degraded like bread in the sun. The physical media was actively trying to forget it existed.

Yes, they included environmental interaction. Throw an enemy into a phone booth and it explodes. Because... why not? But the animations are stiffer than taxidermy. You can’t tell if that pixel smear is a dude, a trash can, or your own disappointment rendered in 16 colors.

Critics tried to be diplomatic. Players didn’t. One called it “a slap in the face.” Another said “avoid it like the plague”—which is putting it gently. This isn’t just a bad game. It’s an experiment in how low expectations can go before they punch through the floor. It’s a warning label masquerading as software. Proof that even iconic franchises can be fed through a woodchipper if you give the license to the wrong team.

It belongs in a museum, sure. But only in the kind of museum that’s attached to a condemned strip mall. With a flickering light. And carpet that smells like old ketchup.

This is not Ninja Gaiden.

This is Ninja Gaiden’t.