Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos

Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos is a platformer released for the NES in 1990. It is called Ninja Ryukenden II: Ankoku no Jashinken (忍者龍剣伝 II 暗黒の邪神剣) in Japan, and there are no noticable gameplay or timing differences between the two versions. The game consists of 13 stages divided into 7 acts, not including boss stages. Ninja Gaiden II is slightly shorter in length than Ninja Gaiden, but it is just as intense and also has very little downtime throughout the run. In a run, the general idea is to acquire two Shadow Clones early on, as well as Art of the Fire Wheel in each stage, and use them to quickly progress through each stage and quickly defeat each boss, while properly managing ninpo and avoiding unwanted item drops.