Ninja Gaiden/Act V

When you arrive in the stage, a brawler, a wrestler, and a tonfa wielder will be waiting for you on the tracks above the side walk. They will all too happily climb down to fight you. After you clear them away, a signpost will appear that you can hang on to, just as a log swinger comes into view. He will be joined by some wrestlers which appear from the left. The barrel that appears on the tracks shortly after is likely to have swords. Beyond the barrel is another signpost that you can hang from, while a brawler and a few more wrestlers approach you from the right.

Shortly after that, the upper tracks will become untraversable as a train is parked on them, so you are forced to drop down. A pack of four wrestlers will chase after you from the left. There are two boxes on the floor, and the one on the left often has an extra life if you manage to break it. Further to the right, a log swinger will appear. As you walk past the wall with graffiti (featuring the name of Tecmo's earlier game Rygar), the game throws some of the more unusual enemies at you, including a lot of ninjas in white outfits, and motorcycle riders. The ninjas will swarm all around you, and they are not pushovers like they have been in previous stages. It will take some patience and willpower to defeat them all. Both the ninjas and the motorcyclists are susceptible to the Flying Neck Throw so take advantage of it.

Once the stage starts to advance again, two brawlers and a log swinger will drop down from the train tracks above, as you will reach the end of the parked train, and the tracks open up again. In fact, you will soon be forced to jump up to the tracks in order to walk along the bridge that leads to the end of the stage. While walking across the bridge, you are about to get swarmed by a large group of brawlers. However, there is a trick you can use to avoid fighting the majority of them. If you advance the screen only far enough to the right so that the fence is still visible below, you can drop down to it and let the enemies climb down to the ledge below. Then jump back up to the tracks and continue to the right, leaving them all behind. Another group will appear on the bridge. Make your way over to the right side as quickly as possible so that you can get off on the other side. Then stand to the right of where the enemies climb down so that you can attack them continuously and knock them into the gap to the left.

You may notice two fighters on the billboard at the end of the stage who look a lot like the pair you fought at the end of Act II. It turns out they are not part of the sign, but real fighters who you must battle once again. A couple of other enemies will join the fight, and you may wish to focus on them first to get them out of the way. Once you are down to just the two boss fighters, stay focused on defeating one of them before you bother with the other. Knock them down, and then move to a different height on the screen, let them approach you, and attack them to knock them down again. Then repeat with the second fighter until you can advance to the final Act.