If you're going to play the original, you should play the Super Famicom version because the SNES version removes the ninja girl enemies entirely.
Ninja Warriors Once Again shows the twisted, ironic logic of remakes. The worst type of remakes aren't horrible remakes, the worst type of remakes are good albeit imperfect ones. Because they do the best job at devaluing the original game in the eyes of the average player who doesn't have a good eye for nuances.
It seems to be widely agreed that the remake of NWA was basically a direct upgrade. I thought this too at one point, brushing off flaws of the remake as flaws of NWA in general. But if you compare them back-to-back, the remake is a much weaker, slower game overall which lacks the intensity that makes the original so fun to play. No amount of bust size upgrades will be able to compensate for this.
The game expanded its play area to fit modern expectations - it's now a widescreen game. so the claustrophobic, closed off feeling of the original where space mattered and enemies were always in range is gone.
With the SNES' limitations gone, the game tries to go wild with enemy counts in hopes that this will fix the issues inherent to its wider play area. The problem is that the devs didn't commit - the enemy counts are there but their aggression has been decreased and their wakeup timers have been beefed up. Some enemies that woke up instantly now lay there for almost a full second! As a result the benefit from adding more enemies isn't felt. The extra enemies feels more like an aesthetic variation than a meaningful gameplay element.
The enemy AI is slower. While their attack frame data is the same, they don't make decisions as as often and, as a result, don't feel as threatening. It's much easier to recover from a bad situation, it's much easier to run away, it's much easier to keep track of independently acting enemies, and there's less pressure to keep them all on one side because they often stand around doing nothing.
Because the bosses are heavily reliant on mooks, this makes most boss fights easier as well. The only exception is the final boss who makes up all of the original game's challenge. The rest of the game is just a relaxed stroll to the final screen.
In general, the remake is all about low stakes improv and flailing. There's never a need to route anything, not even health pickups. Bad decisions aren't punished effectively, you can generally just relax and do whatever.
The remake does have some nice extras though - the new moves fit pretty naturally into the character toolkits, Raiden is a very unique character that's worth experiencing, the combo system while basic fits neatly into the flow of combat and the broken scoring has been replaced with a properly functioning timer. But IMO none of this is enough to elevate the remake, because it comes at the cost of the more intense moment-to-moment gameplay.
Maybe one day someone will hack the remake and fix this, but until then the original is still king.
A more concrete, perpetually WIP list of various changes that aren't really obvious (like the new moves/combo system). Will add more as I test stuff. SFC is the original, OA is the remake
Stuff that makes OA easier :
- Basically every enemy wakes up slower in OA.
- Enemy attacks do less damage in OA.
- Ninja Girl & Claw Guy wakeup timers have been increased. They are 15 frames in SFC, 50-ish frames in OA.
- Fire guys & Ninjas woke up instantly in SFC, now they have a 50-ish frame wakeup timer as well.
- Fire guys & ninjas jump away from you in SFC, but not in OA.
- Big guys wake up in about 25 frames in OA, instead of instantly like they do in SFC.
- The start of your grabs doesn't have iframes in the SFC game, only the throws do. OA has grab startup iframes.
- Kunoichi's grab down+attack doesn't have as many iframes in the SFC game, making it more risky.
- Ninja girl jump frequency has been MASSIVELY reduced in OA.
- Big Robots' grabby arm attack has crazy range in SFC.
- Enemies go into their "stand & do nothing" phases more often across the board in OA.
- The SFC version spawns in encounters 4 enemies at a time instead of all at once, meaning new dudes will be constantly spawning in throughout the fight.
Various changes. Tedious ones, neutral ones, or even ones which make the remake harder.
- OA has slower special charge times with the default characters. Raiden & Yaksha's charge times are equivalent to the SFC version.
- OA resets your charge times during scene transitions, SFC does not.
- Big Robots cannot be killed until they go through the exploding head phase in OA, meaning you have to wait around.
- Big Robots do not exit the screen in the SFC version, nor can they be thrown offscreen, speeding up the pace of combat.
- The back of Ninja’s final hit of his autocombo can hit through the Big Robots' armor in SFC, but not in OA.
- SFC fully restores your health between stages, OA only restores about 50%.
- Enemies are a lot better at getting out from being offscreen in OA - they will jump out or do offscreen attacks more aggressively.
- SFC's side throws do more damage.
- In the SFC version, the boxes & health count as enemies - the game won't spawn a 4th enemy if they're on screen.
- The SFC version lets you hit the stage 4 boss out of the air during his jump up
Thanks to StrayCatChillin for pointing a lot of these out. Not everything's been extensively verified so corrections are welcome. If you've noticed other interesting changes, throw that info at me in some way!
