Like ninjas in the night, Nintendo has snuck in and dropped off a trio of NES games for NSO subscribers to play. Coincidentally, one of those games is Ninja Gaiden 3: The Ancient Ship of Doom, which is probably why I made the ninja reference. Ryu Hayabusa would want you to play it with rewinds and save states, because the US version of that game is some BS.
Anyway, available starting September 2nd, 2026, Nintendo Switch Online subscribers will be able to play the aforementioned Ninja Gaiden 3 as well as SNK’s Ikari Warriors, and Rare’s R.C. Pro-Am II. Ikari Warriors is a shoot-em-up that predates Contra by a year, so it plays out from an overhead perspective instead of a side scrolling one. It was famously lampooned in an Angry Video Game Nerd video 13 years ago, meaning the video is almost old enough for people to be nostalgic about.
R.C. Pro-Am 2 is the sequel to R.C. Pro-Am (duh), and was one of the last NES games Rare developed -the final would be a compromised port of Battletoads & Double Dragons the following year. It’s an enjoyable overhead racer, which was pretty common in the 8-bit days since pseudo-3D wasn’t easy to pull off. It was included in Rare Replay on the Xbox — it’s nice to see it join NSO.
Lastly, Ninja Gaiden 3: The Ancient Ship of Doom is the conclusion of the Ninja Gaiden classic trilogy, though its US release was lightly controversial at the time of its release. In an effort to combat rental stores, Tecmo purposely made the US version harder than the Japanese release by doubling the damage Ryu takes, and giving players limited continues. There’s no password system either, so you have to either be really good, or abuse the hell out of NSO’s rewind functionality. Personally, I think the game would be better if it just had a few tweaks, or if we simply got the Japanese release. Ah well.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
