This hack repurposes the life counter in Ninja Gaiden into a death counter. You begin the game with zero deaths, and each time you die the counter increases by 1 (up to 99). This effectively gives you infinite lives but more than just a simple cheat code, it also modifies the in-game UI to help players keep track of deaths and encourage trying to have as few deaths as possible. It also makes a few necessary design changes to make the game a bit more palatable.

[Main Changes]

• Repurposes the lives counter as a death counter.
• Death counter starts at 0.
• Dying increases the counter.
• Added a little skull icon to the UI to indicate deaths instead of lives.
• At 100 deaths the counter loops back to 99 to prevent a Game Over caused by an overflow.

[Additional Changes]

• Dying during the final boss rush sends Ryu back to 6-3 instead of 6-1.
• Birds do minimum damage to Ryu (1) instead of “final boss” damage (3).

• Database match: Ninja Gaiden (USA)
• Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210216-231042)
• File SHA-1: CA513F841D75EFEB33BB8099FB02BEEB39F6BB9C
• File CRC32: 11F953F6
• ROM SHA-1: 15F245161179AB1959B7DC20E82ADD024D23AA3D
• ROM CRC32: 7C4A72D8