#or backgrounds

It's a remake+sequel to TAITO's Legend of Kage, which is an 80's Arcade game. Just like Ninja Gaiden, everyone knows the first one, but not that anything came after it.

Those "if there is no fan I am dead" memes? That is me @ this game. There is no fandom. It's me, whoever wrote the wiki article, and the like 12 comments under the only upload of its ost. There barely exists any info about this game on the internet otherwise. The only reason *I* know it exists is because a rom of it was on one of my bootleg cartridges from like 15 years ago. Its pixelart was so pretty for a DS game to younger me, it's what got me into pixelart to begin with.

Files in the code heavily imply that one of the more important npcs was supposed to be a twist villain boss fight, but there's no place to geek about it, because no one knows about this game. I am THIS fucking tempted to make a whole wiki just to put this tidbit in, and the only thing stopping that is knowing I can't pull through with projects + no clue if it'd mean keeping my laptop powered on 24/7 to act as a server.

Between Legend of Kage 1 and 2, the guy switched from only-shirt-no pants to only-pants-no shirt. And so did his rival. Are you seeing this shit. The first game had looping color palettes to indicate season changes from summer to fall to winter, and goes infinitely. LoK2 starts with cherry blossoms and ends with snow, and 4 difficulties unlocking after finishing the previous one. It's all on the same file, can always be switched, and you gotta do it to max out your character. Pausing at any time lets you toggle any skill you recieve. You can jump EXTREMELY high at the end (or not, if you want to. Just set the button to Lv1!) There's Ninjutsu skills you can create, and the strongest will cause a black n white cutout of your players' face to cut in first. The UI is SO stylized, to fit into that ancient japan theme as best as it can, from scrolls as buttons to clothing textures as backgrounds.

A remaster of 1 added a playable girl named Ayame, who can throw bombs. A reoccurring sister trio's youngest shares her name and skills. Some enemies' fates change depending on which character you play as, simply because their characters and thus the actions they'd take are different. Your achievements unlock art of characters and development stages, basically an in-game artbook. The menu jingle subtly changes depending on whether you picked Kage or Chihiro as your player character. There's art that shows off her vastly different beta-design that never made it into the game being cool for no reason other than being cool. The jukebox includes unused tracks. One of them is a different remix of "Castle at Night", a track that plays during a level that also marks a major moment of the plot. It's the main song of Legend of Kage 1.