The Last Ninja

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The Last Ninja
developer System 3
First title The Last Ninja (1987)
Last title Last Ninja 4 (20 ??)
Platform (s) Commodore 64 , Apple II , Apple IIgs , BBC Micro / Acorn Electron , MS-DOS , Acorn Archimedes , Amstrad CPC , Virtual Console
Genre (s) Action adventure

The Last Ninja is a computer game series by the English company System 3 . It consists of three action-adventure games that were released between 1987 and 1991.

The games have sold more than three million times. Critics attested the games had excellent graphics and a successful soundtrack , but criticized the controls and the simple gameplay, which was almost identical in all games.

General

Ninjatō
Shuriken

The games essentially consist of battle scenes and the solving of simple puzzles. The game character traverses an isometric landscape that does not scroll ( i.e. does not move). Instead, the character moves from one scene to the next by reaching the edge of the screen. On the way, the player can find some weapons (e.g. a sword or a bamboo stick ) that differ in their striking power. In addition, the player can use ninja stars that can be thrown at the opponent. Other objects are collected like in an adventure game and are used to solve the puzzles.

In order to be able to integrate the numerous graphics into the game, the game was not completely loaded into the RAM. Instead, after successfully completing a level, the next area was reloaded from cassette or floppy disk, which made the game appear graphically and musically very varied. This approach was also chosen by other games in order to exceed the 64 KByte storage capacity of the Commodore 64, even if this meant longer waiting times for the player during the loading process. Another hurdle was the 170 Kbyte limit for floppy disks . The Last Ninja , like other large games (e.g. Summer Games II, Winter Games , California Games ) was delivered on multiple data carriers.

The success of the series is based not only on the technical implementation, but above all on the popularity of the martial arts films and this topic in the 80s . The films Karate Kid (1984) American Ninja (1985), Kickboxer (1986) and Blood Sport (1988) were successful feature films to several sequels led and the respective actors Ralph Macchio , Michael Dudikoff and Jean-Claude Van Damme to her Made a breakthrough. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic series became so famous in the late 1980s that several TV series (from 1987) and video games (from 1989) followed. At the same time (1988) the first part of the multi-part Ninja-Gaiden computer game series was released, which has continued to this day.

Mark Cale and Tim Best developed and designed all parts of the series. Parts 1 and 2 were programmed by John Twiddy; Hugh Riley was responsible for the graphics. Stan Schembri programmed Last Ninja III . Robin Levy, John Kemp, Dan Phillips and Arthur Van Jole were the graphic artists. In an interview with the British magazine Retro Gamer , Mark Cale expresses his dissatisfaction with the later development team. The game would not have lived up to his expectations. The SID musicians of the original version were Ben Daglish and Anthony Lees. Matt Gray was responsible for the music in the second part. Reyn Ouwehand composed the soundtrack for the third part.

In addition to the original hardware, the games can now also be played on Commodore 64 emulators such as the VICE .

Level building

The games and the level structure are similar within the trilogy. The second level “The Wilderness” of The Last Ninja is described below as an example .

The level takes place outside the palace walls of the final boss. The player's task is to find an entrance to the palace. The main gate is locked, but there is another entrance that is guarded by two stone dragons. Either of them will spit fire as the player approaches the entrance. Furthermore, the player has to overcome a rock wall, a stone wall, a gorge, a river and a swamp. In addition, in many pictures an opponent is waiting for the player who has to be defeated.

To climb or descend the walls, the player must take a claw from a lion statue. On the way he also finds a glove with which he can touch a rose and take it with him. The rose is needed in the next levels. The gorge can be overcome by a somersault . However, the river and the swamp cannot be tackled in one jump. Here z. B. the stones in the river are used as an aid, whereby the player has to choose the right direction to jump from one stone to another. If the player misses a stone, the pawn dies. The last problem (fire-breathing dragons) can be solved by touching a magical object. This makes the character fireproof for a certain period of time and therefore has to reach the dragons under time pressure. On the way there, a river and a swamp have to be crossed again.

The Last Ninja

The Last Ninja
Studio System 3
Publisher System 3, Activision , Superior Software
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1987
platform Commodore 64 , Apple II , Apple IIgs , BBC Micro / Acorn Electron , MS-DOS , Acorn Archimedes , Amstrad CPC
genre Action adventure
Game mode Single player
control Keyboard , joystick
medium 2 floppy disks (C64), compact cassette
language English

The background story is about a group of ninjas who are represented in the game world, which is based on medieval Japan, as a powerful faction that is envied by the samurai . The antagonist Kunitoki, a Shogun and magicians, kills one exception all ninjas. According to the framework story, these were located on an island to deepen their martial arts at the “Shrine of the White Ninja”. The player controls the last surviving ninja Armakuni and tries to prevent the shogun from training his elite troops to become ninjas on that fictional island. To do this, he paves his way by solving puzzles and battles, all the way to the final boss Kunitoki.

The game world consists of six levels. It includes two outside areas and four areas belonging to the Kunitokis Palace. In contrast to the successors, the opponents all look very similar - with the exception of special opponents such as a dog in the sixth level and Kunitoki himself. In the first levels, important objects flash when the player enters the screen and the defeated opponents are removed from the game. In the later levels important objects have to be recognized and the opponents have to be fought again when the player re-enters a scene. In addition to the battles and puzzles, the player must, for example, overcome rivers or swamps by skillfully jumping.

The game first appeared on the Commodore 64 and was later implemented on various other systems. The Last Ninja is one of the most commercially successful games on the Commodore 64. Over 750,000 copies were sold across Europe and over 2,000,000 copies worldwide.

The game was mostly received very positively by the trade press. The British magazine ZZAP! 64 gave 94%. The gameplay was well prepared and the graphics described as brilliant: “The Last Ninja's gameplay isn't anything special, but the concept has been executed extremely well. [...] The graphics however are nothing short of brilliant " .

ASM magazine awarded the title “ASM HIT” and praised the “top graphics” and the “perfect animation of the characters” . The game would “thanks to the complexity and the difficulty” become a “super game” .

Heinrich Lenhardt and Boris Schneider rated The Last Ninja in the Happy Computer Games special issue 4/87 rather average: “The graphics are simply awesome and are among the best that you have ever seen on the C64 […] The gameplay itself is its own Not worth the money, but the showmanship is really impressive. "

Last Ninja 2: Back With A Vengeance

Last Ninja 2: Back With A Vengeance
Studio System 3 , Activision
Publisher System 3
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1988
platform Commodore 64 , Apple IIgs , BBC Micro / Acorn Electron , MS-DOS , NES , Atari ST , Amiga , Amstrad CPC , ZX Spectrum
genre Action adventure
Game mode Single player
control Keyboard , joystick
medium 2 floppy disks (C64)
language English

A year later, the sequel appeared under the title " Last Ninja 2: Back With A Vengeance ". While the first part was set in medieval Japan, the second part deals with New York City in the late 20th century. The game's story explains this change of time and place with the help of a magic ball and the so-called “ninja gods” that Kunitoki and Armakuni carried into the future of the game world. The player's task is to smash a corrupt company owned by the shogun and steal that magic bullet from him. The seven levels lead from Central Park via the sewer system and an opium factory to the stronghold of the antagonist.

In contrast to the first part of the series, the character competes against a number of differently represented opponents. In addition to the standard opponents known from the predecessor, who always looked the same, police officers, punks and gangsters were added to the plot. The opponents must initially be defeated twice before they are permanently removed from the game. In the later levels the opponents regenerate permanently. The moving objects in the game scenes are new. For example, a river in the first level can only be crossed if the player jumps onto a boat that is floating in the river at the right time. Also in this game there are a few special opponents like a crocodile, a panther or a swarm of bees, which can either be defeated by a trick or otherwise overcome.

The second part surpassed the first part of the series in terms of graphic design. The game sold more than 1.2 million copies. Matt Gray composed the music for the game. Since there was a media hype about the release of Back With A Vengeance after the success of the first part , the manufacturer decided to also bring a limited edition onto the market. This contained a ninja mask and throwing stars. According to the game developer Mark Cale, these were a bit more massive than planned and some stores therefore refused to sell the variant.

The second part of the series was made by ZZAP! 64 generally described as a “more than worthy successor” ( “A more-than-worthy sequel” ). In the Happy Computer Special 6 from 1988, the testers Schneider and Lenhardt give Last Ninja 2 a better rating than the predecessor (“Good!”): “I like the successor much better, because there are a lot more puzzles, even more colorful graphics, More likely to hit music and a gripping storyline. ” The combat system and controls are rather negative: “ I didn't really like the fight scenes, which always run very similarly and become boring in the long run. I also don't like controlling the ninja. ” ASM gave the game a similar rating and again awarded the title “ ASM HIT ” as a “ new cult game ”. The Amiga Joker called the Amiga porting a "mourning game" . With a rating of 44%, "practically everything is worse than the original" . The magazine writes: “The graphics have suffered a lot, even the animations are no longer as good. [...] The control was a while ehedems quite complicated, but now the poor guy is as hampered by the area and can be controlled more reasonable hardly. " .

The magazine 64'er drew Last Ninja 2 in his retrospective Games '88 as the game with the "Best Graphics" from.

Last Ninja 3

Last Ninja 3
Studio System 3
Publisher System 3
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1991
platform Commodore 64 , Atari ST , Amiga , CD 322
genre Action adventure
Game mode Single player
control Keyboard , joystick
medium Diskettes (C64, Amiga, Atari ST), CD (CD³²), plug-in module (C64)
language English

System 3 released "Last Ninja 3" for the Commodore 64 in 1991. Porting for the Amiga, CD³² and Atari ST followed later . A version for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was, as with the first part, in the works, but was never published. The third episode of the series is set in Tibet. The story is again about the protagonist Armakuni and the villain Kunitoki, who has now withdrawn into the so-called "Palace of Mysteries".

The "Palace of Mysteries" is represented in the game by five levels, each consisting of twelve to 16 screen pages. A novelty in the third part is honor and a Bushido power. If the player avoids fighting, the character wins no honor and thus loses its Bushido power. According to the instructions, this is important for completing the game and for overall strength. Apart from this point and the again improved form of representation, the game principle has not changed. There's just a new supportive indicator that shows whether the player is walking past an object they can take away.

System 3 also published the third part of the series on a plug-in module for the Commodore 64. By inserting and thus directly integrating such a module into the hardware of the system, the reloading could be completely switched off.

Since the gameplay compared to the first part has not changed significantly, the repeated ZZAP -64! Magazine, his criticism for the first game: ". The Last Ninja's gameplay is not anything special, but the concept has been Executed extremely well" despite For this point of criticism, the game received a final rating of 93%. The rating of the Power Play was much worse. Graphics and sound were highlighted positively again, but the controls and some difficult passages led to a rather negative rating: “I think the controls of the (hopefully) last ninja are absolutely cheeky. [...] What remains is a slight regret, because Last Ninja III is graphically and acoustically impressive. " A colleague adds: " A catastrophically poor control and loads of unfair spots cause permanent frustration. " The Amiga Joker criticized the graphics and sound as old-fashioned or stale. "modest" and rated the price-performance ratio as insufficient compared to competing games.

Last Ninja Remix

Last Ninja Remix was released in 1990 in two versions. The variant for 8-bit computers, such as the Commodore 64, is a new edition of the second part of the Last Ninja series. The 16-bit version for Amiga and Atari ST, however, is a port of the first part, which was not published for these systems until then. The version for 8-bit computers only has a revised status graphic and a new soundtrack, some of which contained remixes of pieces from the first two parts.

According to ASM, however, the 16-bit version was completely reprogrammed and adapted to the state of the art at the time. This looks "a lot better than the botched 16-bit Ninja-2 version from Activision" . The remix therefore also received the “ASM HIT” award.

Jochen Hippel was responsible for the background music for the Atari and Amiga setting; Reyn Ouwehand arranged the pieces for the Commodore 64 re-release.

Last Ninja 4

The first information and screenshots about a fourth game in the Last Ninja series were published in the trade press . Accordingly, the game should appear for the Xbox and contain 3D graphics instead of the isometric view . The game has not been released to this day and has been canceled.

Similar games

System 3 brought out other games with a similar look. In 1990 the game Vendetta was released . The game Beauty and the Beast (based on the Disney film Beauty and the Beast ) , released in 1996, with almost identical graphics, is a game by Iranian developers.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Pipex.com: Studio 3 - About Us ( Memento from December 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Subpage "Crew" on The Last Ninja Archives with various interviews
  3. ↑ Complete solution for the level "The Wilderness" in The Last Ninja
  4. ↑ Test report of the first part in the ZZAP! 64 from August 1987 on zzap64.co.uk
  5. ↑ Test report of the first part in ASM 10/1987 on Kultpower.de
  6. ↑ Test report of the first part in the Happy Computer Games special part special issue 4/87 on Kultboy.com
  7. ↑ Test report of the second part in the ZZAP! 64 from September 1988 on zzap64.co.uk
  8. ↑ Test report of the second part in Happy-Computer Special 6 from 1988 on kultpower.de
  9. ↑ Test report of the second part in ASM 03/1989 on Kultpower.de
  10. ↑ Test report of the second part in the Amiga Joker 10/1990 on retropoly.de
  11. ↑ 64'er 2/1989, p. 21
  12. ↑ Test report of the third part in the ZZAP! 64 from March 1991 on zzap64.co.uk
  13. ↑ Test report of the third part in the Power Play issue 8/1991 on Kultpower.de
  14. ↑ Amiga Joker 12/91, p. 77
  15. ↑ Test report of Ninja Remix in ASM issue 12/1990 on Kultboy.com
  16. ↑ GameInfoWire.com: Last Ninja - The Return. Retrieved October 14, 2016 .
  17. ↑ Screenshot from Vendetta with almost identical image structure and graphics
  18. ↑ Screenshot description of Beauty and the Beast
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 27, 2007 .