Last Ninja Trilogy Overview


Title		Last Ninja Trilogy Overview
Game Type	Action Adventure
Compatibility	All ECS, All tested upto 060 via HD patches.
Publisher	System 3 / Activision (LN2)
HD Installable	Patches available
Players		1
Submission	Glen Lambert

Review
The Last Ninja games were born on the C64. That's where they lived, made
their mark and in the end, that's where they'll be remembered. The Amiga
conversions lacked all the consistency of their C64 predecessors, the
titles themselves causing slight confusion.

For those unaware (where have you been?) The Ninja games are
arcade/adventure style games. The main Character walks from screen to
screen collecting this, and using that, solving puzzles and kicking plenty
of arses along the way. The levels are relatively simple layouts of about
20 screens viewed in a 3D isometric perspective, some levels are
deliberately complex mazes however. The rather clever control system
allows you to move the central character around his pseudo 3D universe
very realistically and subtly. Whilst many people have criticized this
control system as over complicated, those who have played the game for any
serious amount of time have fallen in love with it. It is quite unique to
the Last Ninja series. I have not seen it elsewhere. Essentially the Ninja
walks in the eight joystick directions but always faces the same way,
producing a rather neat moonwalk effect moving backwards. Rotating the
Ninja is done by rotating the joystick clockwise or anti-clockwise through
its' 8 directions. Sounds complex? With a little practice it's easy and
very nice.

For the purposes of these reviews I will use firstly the C64 versions as a
guide:
  
The Last Ninja
Eventually appeared under the title 'Ninja Remix' by System 3
  
Last Ninja 2
Released as 'Last Ninja 2' by Activision. Conversion of the C64 game of
the same name.

Ninja Remix
A C64 update to 'Last Ninja 2' with new music and new tape routines. The
Amiga game that appeared with this title was infact the Amiga version of
The Last Ninja (see above).

Last Ninja 3
C64 & Amiga versions written at the same time by System 3. Also often
reffered to as 'Ninja 3'.


All C64 versions by System 3 had a similar look & feel, all were very
popular and are now legendary on the old Commodore.

The Amiga versions were a bit of a hodgepodge, appearing out of order and
all looking wildly different due to different, graphics artists, companies
and programmers doing the different conversions.


Category list.

Alphabetical list.