The Last Ninja was meant to be in the shops in November 1986. System 3 then advertised it for 31 January 1987, on the Commodore 64, Spectrum, Amstrad, Atari ST and Atari 800. It reached the C64 in the summer of 1987, and nowhere else that year. The wait paid off. ZZAP!64 gave it 94% and wrote that “it really feels as if you are controlling a living being, not merely a bunch of sprites”. The Spectrum version, half written, was never finished.
The game is an isometric action adventure: you fight your way across an island, pick up objects and solve puzzles, in a world drawn at an angle so that it looks solid. Its detailed scenery, fluid animation and music made it one of the best-known C64 games.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: System 3; distributed by Activision.
- Released: summer 1987 on the Commodore 64, at £9.99 on cassette and £14.99 on disk.
- Made by: John Twiddy (programming), Hugh Riley (graphics), Ben Daglish and Anthony Lees (music), from an idea by Mark Cale.
- ZZAP!64: 94%, a Sizzler, in issue 28 (August 1987).
- Later versions: BBC Micro and Acorn Electron (reviewed by Acorn User in April 1989), PC and Apple IIGS. The Spectrum and Amstrad versions were abandoned.
- Sequels: Last Ninja 2 (1988) and Last Ninja 3 (1991).
The story
The plot comes from the game’s own introduction, as ZZAP!64 retold it. Every ten years the Ninja brotherhood sailed to the island of Lin Fen to honour the shrine of the White Ninja. The evil shogun Kunitoki used the gathering to wipe them out, planning to seize the sacred Koga scrolls. One ninja, Armakuni, had stayed behind to guard a shrine and survived. You play Armakuni, crossing the island to recover the scrolls and avenge his brothers.
Two teams, then a third
Mark Cale told Retro Gamer in 2007 that he conceived the game at the end of 1985. The graphics came first. Hugh Riley drew thousands of animation frames of fighting moves and weapons, using an editor written by Steve Beat, as well as the backgrounds. Two development teams tried to turn the pictures into a game and failed. Cale gave a third team the chance, and brought in John Twiddy, then living in Newcastle, who had written the Expert cartridge for the C64. “I saw the idea for Last Ninja and I was blown away by the quality of the graphics,” Twiddy recalled.
The delays showed in the press. In November 1986 ZZAP!64 expected the game at the end of that month, and said it would have “around 150 flip screens”. System 3’s advertisements that winter promised “over 125 different screens, 300 k of programming, more than 1,000 sprites” and “an option of sixty different moves”. In February 1987 ZZAP!64 reported that Activision would distribute the game “when [it’s] finished”. A demo on ZZAP!64’s Sampler cassette in June 1987 showed one section of the palace. By System 3’s own count then, the finished game would have about 1,500 sprites chosen from more than 3,500 images, and 130 screens chosen from more than 400.
How the engine worked
Riley had drawn far more than a C64 could hold. Twiddy said there were “probably ten times more sprite graphics than could be used”, so one of his first jobs was choosing which moves and weapons the player would keep.
The backgrounds came from a tool called Integrator, written by Istvan Bodnar, a Hungarian scientist. It built each screen from reusable high-resolution objects, so that a tree was stored once and drawn many times. Integrator had fitted the graphics and animation into 128K; Twiddy reworked the game to fit in half that. Each of the six levels had between 15 and 25 screens. He also improved the editor so that objects could be flipped and recoloured, and added masking, so that the ninja could walk behind scenery in the foreground as well as in front of it.
To keep movement cheap, the paths were defined by joined lines. The program checked whether the ninja had crossed a line to decide whether he could move, and the same line crossings triggered events such as falling into water or waking a dragon. That is why Armakuni keeps to the paths. The Isometric Projection entry explains how games of the period drew this kind of view.
Once Twiddy arrived, the game came together quickly. Cale said Twiddy worked on it in his flat around the clock, and that “we got the whole thing done in two months”, a third of the time the sequels took. He denied that it was rushed: “I’d been working on it for two years… so we weren’t acting in haste.”
Playing it
The island is split into six sections, each loaded separately from tape or disk: the Wastelands, the Wilderness, the Palace Gardens, the Dungeons, the Palace and the Inner Sanctum. Each is a small maze of paths crossed by rivers and marshes, and you need a puzzle’s answer to move on to the next. ZZAP!64’s example: after crossing a marsh by somersaulting from log to log, Armakuni has to get past a dragon that breathes fire.
Armakuni fights with his fists and feet or with the weapons he finds: a sword, nunchakus, smoke bombs, shuriken and a staff. Other objects include a pouch, a key, apples for extra lives, a glove, a claw and an amulet. A border around the play area shows his energy, the weapon in use, the object he is holding and his opponent’s energy. ZZAP!64 found the controls “quite tricky to begin with” but part of the fun once mastered.
The music
The music plays over the whole game. ZZAP!64 described 12 pieces in June 1987: six “intermission tracks” by Anthony Lees that play while each section loads, and six main themes by Ben Daglish. Later accounts credit Lees with at least one of the in-game themes, the Palace Gardens. The reviewers liked what they heard: “twelve pleasant and suitably Oriental tunes”, and music that “is more than cosmetic, adding impetus to the player’s action as it intermittently speeds up and slows down”.
What the reviewers said
ZZAP!64 gave it 94%, with 98% for graphics, and named it a Sizzler. Ciaran Brennan, who had first seen the game while the magazine was putting together its Sampler cassette, found the finished game “one of those rare games which offers hours of consistently puzzling and enjoyable gameplay”. Steve Jarratt said the lack of a save feature “may prove irritating at a later stage” and was the only fault he could find. Gary Penn was less sure: the gameplay “isn’t anything special, but the concept has been executed extremely well”, and it reminded him of an Ultimate adventure, “although… this is far more enjoyable to play… even with the multi-load”.
In its look back at 1987 the magazine noted that The Last Ninja “arrived after much hype from System 3”. Readers kept voting for it. In January 1988 its title tune was third in ZZAP!64‘s readers’ music chart, behind two Rob Hubbard pieces, and in June 1988 the game was still fourth in the readers’ chart of favourite games, a year after its release.
The versions that did and did not appear
Spectrum owners never got it. Sinclair User previewed an unfinished Spectrum version in November 1987 that had the levels, the scenery and the fighting moves “and absolutely no assailants whatsoever”. In March 1988 CRASH still expected Activision to release it “any time now”. In July 1988 CRASH said it was over: the game had been “planned, advertised and even half written, but due to ‘programming difficulties’” it “never appeared on the Spectrum — and never will”.
Other conversions did appear. Acorn User reviewed the BBC Micro and Electron version in April 1989, at £9.95 on cassette, and was unimpressed: “nothing more nor less than a standard implementation of a standard combat game”. There was also a version for PC and one for the Apple IIGS, published by Activision.
Sequels and later life
Last Ninja 2 (1988) took Armakuni to modern New York. It was the first Last Ninja on the Spectrum, and CRASH gave it 90% and a Smash in December 1988.
Last Ninja 3 (1991) brought Armakuni and Kunitoki together for a final showdown in a vast temple. On the C64 it came on a 4-megabit (512K) cartridge. Commodore Format said the cartridge alone cost about £7 to make, before any other costs were added.
In 2007 Cale told Retro Gamer that System 3 would remake the first three games for the PSP, Nintendo DS and Wii, keeping the isometric view, and then make a Last Ninja 4. Neither appeared. The C64 original was re-released on the Wii’s Virtual Console in Europe in 2008 and North America in 2009.
Sources
- ZZAP!64 issue 19, November 1986, p. 105: release expected “the end of November”, around 150 screens.
- System 3 advertisement, Computer & Video Games issue 63, January 1987, and CRASH issue 36, January 1987: screens, sprites, moves, and “Available from Jan 31 on the C64, Spectrum, Amstrad, Atari ST & 800”.
- ZZAP!64 issue 22, February 1987: Activision to distribute The Last Ninja and Bangkok Knights.
- ZZAP!64 issue 26, June 1987, pp. 51–52: the Sampler demo; System 3’s figures for sprites, screens and loads; the twelve pieces of music by Anthony Lees and Ben Daglish.
- ZZAP!64 issue 28, August 1987, pp. 103–105: review by Ciaran Brennan, Steve Jarratt and Gary Penn; the plot, sections, weapons, objects and ratings (Overall 94%, Graphics 98%).
- ZZAP!64 issue 33, January 1988: the review of 1987, and the readers’ music chart (the title tune third). Issue 38, June 1988, p. 84: readers’ chart (fourth).
- Sinclair User issue 68, November 1987: preview of the Spectrum version.
- CRASH issue 50, March 1988 (Spectrum release still expected); issue 54, July 1988, p. 8 (the Spectrum version abandoned); issue 59, December 1988, p. 188 (Last Ninja 2 review, 90%).
- Acorn User issue 81, April 1989: review of the BBC Micro and Electron version.
- Commodore Format issue 6, March 1991: Last Ninja 3 review and the cost of its cartridge.
- “The Making of The Last Ninja”, Retro Gamer issue 34, 2007, pp. 18–21: Mark Cale and John Twiddy on the development, Integrator, the path lines and masking, and the planned remakes.
- Retro Gamer issue 18, 2005: Palace Gardens credited to Anthony Lees.
- Wikipedia, “The Last Ninja” (web, secondary): the Apple IIGS version and the Virtual Console releases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ninja