The Last Ninja

For the ninja enthusiast in the Commodore days, you couldn’t do much better than The Last Ninja. I remember when I first got the game. Along with the 5.2 inch floppies, the game came with an instruction manual and a map of the world on an aged-looking cloth that filled my imagination with mouth watering fantasies. I couldn’t wait to collect all the items and weapons and explore every inch of the amazing new world.
The game didn’t let me down. With graphics that were top notch by Commodore standards and music quality that was also ahead of its time, The Last Ninja was one of those games that wow’ed its players.

For the ninja enthusiast in the Commodore days, you couldn’t do much better than The Last Ninja. I remember when I first got the game. Along with the 5.2 inch floppies, the game came with an instruction manual and a map of the world on an aged-looking cloth that filled my imagination with mouth watering fantasies. I couldn’t wait to collect all the items and weapons and explore every inch of the amazing new world.
The game didn’t let me down. With graphics that were top notch by Commodore standards and music quality that was also ahead of its time, The Last Ninja was one of those games that wow’ed its players. Outfitted with the classic black ninja suit and mask, your character can collect all the weapons and gadgets that a karate master could want (swords, staffs, smoke bombs, claw for scaling walls, etc) Occasionally, you can even find ‘ninja magic’, a mystical glowing sphere that can temporarily make your character invincible. As you venture further into the world of The Last Ninja, the graphics, the music, and the gadgets only get more exciting. You will cross swamps by jumping from rock to rock, work your way up cliffs while fighting off enemies, slay fire breathing dragons, and explore the beautiful paradise of the palace gardens.
By now, you are undoubtedly all too eager to play this game. Before you do, let me present to you the tragic flaws of this would-be insurmountable game. First of all, the game takes a long time to play. I know that’s nothing out of the ordinary, but be sure to set a side a full day to play it if you expect to beat it. I remember playing on the Commodore, the disk drive would always overheat and go haywire before I could finish my game! There is no save option, or at least, if there is, it never worked for me. This is also one of those games were you have a limited number of lives. You may need to spend some time mastering certain skills so that your game is over before you get to the end.
So far, all the shortcoming of the game that I’ve mentioned is forgivable. But here comes the real slap in the face. The game play, shall I say, is sub-par. Not to say that it’s awful—Okay, okay! I can’t take it anymore! It IS awful! The character is very hard to control. The whole game is one these diagonals, and you have to move the character diagonally too at all times. There is no way to move in a cardinal direction. The thing that makes this even more difficult is that the character tends to get stuck if he ventures to close to the borders of the path and is next to an enemy. The enemies can move like five times as fast as you can, so you could lose half your life just trying to about-face while an enemy pounds you. When fighting enemies, you’ll find that one of the hardest things to do is line yourself up with them to land a hit. The other hardest thing to do is to take an enemy out without sustaining a lot of damage. Once you begin fighting an enemy, it’s basically just an exchange of hits. There’s no good way to run away or block. Just punch and take a punch. It’s pathetic. Lining up your character to collect goodies is just as hard. Be prepared for this to be a frustrating endeavour. Just in case you are still wondering if you should play this game, keep in mind that the world of marvel comes to an end in level 4. The fourth level offers little to nothing in the line of backgrounds. It’s this ‘dungeon’ maze where you fight the same enemies over and over, can’t find the way out, and the background is just black.
For what its worth, this is a notable game that I recommend checking out for those who would like a classic black ninja hero. If you still find yourself hunting for another classic ninja game, I also recommend Karate Champ. While The Last Ninja offers a great ninja adventure, Karate Champ offers better fighting mechanics with lots of karate style moves.