This is surely one of the best series ever made for the Commodore 64. It was quite revolutionary in 1987 and has a status of a legend today. Followed by two sequels and a remix, The Last Ninja was the first in the series. If you've never heard of it, now you know a little more. For everybody else, well, come on - it's The Last Ninja; is there really anything more I could say?
I guess I could, since there will be youngsters that have never heard of this game. Besides lovely graphics and great music, game was very advanced at the time. There were some isometric games before 1987, but this game used the isometric type of view to the fullest to achieve gameplay as good as possible. You had eight directions to move, plus you could jump and perform various moves and attacks with your arms and legs or with several ninja weapons. You could even block. The existence of your character's inventory wasn't new also, but I never saw a game before this one in which you could really "pick up" items. In every platform game, you just moved across an item in order to pick it up. But this was different.
Last Ninja is the mixture of action, puzzle solving and some precision and exploration. You will find various weapons and meet enemies with various weapons. There will be some jumping and precise moving that may be stressful. You must solve some puzzles in order to accomplish each level and that makes the gameplay more interesting. There aren't many of them, they are rather simple and shouldn't be too hard to figure out. You will need some trying and practicing before you figure them all out. This requires some patience and wit, but is also what makes the game different from simple action-fighting games and adds depth to the gameplay.
The story is as follows: You are Armakuni, a member of Ninjutsu, left to guard their shrine while the other members go to the island of Lin Fen. Every ten years, all Ninjas (except for this one guardian) must travel to the island of Lin Fen to visit Shrine of the White Ninja and receive further teachings from the Koga Scrolls. However, the evil Shogun Kunitoki has called creatures from the Nether World and destroyed your comrades, so he can bring his own guards and learn the power of Ninjutsu. When he was a child, Armakuni went to the island by using a secret passage. Now he must do it again, but the way is not as it used to be. So he (with your help) must travel alone through the unknown, avenge his brothers, and retrieve the Scrolls. (This is very shortened story.)
The PC version came out a year after the C64 version. Everything looked like it did on the C64. Well, almost everything. The game was a little rough. This is very bad, since you'll have lot of trouble picking up some objects (your ninja must reach out his hands exactly on the object) and jumping over water, lava, or mud. Jumping is the worst; you'll have to step perfectly on the stone to jump to another one. Your ninja moved smoothly on the C64 (with a joystick), but here you use Numpad, and the ninja keeps on moving until you press another direction key or 5 to stop. Jumping over rocks is simply too hard. You'll even find it difficult to turn your character in another direction.
Graphics are great for the time DOS version was released. The PC speaker's limitations left the game without the great musical themes by Ben Daglish and brought new one instead, a nice tune indeed. Still, too bad we can't hear tunes from the original.
If you manage to handle the controls and you don't turn away from hard games, you'll like this one. Even now I run a C64 emulator to play it again. I can never forget the first level, when you go south and actually pick up a katana from some rocks. Although the game looks good, you'll have some problems playing the PC version, and that's a real shame. Game gets better and better later on but those frustrating things may get in the way. DOS version receives average mark because of those flaws.
Part of The Last Ninja games Series
