After this game, I can see why there would be no more Ninjas.

Prepare to be stared at the whole time.

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 7/9/20 – 7/12/20
Difficulty: 5/10
My Difficulty: 5/10
My Video: The Last Ninja Longplay

Ninjas are well known in popular culture.  They are traditionally known as assassins from feudal Japan, known for moving quickly, quietly, and discretely, with deadly force.  It is no surprise then that Ninjas would be the main characters in video games quite often.  The Ninja Gaiden series, for instance, is a very popular game series with sword slashing and climbing through fast-paced platformer stages.  The Last Ninja, on the other hand, features a ninja that is pretty much the polar opposite of Ryu from Ninja Gaiden.  It might seem like this would make for a bad game, but different doesn’t necessarily mean bad.  Let’s take at look at what makes this game tick.

The Last Ninja is a series of three games originally for the Commodore 64 and other computer platforms.  The games were all developed by System 3, beginning with The Last Ninja in 1987.  The game was released to critical acclaim and sold well enough to give the developers the go ahead for sequels.  The Last Ninja 2 was released in 1988 and was far and away the biggest success of the series, selling 5.5 million copies of just the Commodore 64 version alone.  The Last Ninja 3 came out in 1991, also selling millions of copies and was a critical success much like the first two entries.  Curiously, despite all of its success, this was the end of the series.  The NES version of The Last Ninja is actually a port of The Last Ninja 2.  The NES version released in February 1991, developed by Beam Software and published by Jaleco.  This is a North American exclusive game for the NES only.

The Last Ninja has a pretty lengthy story written up in the manual.  You play the role of the Ninja named Armakuni.  In the first game, he battles and defeats the shogun Kunitoki and collects sacred scrolls.  After that, Armakuni seeks to reinstate a new order of Ninja warriors.  One night there was a meeting of his inner circle, when all of a sudden he is whisked away through time to 20th century New York.  Armakuni doesn’t understand how he got there, but he knows that Kunitoki is here as well, so he goes off toward another battle against his archenemy.  There are six stages in this adventure.  Clear them and defeat Kunitoki to win the game.

The first puzzle sets the stage for the rest of the game.

This game is an action-adventure game taking place in an isometric perspective.  This is a “screen-by-screen” kind of game, where the view is locked in place and you exit either off the side of the screen or through doors to a new screen.  Contrary to other Ninja games, this has very slow movement and pacing all throughout. Levels are more or less open and often you can backtrack several screens to use new items as needed.  You use the D-pad directions to move, though the cardinal directions on the controller result in diagonal directions on screen.  For example, Up on the D-pad moves your character up and left.  If you rotate the controller in your hand 45 degrees counter-clockwise, you get the rest of the directions to line up.  I had trouble with this as it was the opposite orientation for Q*bert, and even a few years later I couldn’t wrap my head around it right away.  While moving, if you press A you will do a forward jump.  This is a fixed distance jump and you are locked into the movement after leaving the ground.

Some screens contain weapons and other items on the ground.  To pick them up, you’ll need to stand close to them and press B to bend down and grab them.  The positioning is very precise and not as intuitive as it should be, usually requiring some guesswork and wiggling about to find the right spot.  The things you collect are classified as either weapons or items.  To swap weapons, hold Select and press B.  To switch items, hold Select and press A.  To use a selected item, press B, though you must be standing in the correct, particular spot to actually use it.  The default action of the B button is a standing kick.  Press A to punch, or if you have a weapon selected, press A to attack with that weapon.

There are enemies that patrol many of the screens.  Sometimes they charge at you, while other times they walk along a set path.  Some can throw objects at you from across the screen.  You can fight them with your weapons or punches and kicks.  Your power meter is the swirly blue icon at the lower left of the screen, with two layers of health shown.  There can only be one enemy on screen and their power meter is to the left of yours.  When you deplete your enemy’s power, they crumple to the ground in a heap, but they will slowly regenerate their health before getting back up again.  You can take the opportunity to leave the room or do whatever, but if allowed to get back up you will have to fight them again.  The second time you knock them out, they stay down for good.

Piles of bodies left behind.

There are six distinct stages in the game, each one its own self-contained area.  The stages are Central Park, the Street, the Sewers, the Office, the Mansion, and the Final Battle.  The variety in the stages mostly has to do with the locale and the puzzles within.  Some levels are pretty straightforward, and others are more open ended and you will have to do exploring while trying not to get turned around too much.  The goal in each stage boils down to finding keys, finding items, or solving puzzles that let you make progress.  It can be tough the first time through to know what to do or how to clear the way ahead.  This is made more difficult because of the positioning issues I’ve mentioned earlier.  Sometimes you will miss out on the correct solution just because you were a couple of pixels off, which is very frustrating.  One more thing to know is that your items carry over from one stage to the next, occasionally in a way that can get you stuck badly if you don’t have the right thing.

At the start of the game you have five lives to work with, plus the one you start off with.  You lose a life when your energy is depleted, which can happen anywhere between slowly and instantly depending on the trap or enemy attack at hand.  In some of the levels you can pick up a hamburger for an extra life.  This game has a password system where you get a password after completing each stage.  The passwords here are 15 characters long consisting of 0-9 and the letters B, C, D, F, G, and H.  The passwords retain the current level, the items collected, and the lives remaining.  Because the passwords keep your life total, this is a game where it pays to replay levels efficiently to get a better password.

This was my first time playing through The Last Ninja.  I sort of remember seeing this game long before I played it, but I’m not sure how far back that memory goes.  I would consider this a slightly uncommon game as it is one I don’t see much.  I have owned two copies of this game, both bought on eBay.  The first one cost me $8 shipped in 2014, and the other was in a small lot of games I bought to upgrade and resell a few years later.  This game sold for around $10 back in 2014, but now is worth double or more for just a loose cart.

I spend a lot of time on the computer too.

I can see where this might be a difficult game, but I didn’t really have that much trouble with it.  I have timing data now since I’ve been streaming, and I beat this game in a little over 3 hours, spread out over three evenings.  This is the kind of game that could take a lot longer if you miss out on small details or you fail to interact with things properly.  I only had one case in this game where I looked up the solution to a puzzle.  Maybe I jumped the gun a little bit, but I was pretty well stuck for 20-30 minutes in about a four screen stretch and I don’t have much patience for that kind of stuff these days.  There’s a section where you have to get past a panther guarding a door.  You grab a chicken leg, and I assumed you had to distract it with food, but that wasn’t good enough.  You need to dip the leg into a box of poison and then you kill the panther with the tainted food.  The box looked too much like the background and I didn’t recognize that it was part of the solution.  The rest of the game I managed to figure out on my own.

I went back and recorded a full playthrough of the game after beating it on stream, and it took me roughly 18 minutes to beat the game.  In a rare twist, later on I had a much faster playthrough that is lost to time.  I had participated in the Big 20 speedrun race in September 2020, and that inspired Twitch streamer ShesChardcore to create her own version she called the Chardcore 20.  Since then there have been multiple Chardcore 20s, but I participated in the first one and The Last Ninja was included in the list.  My speedrun of the game was not well optimized at all compared to leaderboard times, but I managed a 12 minute clear of the game.  The route is pretty close to the same and most of the time saved is from kicking enemies to stun them before running past.  Imagine a Ninja running away from fights!  Anyway I failed to record that playthrough, but I am satisfied with the 18-minute run I captured.

The box of The Last Ninja has Game of the Year written on it, but I don’t find any evidence of it actually winning Game of the Year.  It was the runner-up for Game of the Year from the Golden Joystick Awards out of the UK in 1988/1989.  Even still, this was a critically acclaimed game that makes sense to reach the NES.  Based on my experience with this one, I would have to imagine that the NES port of the game misses a lot of what made the original game great.  Graphically it looks nice, with plenty of varied environments and some great animation, particularly of our hero.  The music is limited to just a few songs, but they are catchy and enjoyable to hear.  The controls do take some getting used to, particularly in my case with the “swapped” directions.  It’s in the gameplay where this game falters.  The level design is solid, and most of the puzzles are fair.  Lining up either to grab items or interact with the environment provides some of the most frustrating moments in a game in quite some time.  Enemies bearing down on you during that is even worse.  All in all, it really isn’t a bad game, but nowhere near Game of the Year material to me.
 

#162 – The Last Ninja

A somewhat more pleasant Indiana Jones game this time.

I remember the color gradient is a special programming trick.

To Beat: Reach the ending
To Complete: Finish all levels and get the best ending
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 2/29/20 – 3/7/20
Difficulty: 5/10
My Difficulty: 5/10
My Video: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Taito) Longplay

I have seen all of the Indiana Jones movies, even the fourth one that everyone seems to want to forget ever happened.  I watched them all just once, all in a row, probably 10 years ago or more by now.  It was so long ago that I forgot pretty much everything from any of the movies, but not so long ago that I remembered that I enjoyed this one the most.  That seems to fall in line with the consensus of the series.  This movie had to have been well loved because the NES ended up with two video game adaptations of the movie, both bearing the name of the film.  These aren’t just label variants, but two completely different games.  They are distinguished by the publisher, so this game is considered the Taito version and the other is the Ubisoft version.  While the comparison between those two may be more interesting, I can safely say I enjoyed this one more than Temple of Doom, at least.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the third movie in the Indiana Jones saga, releasing in May 1989.  It was a huge success, grossing nearly $500 million.  The film was directed by Steven Spielberg and was co-written by George Lucas.  There were three games based on the film.  One was a graphical adventure game by LucasArts for home computers.  Another was a more action based game that launched the same year for home computers.  This was the version that was eventually ported to the NES as the Ubisoft version.  The third game, the one I played for this review, was an NES-exclusive game that released in March 1991.  It was developed by Software Creations and published by Taito Corporation.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Taito version, is a side-scrolling platformer that loosely follows the plot of the film.  You play the role of Indiana Jones in his quest to find the holy grail.  The game is played out via multiple scenes, leading up to the final scene in the lost temple where Indy chooses the holy grail.  There are cutscenes in between the levels to advance the story and set up future events.  What makes this game interesting is that you can choose which stages you want to play.  Furthermore, the more stages you complete, the more difficult later stages will become.  You can opt to play the minimum amount and skip straight ahead to the final stage.  A regular ending done that way will do for this game, but I achieved the best ending for beating all the stages.

Kick the ship out of these guys.

Considering that there are different stages made available at different times, I’ll cover the stages in the same order I chose for my playthrough, beginning with the search for the Cross of Coronado.  This stage takes place on a ship with a bunch of enemy sailors that you’ll need to fight off.  The captain of the ship carries the cross and you need to make your way over to the left side of the ship to reach him, fighting off the other baddies along the way.  At the top of the screen you’ll see your health bar, number of lives remaining represented as grail icons, and a number of sailors left to defeat before the captain shows up.  Even though the captain may be outside ready for a fight, you might have to beat up extra sailors to reach him.  This mission goes away for good if you complete two other missions ahead of it, so I like to do this one first.  At the start you have to fight 15 sailors, but if you choose this mission second then you have to fight through 30 sailors.  The game is over if you lose this mission.

The controls for Indy on this ship are shared with some other missions.  They are also the most complex out of all the missions.  You move Indy around with the D-pad.  You can double tap either Left or Right to run in that direction, holding down the directional button on the second press to continue running.  When standing or walking, the A button does a kick attack while the B button punches.  Run and press A to perform a flying kick.  Indy can get his whip out or put it away with Select, which replaces his punch attack.  Indy can duck by holding Down, and you can do low punches, whips, or kicks.  You can climb Up and Down ladders, and even kick enemies from ladders, but this leaves you vulnerable to being knocked off the ship entirely.  Indy has two more attacks.  He can throw a haymaker by holding Up and pressing B and do a jump kick by holding Up and pressing A.  The fighting in this game does not feel very good.  It seems random how you fare when fighting enemies.  Sometimes you land a good hit and knock the bad guys out right away, other times you land a bunch of hits that don’t seem to do anything.  I had the most success with the flying kick, which the manual itself mentions is best.

Hooray a door maze…

The next thing that happens in the story is Indy gets a telegraph stating that both his father is being held captive and his family friend Marcus is missing, so now you have three options for your next stage. I picked going to Castle Brunwald to save Indy’s father.  Indy is controlled in this area the same as on the ship, identical moves and all.  Only this time, you are in a giant maze.  This is a really cumbersome area to figure out.  There are doorways all over this place, some leading into other layers of the castle and some leading to staircases to bring you up and down.  The castle is three floors high and five layers deep, but you only see one layer and two floors at one time.  There are notches on the floors in groups of one through five that indicate which layer you are on, and every floor has its own shield displayed on the wall.  But essentially you are navigating in 3D space, and so this area is pretty difficult to clear.  Making matters worse is that in later difficulty levels some doors are locked.  In that case, there are some hidden passageways revealed by whipping torches on the wall.  The route through the castle is very different per difficulty level.  I had a tough time getting the hang of it on later levels, so I opted to do this one earlier.

From here you have found about where the grail is located, so now you can skip ahead to the final area if you want, but you will have a hard time without knowing what the grail looks like.  So next I went to Venice to the catacombs where a scrambled photo of the grail is found.  However, fire is raging through so you must put the pieces together and get out in time.  This stage is a sliding puzzle level.  There is a 5×5 set of tiles and you move a hand cursor with the D-pad.  Press A or B to slide either a single piece or part of a row or column toward the empty square across from the hand.  While you are constructing the grail photo, a scene below shows the fire catching up to you.  You need to complete the puzzle as best as you can, then escape by pressing Select.  In the following cutscene you will see either a full or partial picture of the grail depending on how much of it you pieced together.  You need this information to pick the proper grail at the end of the game.  You still survive if you don’t leave in time, but you lose the picture and will have to remember what the grail will look like when you make it to the end.  In later difficulties, the puzzle time is shorter and the puzzle gets more scrambled.

The final stage before the end is in the Desert of Iskenderun.  This time you are on top of a tank fighting off enemy soldiers one at a time to save Marcus.  The tank is heading for the edge of a cliff as displayed at the bottom of the screen, so that’s your time limit to complete the stage.  The controls and combat are the same as in the other side-scrolling segments.  This time, if you get knocked off the tank, you lose a life, your health bar isn’t restored, and you lose time while waiting for Indy to climb back up.  In this stage the flying kick is essential to both survival and clearing the stage in time.  There are more enemies to fight in the higher difficulties.

Solve the puzzle while also remembering the picture.

At the very beginning of the game you are entrusted with Indy’s father’s grail diary.  As a result, the enemies are out to get it at all costs.  Aside from the Coronado, if you lose in a level the diary is taken by the bad guys.  You can keep playing stages but if you lose one, it is Game Over.  An alternative is to go to Berlin to take the diary back and make your escape.  The Road to Berlin is a top-down motorcycle driving level.  You’ll have to avoid all kinds of stuff like mines, gun turrets, ravines, and enemy motorcycles as you make your way up the road.  You use the D-pad to move Left and Right as well as speed Up or slow Down.  You can jump with A or whip to the side with B.  Every time you crash, you’ll restart from a checkpoint with a little health loss.  The goal is to make your way to the end before running out of health.  This is not an easy level, but the good thing is you can keep trying as many times as you want without penalty.  For reasons I’ll explain shortly, it is best if you keep the diary for the end of the game.

The final scene in the game is The Lost Temple.  This has a few different parts to it.  First off, you’ll see a map showing a path or two through the temple.  There is an icon at the top if you have the diary, and you’ll want to make a mental note of that.  You move across the floor of the temple one step at a time with the D-pad.  Tiles on the ground have the letters in JEHOVAH and you need to walk the path of God by spelling out JEHOVAH step-by-step several times.  If you step on the wrong letter, you’ll fall and that’s Game Over.  If you happen to go the wrong way you can backtrack.  You are also racing the torch you are carrying.  When it goes out, you can’t see the letters on the floor and you’ll have to guess.  Once you make it to the other side, the next part is to walk across the invisible path as noted by the symbol that was written on the diary.  If you didn’t bring the diary with you, you can guess.  If you pass that, then your final task is to choose the Holy Grail out of a lineup.  Before choosing, you will see your note of what the grail looks like that you put together earlier.  If you choose right, you beat the game, otherwise you lose completely.  No pressure!

This was my first time playing this game.  I remember testing my cart and playing a little bit of the ship, and I didn’t do so well.  While this cart is the cheaper of the two, it is not that easy to find and costs in the $30-$40 range, which is more than I remembered when I was actively collecting.  I bought a copy of this game for about $10 in 2014, only for the seller to cancel the order because it sold too low.  A few months later I bought a different cart for $12 which is in my collection now.

Walk the path of God.

This game started out like a normal playthrough, just testing levels out and figuring the best way through.  The castle gave me the most trouble as I couldn’t find the exit.  After exploring multiple times for a few days, I gave into an FAQ and found that what I was looking for was in a room I had visited a bunch and didn’t recognize the exit.  (Perhaps this is a direct reference to the movie that I didn’t notice?) I also had some struggles with the Road to Berlin.  I could clear it on the easiest difficulties but not on the higher settings.  That became a moot point because I stopped going there when I played well elsewhere.  On either the 2nd or 3rd day I beat the game.  When you know what to do, the game is pretty short.

My next step was to beat the game while recording before moving on to the next.  In theory this should have been easy, but goodness gracious did it go poorly.  I could do the entire game fine up to choosing the grail, and then I failed over and over and over again.  It took nine tries before beating the game again.  In pretty much all attempts, I had it nailed down to two or three grails and I just kept picking the wrong one.  Re-reading the manual finally helped bail me out.  There are, at least, five attributes of the grail to examine: The lip, the handle, the cup shape, the stem, and the base.  It was the shape of the cup that I wasn’t paying close attention to that messed me up the most, though it was a few tries in before I realized I wasn’t noticing the lip of the cup also.  That first time I won I must have really been lucky.  I get that the developers were trying to do something interesting for the end of the game, and the randomized nature of it is a good idea.  It was just so frustrating and maddening to fail completely at the very end of the game to something that doesn’t at all reflect the ending of the film anyway.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Taito version, is a pretty good game that has some issues.  Presentation-wise, this is very well made.  The gameplay graphics are decent enough, but the cutscenes are digitized images from the movie that look nice in a sepia-tone.  The music is pretty good and includes the iconic theme from the film series.  The gameplay provides plenty of variety, including side-scrolling platforming, top-down action, and even a sliding block puzzle.  The controls and feel of the side-scrolling action is rough and is the most obvious issue with the game.  Combat feels clunky and random.  I can swing away at enemies, not sure if I’m doing damage, and sometimes I beat them right away and other times I get knocked around a bunch.  There’s a lot going on with the controls, making things more cumbersome when things don’t go well.  Another thing is the maze design in the castle is brutal at the higher levels.  Once you get used to things, this is a short game, and you can get skilled enough that the combat issues don’t really matter.  Just make sure that if you play this game that you are more observant with the grail than I was.

#151 – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Taito)

Ripping straight out of your NES!

Didn’t even realize this game had a 2-player mode!

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 7/25/19 – 8/1/19
Difficulty: 8/10
My Difficulty: 8/10
My Video: Werewolf: The Last Warrior Longplay

I’m just going to say this right away.  I think Werewolf: The Last Warrior is gonna be my favorite NES Box Art of 2019. The obvious element is the giant werewolf ripping out of the cover, but look closely and you will see that he bursts right out of an NES cart.  You can make out the gray lines and the chips on the green circuit board inside.  At this time, very few people took the carts apart to see what was inside because new carts didn’t need to have the pins cleaned. I bet this aspect of the cover was underappreciated.  Some other parts of the cover I like are the red text on yellow background for contrast and the huge claws on the werewolf.  With a box cover so awesome, the game inside has to be equally good, right?

Werewolf: The Last Warrior debuted on the NES in November 1990.  The game was developed and published by Data East, with development credit given to Sakata SAS.  The Famicom release came later in June 1991, published by Takara.  There the game was called Cho Jinro Senki Wourufu, translating to Super Werewolf Chronicle Warwolf.  Europe also saw an NES release in September 1991.

In this game, you play as Chief WarWolf.  The evil Dr. Faryan has created a bunch of bio-monsters that have imprisoned nearly everyone in the world.  Guess who is the only hope for civilization?  With the help and powers of the Great Spirit, you can become Werewolf which will give you the abilities needed to defeat Faryan and save humanity from his evil schemes.  There are five stages in the game, culminating in the final battle with Faryan. Beat all the levels to beat this game.

Most of the cutscenes involve this guy.

This is your typical platforming game with a mostly familiar control scheme. An obvious downside right off the bat is that you attack with A and jump with B.  I have no idea why developers did this as the convention of using A to jump and B to attack was the de facto standard.  I’ve played games long enough to be able to handle it no problem, but otherwise there is this artificial learning curve added for no real reason other than to be different.  The rest of the controls are fine.  Press the D-pad directions to move around.  You can duck with Down and climb ladders with Up.  The A button does a simple punch and you can punch high while standing or punch low while ducking.  You also wield a Power Ray as a charge attack by holding A to charge and letting go to unleash the attack.  Pressing B jumps normally, but you can do a higher jump if you hold Up while pressing B.  Start pauses the game.  While paused, you can press Select to show your score and number of lives remaining. 

At the start of the game, you meet the Great Spirit.  The game switches over to a brief cutscene where the Great Spirit gives you some advice.  Immediately after this you are thrown into a fight with one of Faryan’s death slaves. This enemy has a health bar displayed at the bottom and is a recurring mini-boss throughout the game.  Defeat him and he will leave behind a red W.  Collecting this item turns you into Werewolf.  Then you get another cutscene where you see his transformation.  Don’t worry, this scene only happens the first time you transform.

In Werewolf form, you have several new options available.  You maintain this form until you are at about a quarter of health remaining.  By default, your attacks are twice as strong as normal.  Your Power Ray now attacks everything on screen via a shock wave, but this deals you a lot of damage just to perform the move.  You also get four new movement abilities.  You can crawl into tunnels too big for you to enter normally. Simply walk into the tunnel to start crawling.  You can perform a backflip that makes you invincible to all attacks by pressing both A and B together.  You can climb walls in Werewolf form.  Simply jump into a wall to cling to it.  Now you can climb the wall by pressing either Up or Down.  To get off, you press the direction opposite the wall and press B to jump off.  Lastly, you can cling and hand-walk along ceilings with your claws.  Jump up to the ceiling, then hold Up and press A to dig your claws in.  Then you can use Left or Right to move across the ceiling and press Down to disembark. Getting hooked is tough.  You have to connect just as you are falling from the top of your jump so that you touch the ceiling with the tip of your claws.

This early spot is tough when you don’t know how to ceiling walk.

There is an anger meter at the bottom of the screen.  You collect these tiny, white bubbles that add a notch to your anger meter.  When the meter hits five bubbles, then you transform into Super Werewolf.  In this mode, you have all the same powers and abilities as Werewolf, but your attacks double in strength, you move faster, and you jump incredibly high.  The downside is that this mode is temporary as the bubbles gradually decrease.  (I guess they pop?)  Once you run out of bubbles, you switch back to Werewolf mode until you collect enough bubbles for another transformation.

There are several other items you can collect in this game.  Finding items is weird.  Some of them are dropped by enemies, and others you find by striking objects in the levels.  Sometimes these locations are obvious, like posts or boxes.  Other times you find items by hitting ledges or other places you might not expect.  It doesn’t hurt to attack random things just in case.  Anyway, here are the other items to look out for.  Small hearts heal one health point while large hearts are full health refills.  Little red bubbles defeat all enemies onscreen.  Big red bubbles make you invincible for a little while.  Why bubbles are so powerful in this game, I have no idea.  Hourglasses give you more time, dollar signs add points, and 1ups are obvious. Some enemies drop a bullet behind that gives you a single shot attack of your own with A.

The final item you need to watch out for are the blue W’s.  While red W’s upgrade you to Werewolf, the blue ones downgrade you.  They take you from Super Werewolf back to Werewolf, or from Werewolf back to plain War Wolf form.  If you grab one as War Wolf, it deals a significant amount of damage.  Therefore, you want to avoid these at all costs.  The game puts you in some situations where if you reveal a blue W, you are forced to pick it up to proceed.  Just be careful.  The manual suggests there is a way to somehow use both a blue W and a red W to go directly to Super Werewolf.  I have no idea how or if that works, and I didn’t find any information about that mechanic.

Knock stuff around until you find the good items.

The levels in this game are usually laid out a specific way.  Stages move from Left to Right with a few exceptions. Stages also typically have a high section and a low section.  You can find ladders to climb between sections and sometimes you can choose between the upper path or lower path all the way through the stage.  This can add some replay value if you want to try a different path and it lets you experiment to find the best way through a level.  All levels end in a boss fight with one of Faryan’s stronger creatures.

This game treats lives as continues.  When you fall into a pit or run out of health, it is Game Over.  If you have any lives remaining, then you can Continue from the Game Over screen or select End to start over.  When you run out of lives, the game puts you at the same screen only you are forced to choose End.  You start the game with three lives.  You can earn more by collecting 1up items or for every 50,000 points earned.  Every time you die your score goes back to 0, so you are incentivized to play well enough early to earn more lives for later.

This was my first time beating Werewolf: The Last Warrior.  I sort of remember testing this game out one time and playing until I died, which didn’t take too long that time.   I might have went further if I knew the controls.  I bought my cart copy of the game at a game store about an hour away from home that I have only visited one time.  I think I paid either $7 or $8 for it.  The game sells now for around $10 which I believe is the same as the going rate was when I bought mine.

Boss fights are much better as Super Werewolf

Beating this game was yet another installment in the series of “making incremental progress each playthrough.”  The first stage has at least a couple of spots that are tough to pass until you get a grip of the controls and all the moves you have available. The worst stopping point was the waterfall stage.  This is one of those two-tiered horizontal levels where the lower section is all water. Evidently, in this universe, werewolves cannot swim, so once you fall in you have to watch yourself drown.  There are leaping fish that can easily knock you in the drink, in part because you have a tough time hitting enemies in the air. Their placements are not quite consistent either.  It makes for a tough section and you can bleed your remaining lives away in a flash. Some other parts of the game aren’t much easier, but the waterfall was the worst I experienced.  I could have knocked the difficulty down a point or two if that stage were easier.  Still, completing the game in a week isn’t all that bad and it was a straightforward game to boot.

What I will remember most about Werewolf: The Last Warrior is how janky the game is.  I’ve already mentioned a few of these instances of jankiness, such as B button jumping, tricky ceiling clinging, and the seemingly random locations of hidden items. There are plenty more.  The backflip maneuver is very helpful in crossing some parts where taking damage is eminent, since you are invincible during the flip.  One downside of that is that there are two forced jumps associated with the move, and if you didn’t plan carefully, you could leap right into a pit.  Another quirk is that during a backflip, the screen does not scroll ahead.  You can backflip all the way to the right and then walk against the right side of the screen, leaving you completely defenseless to the dangers right in front of you.  Bosses soak up a lot of damage before going down and end up being very repetitive as a result.  Super Werewolf status makes them pretty manageable, but you may only build up to that state once or twice in the whole game.  If you are plain War Wolf, forget even trying to fight a boss.  Your attacks have one-fourth the power of Super Werewolf, and even if you play the fight perfectly you will probably run out of time before winning anyway.  There are still other minor nuisances that don’t even make a blip compared to these issues.

Werewolf: The Last Warrior is a game that falls short of most other NES platformers. I would say the graphics are just average.  Most of the sprites are large and detailed.  The Werewolf character has a lot of different poses and such for all the moves available. The music is pretty decent.  My favorite song is the one that plays when you are normal War Wolf, but unfortunately the more you hear that song the worse you are playing.  The controls take some getting used to with the B button jumping and handling specific moves like backflips and wall climbing.  The gameplay has some notable flaws.  The jumping is rather stiff and favors more vertical leaping than horizontal, which is tough considering most of the game is horizontal scrolling. Bosses and some enemies take way too many hits to defeat, leaving the timer as more of a threat here than in other games. You can tell that Ninja Gaiden was an inspiration for this game with things like its interstitial cutscenes and wall climbing moves.  Those are some huge shoes to fill, and in my opinion, Werewolf isn’t half as good as Ninja Gaiden.  It’s not terrible and there are sure to be some people that will go to bat for the game, but I’d rather play something else.

#131 – Werewolf: The Last Warrior