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