The 80s was a huge “Ninja craze” period. There were Ninja movies, Ninja comics, Ninja turtles, and of course, tons of Ninja games. The C-64 was no exception, and one of the biggest titles was Activision’s “The Last Ninja”. There were all types of faux paus with this game (a Buddha statue in a Shinto shrine, for example), but who cares, it was fun. Or it was at the time.
Ah, the familiar Activision title screen. They really started in the 80s with the “games as a movie” experience, and this game was no exception.
GREAT title screen. The music starts playing and my teenage self gets really pumped to be a Ninja in Japan.
As you can see we start off with no weapons and the axis of movement is diagonal. This makes initial movement really tricky. But with some time I figured it out and went on to beat up 2 opponents.
Despite beating these guys I didn’t earn any weapons. But I kept tregging along. When you arrive at the river, if you fall in you literally die. Luckily, it’s easy to jump over.
Once I got to a key screen I got stuck. I tried a number of keys on the keyboard to take the key; nothing worked. Nothing from the joystick worked. After a few minutes I just gave up. I couldn’t move back or do anything after this and it’s really boring, so I just gave up.
Since being a Ninja was way less fun than I thought, I thought I’d try some Judo! Firing up “Uchi Mata”
Uchi Mata has a great title screen, which is ironic because an Uchi Mata is a move throwing someone by moving your leg in between theirs and making them lose their balance (don’t be impressed, I had to look it up).
For details, see this link: Uchi Mata.
This game really made me think of the 80s classic “Karate Champ”. The characters look almost exactly the same and the movement was a lot like that game as well.
The problem with this game is that like Karate Champ, the moves were really tricky. Maybe it required 2 joysticks like that one did, I don’t know. After a few minutes I switched it off since I couldn’t figure out the moves. Every now and then I could throw my opponent.
But otherwise, it was just too tricky for me as a rookie.
Maybe after some research this one might be more fun.
In my next chapter, 2 driving games. Stay tuned!