{"id":277,"date":"2026-04-04T19:29:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T19:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/japanobserver.net\/?p=277"},"modified":"2026-04-04T19:29:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T19:29:28","slug":"commodore-games-part-iii-the-last-ninja-and-uchi-mata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/2026\/04\/04\/commodore-games-part-iii-the-last-ninja-and-uchi-mata\/","title":{"rendered":"Commodore games, part III: The Last Ninja and Uchi Mata"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

\"Activision
Before they were evil…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Last
Ah, the Ninja craze of the 80s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

GREAT title screen. The music starts playing and my teenage self gets really pumped to be a Ninja in Japan.<\/p>\n

\"Last
Off to do Ninja stuff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Last
Thought you were BAD, eh?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Last
Splash time<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Last
A KEY scene<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since being a Ninja was way less fun than I thought, I thought I’d try some Judo! Firing up “Uchi Mata”<\/p>\n

\"Uchi
You’ll FLIP for good title screens!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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).<\/p>\n

For details, see this link: Uchi Mata<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Uchi
It begins<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Uchi
Down you go!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But otherwise, it was just too tricky for me as a rookie.<\/p>\n

\"Uchi
Cool dragon!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Maybe after some research this one might be more fun.<\/p>\n

In my next chapter, 2 driving games. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Commodore games, part III: The Last Ninja and Uchi Mata”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,28,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commodore","category-retro-computing","category-retro-gaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/japanobserver.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}