Tag Archives: Iconic

The Last Ninja 2, Commodore 64

The sequel to the classic The Last Ninja was first released by System 3 in 1988 – one year after the original game.

It was designed by the same team as made the first game, except this time they had on board the highly-respected John Twiddy as writer/coder, and Matt Gray doing music.

Graphically, The Last Ninja 2 is arguably better than its predecessor, with more colour and variety in the environments, and some of the gameplay niggles from the first game have thankfully been addressed too. In particular: it is now easier to pick things up!

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The Last Ninja, Commodore 64

First released in 1987, The Last Ninja is a classic isometric action adventure game originating on the Commodore 64, and later being converted to other systems.

It has to be said, though: the control system used in this game does leave a lot to be desired when playing it nowadays. Getting your ninja guy to do what you want him to do is tricky – even when you know what you’re doing…

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Bruce Lee: Return of the Legend, Game Boy Advance

Created in 2003 by Vicarious Visions, Bruce Lee: Return of the Legend is an excellent side-scrolling beat ’em up that presents Bruce Lee in the role of a martial arts student fighting an evil crime syndicate in revenge for the murder of his master.

It’s an excellent game too – surprisingly so.

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Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Game Boy Advance

This handheld version of Mario Kart was developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo on the Game Boy Advance in 2001, and it is quite wonderful to play! Like pretty much every Mario Kart game ever made… What’s not to like about them?

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Donkey Kong Country, Super Nintendo

Donkey Kong Country is a famous SNES platform game, created by British developer Rare and published by Nintendo in 1994.

It is famous for a number of reasons. Primarily because it was one of the first mainstream games to use pre-rendered 3D graphics in a 2D setting. And also because it was one of the biggest cartridges Nintendo ever produced, and was a massive-seller.

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Pac-Mania, Arcade

Pac-Mania is the 1987 sequel to the classic Pac-Man, and it is generally very highly-rated by those who’ve played it.

Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani was involved in Pac-Mania‘s development for Namco, so the game is properly canon, totally authentic, and deviously subtle.

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Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, Super Nintendo

The follow-up to one of the best platform games of all time (Super Mario World), is – unsurprisingly – also one of the best platform games of all time!

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was released by Nintendo in 1995 to much anticipation, and it didn’t disappoint.

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Pilotwings, Super Nintendo

Nintendo‘s famous flying game, Pilotwings, first came out in Japan in 1990, then the following year was a launch title for the North American and European releases of the Super Nintendo.

Pilotwings uses scaling and rotation effects (known as ‘Mode 7’ in some circles) to give a visual representation of the ground, with regular 2D sprites making up everything else, and it works extremely well.

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