The arcade version of Shinobi was developed and published by Sega in 1987. It is a scrolling run-and-gun action game featuring a lead character called Joe Musashi who is on a mission to defeat the Zeed terrorist organisation. The aim of the game is to rescue kidnapped students of his clan and each level has a certain number of hostages to release.
Tag Archives: ninjas
Bruce Lee, Apple II
Predictably the Apple II conversion of Bruce Lee isn’t that great. It’s nowhere near as bad as the awful BBC Micro version, but it does have its problems. It first came out in 1984 and was programmed by Rick Mirsky.
Bruce Lee, Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC version of Datasoft‘s Bruce Lee, developed by Timedata Ltd., is excellent – not far off the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 versions, which are rightly regarded as retro-gaming classics.
Bruce Lee, ZX Spectrum
Bruce Lee on the ZX Spectrum was developed by Ocean Software and is an excellent conversion of the Atari 8-bit original. It’s playable, solid, and remains great fun to play to this day. It even retains the simultaneous two-player mode from the original.
Bruce Lee, MSX
The MSX conversion of Datasoft‘s classic Atari 8-bit/Commodore 64 game, Bruce Lee, was coded by Mike Livesay and published by Comptiq in 1985.
Shinobi II: The Silent Fury, Game Gear
Shinobi II: The Silent Fury is the sequel to the first Shinobi on the Game Gear and it was first published by Sega in 1992.
It’s a scrolling platform action game where you control Joe Musashi on a mission to retrieve five elemental crystals that have been stolen by the enemy and hidden across different locations in the game.
Skull & Crossbones, Arcade
I hadn’t seen this 1989 arcade game from Atari Games before, until I played it recently, and even then I found it on the Commodore 64 first, then realised that it was an arcade conversion.
Skull & Crossbones has all the ingredients of a classic arcade action game, but – having played it extensively now – I can see why it failed…
The Last Ninja 3, Commodore 64
The Last Ninja 3 was released by System 3 in 1991 and it follows the same isometric/action template as the previous two games.
Again: there are refinements and differences that make The Last Ninja 3 a worthwhile game in its own right – in particular: the graphics, which are more detailed and colourful than seen previously.
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!
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…
The King of Grabs 