The Last Ninja Collection + Bonus Games Review (Switch)

Of all the collections we thought might make their way to the Switch, we didn’t have a Last Ninja collection at the top of our likelihood list. With the prevalence of C64 releases on the Evercade that seemed like a far more likely destination. We are however delighted to see one of the most iconic franchises of the 8-bit computer era find its way to a new audience.

One-time British powerhouse, System 3 has been pretty quiet for a long time. We had a Putty Squad release a long time ago and Constructor, but this is by far their most high-profile release for decades. Even then, it took a Kickstarter campaign to finally get the franchise over the line in some form. In terms of context of why a Ninja game was out on the C64, it can help to remember that the West was absolutely obsessed with Kung Fu and Eastern culture back in the 80’s, with martial arts movies prevalent at video rental shops.

What you get included here is The Last Ninja one, two and three and the Last Ninja Remix with the C64, Amiga and ZX Spectrum versions of the relevant titles. As well this Internation Karate and IK+ are added in as bonus games along with the easily forgettable Bangkok Knights.

There’s no hiding that anyone new to these games is going have a steep learning curve to go through. The games are difficult and the controls and isometric viewpoint will take some time to adjust to. The basic layout of all three games is similar. You explore a level, pick up weapons and key objects and then progress to the next. But you can leave key items behind and then find you can’t progress later such as the glove in the first game which is needed to pick up a poisoned rose later, or the shuriken’s in the second game.

There are also traps and puzzle elements to overcome and the river and swamp jumping sections were infuriating even in the 80’s. All that said, the first two games are stone cold classics and when it clicks, they still offer a unique experience. The Last Ninja 3 isn’t as strong sadly and the emphasis on almost constant combat makes things very frustrating.

Which brings us to the added quality of life features. Or lack of them. There is no rewind function which is the biggest shame as that would have really made these games accessible, and no way to implement any kind of cheat codes. There is a save function. But each game can only have one game saved and there is also no quick save and load option, meaning you have to quit and then reload when you want to load again. Why we couldn’t just have a load option in-game I don’t know. That said, the screen transition very quickly so we didn’t find it to be a major issue and we were loading a lot. It’s strange though as the Steam version seems to have one.

The other disappointment is the extras. It seems clear the museum text is pretty much all identical for each game with a few words (such as the platform) changed. That’s a real missed opportunity as getting a real insight into some of these titles would have been great.

We are somewhat surprised that IK+ doesn’t get a bigger billing on this collection as it was arguably as iconic as the Ninja games back in the day. Here you have three combatants on a single screen trying to score points to win a round of karate. As these are 8-bit computer games, controls are based around a one button joystick configuration. In this case, you hold a button then press a direction to break out different moves. It actually works really well, and no matter which version you are playing it’s a great high score chasing games.

We found that the Last Ninja games where best played in their C64 guise. This makes sense as this was originally the main platform for games. The ZX Spectrum version of Last Ninja 2 is also remarkably playable. We found the Amiga versions, although they look a lot better, to be far less playable. And if anything, the extra graphical detail made the environments more difficult to traverse and objects more difficult to find.

Overall, we are just really happy that this collection exists at all. These are games that really should be preserved with Last Ninja 1 and 2 and IK+ being among some of the most iconic games the British games industry has ever produced. Yes, there could be more here in terms of the quality of life and museum features, but we can hope for that in an update. We just hope that this gives System 3 some latitude to get other release out the door, we would love to see a Putty or James Pond Collection in the future also.

Overall 7/10