The Last Ninja

Cancelled ports

The Last Ninja was advertised and previewed in most major Sinclair ZX Spectrum magazines. The game ran into a number of problems and System 3 ended up developing and releasing Last Ninja 2 instead for the Spectrum. In issue 54 of UK gaming magazine Crash it is claimed that the first game was half finished. The game (or possibly its follow-up) was also being ported to the Tandy Color Computer 3, and even mentioned in Tandy's catalogues. The project facing difficulties, Steve Bjork was called in to help before the game was finally canceled. As a recently recovered development version shows, the CoCo port was already at an advanced state when it was scrapped. For information and pictures, refer to Allen Huffman's site.

Delayed port

In 1988, Marc Rosocha had a conversion of "The Last Ninja" ready for Atari ST and Amiga computers. But this was not released until 1990. This version was titled Ninja Remix and featured extended graphics and was completely programmed from scratch. It should not be mistaken with re-released, enhanced version of 8-bit "The Last Ninja 2".

Awards

• Computer and Video Games
  • May 1988 (Issue #79) - Golden Joystick 1988 Award: Runner Up category Game of the Year
• Game Art Beyond
  • In 2018, The Last Ninja was selected as one of the biggest classics on the Commodore 64 by the creators of the C64 graphics collection Game Art Beyond. Last Ninja was honoured with a high resolution title picture in a special C64 graphics format called NUFLI, along with a new interpretation of the Last Ninja (Level 1) theme.
• Retro Gamer
  • September 2004 (Issue #8) – #90 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
• ZZAP! 64
  • Newsfield Reader's Awards 1987 - Best Arcade Adventure (Readers' Vote)
  • Newsfield Reader's Awards 1987 - Best Graphics (Readers' Vote)