Mastertronic
Price: £9.95
This is the first in Mastertronic's budget range
of games for the ST. Basically Ninja Mission' is the old
Mastertronic game 'Ninja' ported across from the 8-bit computers,
however the graphics have been improved a fair bit.
Upon loading the game, you are greeted with quite
an impressive picture, along with a fairly good tune. The tune was
written by David Whittaker, who I believe is quite well known for
his musical creations on the Commodore 64. The game has you playing
the part of a Ninja who has to 'Enter the Temple of Death and regain
the glowing idols stolen from the Princess by the Hordes of
Darkness'. What this really means is that Ninja Mission' is an
arcade adventure where you go around picking things up, and instead
of shooting little robots or whatever, you have to beat them up,
Ninja style.
The mission begins at the Tori, and here you will
usually find a Ninja star or two lying on the ground. You pick this
up and then head off to either the left or right hand side of the
screen. When you leave the screen, everything goes black and the
name of the next screen comes up in suitably chunky Chinese style
writing. This is all very pretty, but it does slow down the game
considerably. Other than that the game is quite playable and
enjoyable if you like beat 'ern up games. The sprites are very good,
being fairly large and reasonably detailed (not as much as the
International Karate sprites though!) and they move quite smoothly.
The joystick reacts quite well unlike on some karate games, and
there is a reasonable number of moves, some of which I have not come
across before in any other Karate game, involving such things as a
Samurai sword and the ninja stars.
Overall this isn't a bad game but it is not the
game that will 'Blow the black belts off all the others' as the
packaging claims. The price is good, although I still don't count
nearly ten quid to be a budget release
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