Yet another Titus title which was mentioned in a schedule list from 1990 for the C64 on Tape and Disk. Strangely the game never surfaced on any platform and doesn’t seem to have got past the schedule list. Just what kind of game was this?
Well it was a fighting game with animals, and got relatively far on 16-bit platforms – Atari ST and Amiga versions have surfaced over the years which show something a little bit like Ninja Rabbits.
It seems the 8-bit conversions were to follow, but because the 16-bit versions were canned due to the company not having enough funds to see things through to completion, these were all cancelled.
As a result, it means there is very likely nothing of a C64 conversion to find, and could well be a case closed!
Contributions: Fabrizio Bartoloni
Supporting content
Available downloads
- titus.pdf (pdf)
Creator speaks
One of the creators talks about development of the 16-bit game:
“We started work on this ‘Beat ’em up’ in late 1988, I think; the initial idea came from Didier, the studio’s art director.
Ninjanimal was inspired by Altered Beast; we controlled a ninja who had the ability to transform!
We created a few backgrounds (very successful ones, in fact) and I programmed a demo to present the project to several publishers! (Titus and Ubi-Soft in particular)
I had a bit of fun adding a few little ‘tricks’ typical of demo-makers, such as a colour raster and a low-overscan graphic. (Something I never did again.)
My 68000 code wasn’t optimised, but the idea was to present a sufficiently appealing prototype to a few publishers.
Unfortunately, the company didn’t have enough funds to see the project through to completion.
In fact, an unscrupulous distributor left us with a rather large outstanding debt (notably from sales of *Les Portes du temps*) and thus jeopardised the company’s financial stability.
Legend Software is forced to close its doors prematurely.”
Update history
13/06/26 – Added Creator speaks segment from 16-bit author and detail about the game and what happened.
Ninjanimal demo on Atari ST is available for download here: https://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-ninjanimal_31454.html , a couple Amiga shots in this other thread: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=119535 .
The direct source from the team says:
“We started work on this ‘Beat ’em up’ in late 1988, I think; the initial idea came from Didier, the studio’s art director.
Ninjanimal was inspired by Altered Beast; we controlled a ninja who had the ability to transform!
We created a few backgrounds (very successful ones, in fact) and I programmed a demo to present the project to several publishers! (Titus and Ubi-Soft in particular)
I had a bit of fun adding a few little ‘tricks’ typical of demo-makers, such as a colour raster and a low-overscan graphic. (Something I never did again.)
My 68000 code wasn’t optimised, but the idea was to present a sufficiently appealing prototype to a few publishers.
Unfortunately, the company didn’t have enough funds to see the project through to completion.
In fact, an unscrupulous distributor left us with a rather large outstanding debt (notably from sales of *Les Portes du temps*) and thus jeopardised the company’s financial stability.
Legend Software is forced to close its doors prematurely.”
French source for the latter: http://safargames.fr/ninjanimal/
Thanks Fabrizio – looks like I need to create an ST/Amiga entry!
I’ll make a note!
being 1990 it’s safe to assume it was due for 16 bit first and then converted to C64 but the failure to deliver on the first led to give up on the latter.