Games That Weren't^®

A controversial entry originally, but which was eventually the result of a development which became too difficult for the original team to complete. Hugh Riley and Mark Cale shed light on the original Last Ninja and what happened….

Casting things back, it was claimed some years ago that Last Ninja was originally a game by an Hungarian team, which was to have System 3 as the publisher. The rumor was that the team had sent System 3 an almost complete version for testing, and System 3 finished it off and published it.

Further to this, another Hungarian told the story of how he spoke to a mathematician who claimed to be part of the original LN development crew. The mathematician backed up his claim by demonstrating the Level editor system used to place trees and other objects into the game.

The contributor (who wanted to remain nameless) went on to say…

“I couldn’t believe my eyes! He told me, that for example Shogun on the last level moves so “dizzy”, because they couldn’t finish it. They sent the program out for testing (or checking to Germany or England I’m not quiet sure), and they stole the whole program, after they finished quickly and released before the Hungarian group finished the same.

If it’s true, than what a scandal! He told me, that originally you didn’t have to throw a gas bomb under the dragon’s nose – the only thing you had to to is to avoid its flames (and that’s right I downloaded the LN preview). He told me moreover, that originally you could kill the spider in the dungeons by jumping onto his “back”. That remained just a plan. He also told me the date of the programming works. Unfortunately I forgot it, but, I think from August 1986 to March or April 1987.”

Was any of this true? Well, it was declared as complete rubbish.

The story developed and became clearer a few years ago as Kai Spitzley, webmaster of the excellent Last Ninja archives, shared findings, including the following from Hugh Riley (Graphics artist for LN1 and 2)…

“When I came onto Ninja 1 it was being programmed for System 3 by a subsidiary of Andromeda in Hungary (Caesar the Cat? now there’s going back!).

Bob Stevenson had done some mock up screens for the adverts then left. I spent 3 weekends in Budapest (still behind the iron curtain) where it became apparent that their programmers were having difficulties.

They were programming in forth (used for washing machines) so back in London John Twiddy was brought in to rewrite the code and we worked together in Mark Cale’s (Mr System 3) front room and various other places. By the time we finished Twiddy reckoned there was only one byte left in the machine which explains the crappy ending.”

GTW also got in touch with one of the original developers of Last Ninja, Istvan Bodnari, who confirmed the level editor, but didn’t know its existence now. Nothing was mentioned about the game being stolen though, so we believe that nothing bad actually happened. He even confirmed that the graphics were all supplied by System 3, so it confirms Andromedia were developing the game FOR System 3, and it was not a game that System 3 were trying to purchase from them.

Although we now had both Hugh and Istvan confirming the real story, Mark Cale also came in to set the record straight as well in November 2015:

“I wanted to put a close to the idea that Hungarian team wrote and finished 85% another Last Ninja. Hugh Riley will tell you they tried and failed. Currently we are making a number of videos from people we have worked with including Andromeda about all our games.

Andromeda’s Robert Stein will state on video that he refunded all the advances we gave on Last Ninja as they failed to even get a ninja sprite Hugh drew to animate let alone fight. The only game ever finished by them was IK on the Atari ST and that was only after I sent both Archer Maclean and Bob Stevenson to Budapest.

Hugh and I did 3 trips to Hungary and gave up on Last Ninja when we found out they were writing the game in Forth which is almost as slow as basic. The screen shot you showed was the original Bob Stevenson concept shot which we had published in magazines like C&VG announcing the game. I’m sure Hugh, Archer and Bob can all tell you their thoughts on the quality of game programming at the time.”

Frustratingly there was no Ninja character to move or fight with other characters!

So there we have it. We’re unsure how some of the original stories came to fruition, but it is a chapter that can sort of be closed. The video itself surfaced a few years ago at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOzcDPCNd_I for you to check out (in Hungarian). Regardless of the controversies there could well be another version of Last Ninja out there, and we would love to find this early version. But it sounds like essentially it would just be a broken version of the game we all know and love, with the same graphics and maps that Hugh had done. It would be only interesting from a historical point of view.

The large screenshot with rather different looking background elements and a score panel which is vastly different in the gallery was confirmed to be an original concept screenshot. This was drawn by Bob Stevenson and was published in magazines like CVG announcing the game. When Bob left the project, Hugh took over and re-did some of the panels and graphics, but essentially the end result was fairly similar.

Interestingly, in the sleeve of International Karate, along with Last Ninja – two other further titles are announced for 1986 in the form of Last Ninja: Return of the Last Ninja and Revenge of the Last Ninja. Martin/Stadium64 wonders if the two parts would have just been some of the later levels split into a sequel of some kind. They didn’t get far anyway, possibly after the first game got delayed like it did.

Recently in 2021, we have added the Zzap Sampler tape and various demos disk (thanks to The Last Ninja archives) to the downloads, as it contains a non-playable preview of The Last Ninja that features a number of sprites and backgrounds which never featured in the final game. There is also a slightly different game panel too. Marcin ‘Tenchi’ Świętoniewski kindly provided versions where the panel had no corruption.

I wondered if there is any way of making the demo playable, so other screens could be uncovered. Well, in 2022, Luigi Di Fraia confirmed that only the 4 locations shown were present, after decoding the integrator file for the demo.

A massive thanks to Jazzcat, Mark Cale and Hugh Riley for finally clearing up the story behind the game!

Wasn’t Liverpool The Game released in 1993? Yes, it was – but it seems that Grandslam had a previous version underway in 1989, a long long time before its eventual release. But what a difference though between the two!

This earlier version had a Emlyn Hughes perspective, but then the final game from 1993 had a top down Microprose Soccer approach to it.

Looking at the magazine screenshots that snuck out, the first version looks a bit crowded and not quite as good as the final edition. Your Commodore magazine however oddly reviewed the game and gave it 92%, suggesting that it had been complete.

So after that review, why did Grandslam not release it? Many years after we first set up this entry, Dave Spicer shed some light on the game with the following:

“I can give you a little bit more info about the 1990 version of Grandslam’s Liverpool game. The last person to work on the game was Paul Rogers, who previously wrote Time Solider for Smart Egg Software.

Paul inherited a semi-working version of the code and was given the unenviable task of trying to turn it into something workable within a very short time period. I supplied a few sound effects, purely as a favour, although I’ve no idea if he actually ended up using them.

Paul’s whereabouts these days is anyone’s guess… Maybe you can track him down?”

No exact reason why the first version was never released. As the game was completed, it could have been reworked into a budget football game if it were that bad. The Amstrad version was actually released. The Amstrad release is is odd, as the ad described that version as ‘under consideration’ whereas none of the confirmed versions surfaced.

Your Commodore speculated that Grandslam went under, only for them to reappear later (possibly after a takeover). So its likely the C64 edition was caught up in all of this. Your Sinclair reported in 1990 that Grandslam had brought in the receivers, so the CPC version must have just sneaked out before then. We guess someone must have came in and saved Grandslam, as they lived on for many years after and eventually did release another Liverpool title.

Well, we got hold of Paul Rogers, and he confirms that it was a case of “don’t worry, most of the work is done” from Grandslam when he was given the game to finish off (which someone else had started and left).

However, the game was in a right state and he ended up having to restart things again with the same design and sort the mess out. Paul goes on holiday at somepoint, and when he gets back he finds a load of suits saying that the company has gone into administration – and so it was left incomplete. Grandslam later reappeared and had the game done from scratch in 1993 by Arc Developments.

So there we have it! The first version was never complete, and Your Commodore therefore reviewed something that was never complete. That’s pure 92% gold, and up there alongside the 100% rating for Last Ninja 3 shortly after its big spread on System 3.

So what about the game? Well, Paul managed to find his disks and got the game up and running in 2020, and we’re hoping to see digital back ups at some point to be able to add onto the site. Exciting news and findings, so watch this space!

After sampling the great Rolling Ronny game from BONESPARK, they had much much more in store for our beloved C64’s back in the early 90’s. One such promising title was a conversion of a stunning Amiga German (thanks Teki!) shooter called “Lethal Xcess”.

BONESPARK were nominated to convert the game to the humble C64, which was to have 150 animated objects on the screen at once, 100 different sprites and 30 screens long levels made up of 3 charsets at a time.

Sadly the cause of the game’s death was not its impossibility of being converted, but the fact that development time was underestimated. At what was first predicted to take about 3 months to create, turned out to really add up to 12-13 months worth of work. BONESPARK simply did not have the money to go on for this period of time. Mario doesn’t really agree with this, and feels the game could have been done.

So after reaching level 2 with the game, it was finally cancelled after 20% completion.

Currently, remains recovered are a whole first level map courtesy of Oliver Lindau, who first put us in touch with his website and bits, a sample set of enemies and animations and the remains of the game’s music composed by Thomas Detert in .SID format.

Playable forms of the game exist, and although limited, these would be interesting to view from a GTW perspective. Hopefully Oliver may be able to pass on any playable elements of the game, or even Mario himself. At least now in late 2008/2009 we start by seeing the actual level 1 graphics released with the Bones Park editor – which you can now download from here.

The good news is that the programmer is quite happy for the game to be put out in its preview form. It is just a case of the disks being dug out with the previews on. This could be a little while yet, but its good news that you may get to see the promise of this exciting conversion. This may not happen though if Mario decides like he says to possibly FINISH the C64 conversion if he digs out his C64… in that case we will be waiting a bit longer for Mario to realize his dream.

Mario tells GTW that a lot of elements were taken from Rolling Ronny which were unusued. Not gameplay elements, but technical bits of code which were never used but developed. This would have possibly been the greatest SEU ever seen on a C64 had it been complete.

Within the screenshots we have added another shot which was scanned from a magazine, showing the actual game in action. As you can just about see, the game looked to be very action packed, and the magazine seemed very impressed with what they saw.

What has to be done now is for GTW to preserve as much of the game as possible, and archive it here where it belongs. A huge shame it never saw the light of day, and had it done, then no doubt it would have been a huge success.

For now we live in the comfort that the game will surface in some form at some point… IF Mario’s disks are still working. Oliver however does have all the graphics he did, so not everything is lost. There is hopefully more to tell in this story we hope…

A sad loss for the C64 in its dying days…