Ninja Hamster has returned to the village where he was born after many years away, but a gang of nasty creatures has overrun it, so he must take them on. The creatures have silly names like Sinister Rat, the Lizard of Death, Barmy Bee and Loony Lobster - great! Unfortunately, underneath all of this wackiness is a bland, repetitive single-screen beat-'em-up. On each level, you must battle against one of these mutant creatures, and you must knock him out six times before you can take on another opponent. The graphics are awful, and even hardened beat-'em-up fans will find this game quite disappointing - although the Oriental-themed music on the menu is worth listening to.

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Amstrad Action's Adam Waring was responsible for this rather average maze game. You're a ninja and in each level, you have to find the exit, but you'll have to find keys and eat fruit to restore your energy that is constantly taken away from you by the armies of monsters attacking you. The graphics are reasonable and the music is quite good, and while the game is startlingly unoriginal (it's a blatant Gauntlet clone), it's OK if you want a quick game of something. There are also passwords for every five levels to help you.

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Ever wondered how ninjas actually become those masked assassins we all know and love? Well, according to this game, they take part in a kind of Ninja Olympics to gain the title of Master Ninja. There are four events - punching and kicking arrows out of the air, breaking blocks of wood, deflecting shurikens with your sword and using your blowpipe to shoot darts into cans that fly past you. Progress through these and you start again but with a higher score to qualify. There's not much to it; you can only use the keyboard to play, and the graphics and sound are absolutely terrible, but it's still quite fun (for a while), and at least it tries something a bit different. Oh, and you'll need lightning reflexes to get past the third stage!

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5

Ever wondered what it's like to ride on a Ninja Scooter? If so, then this is the simulator for you! Anyway, onto the review... and really there's not much to say. You control a ninja on a scooter, and must travel down the road, from left to right, avoiding obstacles and performing stunts, and then do the same, but this time from right to left. So this is what ninjas do in their spare time! The levels get progressively harder, but are never a real challenge, and you'll soon see the same levels cycling over and over, as you rack up a huge score. Graphics and sound are about average, but - here's the surprise - the game is actually a lot of fun and is unbelievably addictive! It's nothing ground-breaking and it's not a classic, but I like it anyway!

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The Ninja Warriors
(Virgin, 1989)
Reviewed by Ninja Wonderboy

In the near future, the city is controlled by the evil dictator Bangler. Unable to live under his corrupt rule any longer, the people band together and build two robotic ninjas to go against Bangler's empire and bring it crashing down. As the blue Ninja Warrior (and the red one, if you've got a friend), you must traverse the six horizontally scrolling levels and dispose of any bad guy that comes your way using your twin blades and your limited supply of shurikens, and ultimately destroy Bangler in his lair. Despite good, colourful graphics and a nice title screen tune, this Vigilante clone is let down by being far too difficult. On top of that, it's quite monotonous, as all the levels are very long, look the same, and scroll very slowly. A disappointing ninja game.

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5

One night, while riding your bicycle on your way home, you are kidnapped by aliens and you now find yourself on a spaceship, inside a metal room. When you escape from the room, you discover that the spaceship's mission is to collect animal specimens from Earth, but your mission is to return home. I didn't like this GAC text adventure at all. It's very hard to know what puzzles you're supposed to solve, and the game's vocabulary seems to be quite small. Even getting out of the first room is a problem - you are supposed to bash or kick the wall and then get the sunglasses from the man that appears, but hitting the wall doesn't work. The inability to examine any objects is also annoying, and most adventurers will find this game frustrating.

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NOMAD
(Ocean, 1986)

A giant artificial asteroid called Talos, controlled by Cyrus T. Gross, is wreaking havoc across the galaxy, and the Nemesis Organisation has hired a droid to penetrate the asteroid and destroy Gross. The asteroid consists of long, tortuous mazes filled with guns and missiles - a tricky combination, made even more so by the control method used to move your droid; getting it to go where you want is irritating. The graphics are good, but the sound effects are just white noise and the game is too difficult; you need more than three lives.

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4

Becoming a knight has never been an easy task in computer games. In this one, you have to find your way out of a castle packed with monsters, carrying no weapons at all. You character moves through long corridors and rooms, getting to other floors helped by ropes scattered around the castle. The problem is that your character movements are a bit slow and jerky, and the enemies seem to come up from nowhere. Nevertheless, Nonamed has nice and colourful graphics, although a bit simple and small. This means that, although the game is reasonably enjoyable at first, it's too difficult to keep the player interested.

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5

That's a difficult word to spell (it means 'neither of the earth nor the sea'), and the game is even more so. The citizens of the planet Nonterraqueous have sent a robotic seeker to destroy a computer which is currently in control. Getting started requires you to convert your seeker into something that can shoot lasers, and you also have to blow up the a barrier with a bomb to enter the main complex. However, if you touch any of the photon thrusters, you die instantly - and since they're usually tricky to avoid, this ruins the game. The maze is also far too big; I think there are over 500 locations!

See also: Into Oblivion, Soul of a Robot.

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4

North and South
(Infogrames, 1991)

If you're French, you might know of a cartoon called Les Tuniques Bleues. This game is based on the cartoon and re-enacts the American Civil War. You can start from any year from 1861 to 1864, and this affects the amount of units and territory you own. The aim is to gain as much territory as possible and to wipe out all the enemy units by going into battle with them, where you and the enemy fight it out with cannons, infantry and horsemen! The graphics are nothing short of excellent and there's a great introduction sequence with an amazingly catchy tune. The fort and train attack sequences are a bit slow but that doesn't stop the rest of the game being fun, especially with a friend.

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