The Last Ninja is an action-adventure game originally developed and published by System 3 in 1987 for the Commodore 64. It was converted to the Apple IIGS, MS-DOS, BBC Micro and Acorn Electron in 1988, the Apple II series in 1989, the Amiga and Atari ST (as Last Ninja Remix) in 1990, and the Acorn Archimedes in 1991. It is one of the most successful games released on the Commodore 64. It was followed by Last Ninja 2 and Last Ninja 3. Gameplay The Last Ninja contains a blend of exploration, puzzle solving, and combat. The object of the game is to guide the ninja protagonist Armakuni on his journey to the palace of the evil shogun Kunitoki to assassinate him, avenging his clan, and retrieve the sacred scrolls. As the player progresses, Kunitoki's henchmen become more challenging as they learn the ways of the ninja. The interface consists of the opponents' energy and collected inventory (on the right) and player's health (on the bottom). The world is viewed in an isometric perspective allowing the player to move in eight directions. Movements are relative to the direction Armakuni is facing but restricted to predefined paths upon inaccessible scenery. Precision must be used when navigating and jumping around obstacles, traps, and fatal features of the terrain. By approaching and kneeling at certain landmarks, such as shrines to Buddha and water fountains, an indication of what to collect next is revealed. These items are often hidden in trees or bushes and flash shortly after a new screen has been entered. Attack moves are executed by combinations of directional controls with the fire button for attacking the opponent's head, torso and legs. Weapons, like the ninjato, nunchaku, staff, shuriken, and smoke bombs, can be equipped. Development The program was originally developed for System 3 in Hungary for almost a year by a team called SoftView (an internal development team of Novotrade Software) but the financial advance for the work was refunded and the Hungarian team was uncredited for its work. SoftView developed it in its proprietary Forth-like language as a foundation for portability. A lot of time was spent developing the programming language and game engine. The team had some of the levels done, but missed all the deadlines, so the code was returned to London by Cale, and the engine rewritten for the Commodore 64 by John Twiddy. Cale said: "Basically, the