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The One
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Converting a coin-op is one thing, but squeezing three screens into one? Gary Whitta dusts off his pyjama trousers to put Virgin's latest Taito conversion through its paces.
The Ninja Warriors
It's 1993 and America has changed a lot since the familiar days of Big Macs and The Brady Bunch. After a bloody coup, the society we once knew has fallen and been replaced by a police state controlled by a new President, the evil dictator Bangler.
With the army, police and the criminal underground all at Bangler's command, no-one dares stand in his way. Except the Ninja Warriors, two robots skilled in the art of Ninjitsu, built by a small band of rebels and sent out to assassinate Bangler and restore freedom to the galaxy...
So goes the rather unlikely storyline for The Ninja Warriors, the latest in a line of Taito coin-op conversions from Virgn and The Sales Curve (after SilkWing). This one was arguably the most difficult of the four to convert, thanks to the coin-op's innovative method of using three monitors side by side to create a Cinemascope-style playing area.
![The Ninja Warriors](/ills_small/amiga_500/virgin/3_5_discs/The-Ninja-Warriors-002.png)
These days 16-bit gamers are practically spoilt for choice when it comes to shoot-'em-ups, sport simulations, arcade adventures, racing games... everything in fact, except from any quality beam-'em-ups.
Apart from the brilliant IK+ (which is now over a year old), there's virtually nothing to satisfy would-be Ninjas - or at least there wasn't until now.
Random Access' conversion succeeds where all the others have failed - it feels good to play. The action never lets up, as there are always plenty of things to kill, and, more importantly, the combat moves don't take five seconds to execute - one quick stab of the fire button is enough to gore an enemy soldier.
Because the combat moves can be executed so quickly, you can cut your way through a whole platoon of soldiers without too much trouble. The sampled 'urgh!' and squirt of blood that accompanies each kill adds to the fun, as does the two-player element, where the players have to cover each others' backs to survive.
The graphics are a little blotchy in places, and a wider variety of sampled sound would have been nice, but it's the strength of the gameplay that makes it what it is - one of the best beat-'em-ups to date.
Scores
Amiga 500 VersionGraphics | 80% |
Sound | 82% |
Playability | 84% |
Value For Money | 71% |
Overall | 82% |