“I hope they choke on an AI-generated fishbone.” Those were the recent words of developer Chris Sorrell about publisher System 3, in reference to their treatment of the James Pond games Sorrell had developed. This followed System 3’s release of a trailer for their new James Pond collection, which was visibly filled with the product of generative AI. System 3 owner Mark Cale at first denied the obvious, before switching to blaming contractor Antstream. Cale added that “at the end of the day, if people think we’re going to redraw, re-render to that quality, and have 20 or 30 people working two years on it, forget it: It’s not going to happen […] it would not match an investment versus a return.”

A long time has passed since the 1980s, but back then Mark Cale’s System 3 were the proud developer of some celebrated and high profile games. In 1987 that included both fun-filled three-player fighting game International Karate+ and isometric martial arts adventure The Last Ninja. The latter was a major success on the Commodore 64. At a time when it was increasingly rare for single-format games to grace the upper reaches of the chart, System 3 set about trying to make some conversions. Echoing the somewhat convoluted development process of the original game, they found it hard going.

  • The Last Ninja (System 3, 1987, Commodore 64)
  • The Last Ninja (System 3, 1987, Commodore 64)
  • IK+ (System 3, 1987, Commodore 64)
  • IK+ (System 3, 1987, Commodore 64)

At some point, struggling to get a Spectrum version of The Last Ninja to work, System 3 turned to Mevlüt Dinç, aka Mev Dinc. He was about 30 years old (in his autobiography he writes that he has no idea of his actual birthday) and grew up in Turkey before marrying a British woman and moving to the UK. Working for the Standard and Telephones Company in Southampton in 1983, one of his colleagues suggested he should get a ZX Spectrum, and it started a fascination with computers and programming. Dinc taught himself assembly programming, and by the following year was making uncredited programming contributions to the Commodore 64 conversion of Ant Attack.

In 1985 and 1986, he wrote a couple of his own games, Gerry the Germ Goes Body Poppin’ and Prodigy, programming them on both Spectrum and Amstrad. By then, Dinc was using an enhanced Amstrad CPC as his development system, and was able to compile and test his work much faster as a result. The next game which got him noticed was his Amstrad conversion of Enduro Racer, the arcade racer that Sega made before Out Run. Activision came to him at the last minute and, impressed with the Spectrum version by Ian Morrison and Alan Laird, he agreed to get it to work on the new format. His work didn’t exactly use the Amstrad’s full graphic capabilities, but he did get it done rapidly.

  • Gerry the Germ Goes Body Poppin’ (Firebird, 1985, ZX Spectrum)
  • Gerry the Germ Goes Body Poppin’ (Firebird, 1985, ZX Spectrum)
  • Prodigy (Electric Dreams, 1986, Amstrad CPC)
  • Prodigy (Electric Dreams, 1986, Amstrad CPC)
  • Enduro Racer (Activision, 1987, Amstrad CPC)
  • Enduro Racer (Activision, 1987, Amstrad CPC)

Activision had published The Last Ninja in the US, and that link was how System 3 ended up turning to Dinc after eight months of struggling with porting it to the Spectrum. They may also have seen his way with an isometric adventure in Prodigy. Dinc took a look at the work to date on The Last Ninja and found it played slower and looked worse than expected. He told them that he could do much better, but not within the required timescale of a couple of months. Rather than taking longer and holding up a planned sequel, though, he suggested that they should scrap it altogether and he would instead work on that sequel, with a view to System 3 releasing versions for the three main 8-bit computers at the same time. They took him up on the offer.

Mev Dinc joined programmer John Twiddy and artist Hugh Riley from the original game in working on The Last Ninja 2. They aimed to make a sequel that would be even better and stand out from the original. As Mark Cale told Retro Gamer, “we wanted to place a spin on things so it wasn’t just the same as what had gone before. That’s why we decided to shift the setting to New York, a typical metropolitan hustle bustle-type city. It provided us with a different graphical style and feel to the game.” Dinc was joined on the Spectrum and Amstrad versions by Gary Thornton on graphics and Brian Marshall on music. Dinc later recalled that “the massive 3D levels in The Last Ninja 2 were tough to squeeze into 48 kB, and every aspect of the game as a whole was very challenging”.

  • The Last Ninja 2 (System 3, 1988, Commodore 64)
  • The Last Ninja 2 (System 3, 1988, Amstrad CPC)
  • The Last Ninja 2 (System 3, 1988, ZX Spectrum)

John Twiddy’s memory of the different versions of The Last Ninja 2 was that “co-ordinating it was difficult, because in those days the code was very different. It’s not like you were writing in C”. It must have helped that Dinc moved in with Twiddy in Watford, with Riley often coming to stay with them. They got on very well as they worked together, and Dinc credits their chemistry as a major reason why they succeeded as well as they did. In around six months, they made a strong multi-platform sequel that despite some inevitable limitations (like the Spectrum version being monochrome) does feel like the same game in each case.

The Last Ninja 2’s fish-out-of-water approach, with its historical ninja lead now fighting the police in New York and making nunchaku out of toilet flush chains, does works very well to give a different atmosphere. They also expanded on the original game in other ways, with some slightly more involved puzzles and a bit less reliance on pixel-perfect platforming. Though it is still very fiddly to control. The Commodore 64 version also has some fine music by Matt Gray, who had a lot to live up to following the first game’s celebrated Ben Dalglish soundtrack. Gray, who was then 17 years old, tried to set his style apart too: “whilst I did some Far Eastern style nods to the first game I mainly went for electronic rock soundtrack type pieces.”

Critical reception to the game was strong. New Computer Express wrote that “TLN was a hard act to follow, but TLN2 manages the task admirably. The state-of-the-art visuals are matched by tweaked gameplay, the boredom factor now gone”. Eugene Lacey in Computer & Video Games said it was “one of the best sequels I have seen. It works because the designers were brave enough to stick to the same basic concept.” Gary Penn in Commodore User enjoyed it so much he finished his review with “well done to all involved”. On the Spectrum specifically, The Last Ninja 2 was hailed by Phil South in Your Sinclair as “a superb feat of programming” and by Crash as “a truly awe-inspiring game”. “Mev Dinc […] has done a superlative job” wrote Chris Jenkins in Sinclair User. 

Outside of the attributes of the game itself, System 3 also had some other ideas to make a bigger splash with The Last Ninja 2. They sold it in a limited edition package with some extra items, and an increased price of £12.99. C&VG quoted Mark Cale as saying that the price was justified because “the game is beautifully packaged in a top quality box. You get a 30 page booklet, a Ninja mask, and soft rubber shuriken which might, just might, be a clue to winning the game.” As New Computer Express interpreted it, “unfortunately these little goodies add an extra three pounds to the asking price (estimated value being 28p).” An investment versus a return.

  • The Last Ninja 2 (System 3, 1988, Commodore 64)
  • The Last Ninja 2 (System 3, 1988, Amstrad CPC)
  • The Last Ninja 2 (System 3, 1988, ZX Spectrum)

Some magazines joked about the shuriken. In a different article in which they also reminisced over the promotional tat of World Cup Carnival, New Computer Express recounted that “the throwing star is particularly effective for persuading colleagues to modify or change opinions”. Crash claimed that even the soft shuriken “proved almost lethal to the office cat!” There was slightly more than just joke material there. As Mark Cale later put it, “unfortunately the shuriken ended up a little bit harder than we wanted […] if you look at it today, Health and Safety certainly wouldn’t allow us to do what we did back then”.

The Games Machine reported that Boots refused to stock the special edition, and that “other retailers have removed [the throwing star] from the box, or stuck warnings on the front, believing it to be dangerous. Moral: when you wish for sales upon a star, check with the chain stores first”. There was a wider panic context in objections to both the shuriken and mask too; as a country we were just over a year away from the first BBC broadcast of the re-titled and edited Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. 

One Commodore User reader wrote in about how they had received the game as a birthday gift to find both ninja items missing and a Boots sticker covering up the list of expected contents. That seems to reflect that the controversy landed up in a place which may well have been beneficial to System 3. Like Boots’s objections to Barbarian’s original cover photo before it, it doesn’t seem to have stopped anyone much from buying and playing The Last Ninja 2, but certainly helped prompt some extra publicity for it.

  • The Last Ninja 2 (System 3, 1988, Commodore 64)
  • The Last Ninja 2 (System 3, 1988, Commodore 64)
  • The Last Ninja 2 (System 3, 1988, ZXZ Spectrum)

If The Last Ninja 2 itself showed how well John Twiddy, Hugh Riley and Mev Dinc worked together, so did what happened next. Alongside the later stages of making the game, they were holding discussions with both Telecomsoft and Activision about their future plans. At a meeting in a service station with Rod Cousens of Activision UK, they agreed a deal for backing to set up their own new label. Per Dinc’s autobiography, “It was something like five years or five games, whichever happened earlier, with a deal amount in the region of several hundred thousand pounds.”

They contributed some technical support to Tibet-set The Last Ninja 3, which released in 1991 and has special thanks to Twiddy and Dinc in its credits. The Last Ninja 3 was a #6 hit in the UK and not quite the phenomenon of the first two games, although it did reach #1 in the Commodore 64 charts. Looking back, Mark Cale was clear on the difference: “by no means do we feel that Ninja 3 was the best of the series […] I think the programmers on Ninja 3 were always trying to outdo John Twiddy, rather than make a great game.” 

  • The Last Ninja 3 (System 3, Commodore 64, 1991)
  • The Last Ninja 3 (System 3, Commodore 64, 1991)
  • The Last Ninja 3 (System 3, Commodore 64, 1991)

Meanwhile Dinc, Riley and Twiddy called their new company Vivid Image. They took on staff including future Sony executive Phil Harrison, and decided to make the Amiga their lead system. Vivid Image’s first game, Hammerfist, was less than successful, but follow-up Time Machine did better, reaching #11 in 1990. Then they made a beat-’em-up/platformer cross with a mystical Japanese setting, and inevitably chose to play on the series which had brought them together to begin with. In 1991, a few months after The Last Ninja 3 came out, they released The First Samurai. It was well-reviewed and a decent-sized hit too.

  • The First Samurai (Mirrorsoft, Amiga, 1991)
  • The First Samurai (Mirrorsoft, Amiga, 1991)

The Last Ninja 3 was the last new entry in the series for System 3, although they have returned to the well since. They have a Last Ninja/International Karate collection coming out on the Evercade next month. They released a similar collection, with The Last Ninja as the headliner, back in March on formats including the Nintendo Switch. It had been intended for an earlier release, but hit a delay thanks to The Last Ninja 3’s scoreboard background on the Amiga. Which was the rising sun flag used by the Japanese imperial army. “Nintendo has made serious objections” System 3 told Kickstarter backers. They managed to run into that without even selling the game with any rubber weapons.

  • Gallup combined full price chart for week ending 29 October 1988, New Computer Express
  • Gallup combined chart for week ending 05 November 1988, Computer & Video Games
  • Gallup combined full price chart for week ending 12 November 1988, New Computer Express

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