Before the internet, before social media and before all the many news outlets existed, there was the schoolyard. A place where we met. A place where we exchanged information. A place where we told each other stories. About what? Anything to do with video games and this is one of those stories.
We were three or four boys plus two others who only lived with one of us in the street but went to a different school. Nevertheless, we kept in touch from time to time and talked about new games. Maniac Mansion (1987) was all the rage at the time, and I was given the game to see if I could even get into the house.
I had just got my C64 and games like Slimey’s Mine (Silverbird, 1988), IK+ (System 3, 1987) and Hostage (Infogrames, 1989) had me firmly under their spell, after I was released from parental control and I could play as I pleased. I had already had a look at Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (Lucasfilm Games, 1988), but quickly put it aside again as my English was not yet very advanced.
Now a new game entered the scene, The Last Ninja (System 3, 1987)! The action of this game, and sometimes the very cumbersome controls, at least from today’s perspective, made our red and black Competition Pro glow. There was a lot to discover, new weapons to find and some things, especially jumps over rivers or swamps, had to be executed with extreme precision.
The aforementioned controls didn’t make it any easier, as you often had to stand at a certain angle or at a certain point in relation to an edge. If this was not the case, you had to go back a bit and practically take another run-up.
One particular spot led over a river and there were round, black stones scattered across the river that you had to jump over in a certain pattern to cross the river.
Later in the game there was another such spot, and it was shown that this river also had a waterfall.
Both were recurring sections in the first part of the game. Sometimes you had to cross the river, sometimes you saw a beautifully flowing waterfall, and sometimes there were only small parts of this body of water that you could see in the background.
We spent an incredible amount of time in the first section alone, as we kept discovering new weapons, new items and the first rumours that you could also interact in some way with the one or other crane standing at the side of the path.
Let’s come back to the schoolyard mentioned at the beginning! The rumours were also circulating there and suddenly the following story emerged:
“In this first section, it is possible to find bamboo leaves and use them to make a kind of flipper so that you can swim up one of these rivers, through one of the waterfalls. On this path, you come to another section that has not yet been discovered.”
This story did the rounds, and we took the first section of the game apart even more intensively. Especially when the individual screens built up layer by layer, we were convinced that we would discover clues. (Due to various limitations, the C64 couldn’t show the screens immediately after you entered them, so the graphics were built up layer by layer).
At some point we gave up, but we didn’t know whether it was just a wildly invented story or something the developers were really cleverly hiding from us. Like a spot in our brain that we just couldn’t scratch, it was still there, even when the third part was released in 1991.
We never found out the source of this story either. It suddenly appeared, someone told us about it, and I think he backed it up with an article he had read in one of the popular magazines at the time.
When I think about it more closely, I now believe that it wasn’t actually bamboo leaves that were meant, but rather banana leaves. At the end of the day, bamboo leaves are quite small and are not really suitable as flippers.
The interesting thing was that nobody was angry, and we wondered whether we had been tricked. Surely this was also due to our childish curiosity. But more importantly, such stories often enhanced games. Not necessarily because of the story itself, but rather because it was a kind of means of transport for the discoveries that followed.
We were never able to realise the story itself, but we invested even more time, sweat and the odd Competition Pro.
It was a world we lived in, which made many things more vivid, more tangible and also more interesting for us. In terms of graphics and game design, we’ve come a long way since then, but when I look at games from that time, I always think to myself that it was all a realistic representation for us. (This is absolutely not a judgement on the games we played, it’s more about the kind of headspace we were in).
And I am firmly convinced that there were many such stories, this one in particular has stuck in my memory.
Link to the Lemon64 Archive Entry of The Last Ninja with a ton of information about the game and a lot more!
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