Ninja Massacre

Copyright : Codemasters | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

Ultimate mass oriental combat! Over 50 levels of torturous death and destruction! Encounter man eating slime, hell holes, cunning traps, 100â??s of hideous beasts and creatures. Use death stars, bouncers, stink bombs and magic â?? A RELENTLESS NINJA ATTACK!

Ahhh! Gotta love those Codiesâ?? inlaysâ?¦

Graphics

A blatant Gauntlet clone, Ninja Massacre was also clearly written on the Spectrum and ported over to the Amstrad (particularly upsetting when you consider the author was Adam Waring, Amstrad Actionâ??s technical editor for a number of years!).

The colour palette is as limited as youâ??d expect from a Speccy port and the background is often obscured by a black square surrounding each of the sprites furthering emphasising the gameâ??s origins.

On the positive side, the animation is fairly smooth and the sprites move at a fast pace, the game is a couple of notches faster than Gauntlet.

Sound

The title screen music, which continues in to the game proper is quite good, the only thing about is it seems out of place in a game of this style. An upbeat bombastic number it would better suit a sci-fi based game and has very little to do with the setting of this game. There are no sound effects.

Gameplay

Virtually identical to Gauntlet in terms of gameplay, the player must progress from level to level picking up food and magic for survival. This is no easy task however as the difficulty level has been revved right up and the speed and number of enemies that are generated and come at you can become overwhelming on your first few goes.

Thankfully, Adam had the good sense to include a password every five levels that allows you to start the game at roughly the point you last pegged it. This is a good addition to the game although it may reduce its longevity.

Thereâ??s not much else to be said really, if you like your Gauntlet clones then you could do worse than this but itâ??s nowhere near as polished as the original or even some earlier variations of the same theme.