Content
The Konix Multi-system Games
Here are the know games that were either in development for the Konix Multi-system or had been planed to be. Some have screen shots from magazines and some have videos provided with kind permission of Jon Dean (the guy that actually filmed them). Please don't distribute or re-produce these videos as they remain Jon Dean's Copyright.
Last Ninja II - System 3 / ATD
The Konix Multi-system version of Last Ninja 2 - or more appropriately Last Ninja 3, based on this little titbit of info from Jon Deans interview "LAST NINJA 2 was, actually, going to be the first release of LAST NINJA 3 - a surprise for the launch that never was."
This game looked, at various stages, to be attractive - although a bit blocky.
The interface screen in later builds of the game packed in more detail and
was quite pretty - as this picture from ACE or C&VG shows. The video
provided shows an early build where the character sprite hadn't been added in
yet and a place holder graphic had been used which looked suspiciously like a
fish-stick! If this release in the Ninja line-up had been the 3rd instalment
and it was, for a period of time, at least exclusive to the KMS, then this game
could have helped sell a lot of machines.
If you could buy a machine as cool as this AND it had the next instalment of
a game that you liked on your old computer then it may have encouraged people
to buy the Konix. I'm fascinated by the System 3 and ATD joint effort. I'm not
going to badger the guys from ATD any more to find out the specifics.
Being released on floppy - this game would have benefited from being as big as the developers would have liked without incurring huge costs involved in having bigger capacity memory chips in a cartridge.
Also, based on another Jon Dean quote, "They finished LAST NINJA 3 for System 3, which played and looked great" I think it's safe to say that this game would have been ready for launch.
I think Last Ninja was a wise title to include in the line-up of games for the Multi-system. It offered a great deal of value for money in a game. Yes, it was great having the controls for a bike/plane/car built into the console, but you really wouldn't have wanted to have been playing riding, flying and driving games all the time. So of course there needed to be some variety. This game offered a good mix of action and puzzle. It was also a fairly safe game to port, you really couldn't get it too wrong. After all, there were great 8 bit versions for machines like the NES and C64 already, so things could only get better.
With this game, the machine had a chance to distinguish itself, and I think all involved would agree that in the case of the Last Ninja conversion it did.
Screenshots
)
)
)
)
Although the main action of Last ninja looked quite blocky in places looking quite like a C64 game, the boarder was really nicely drawn and packed in the detail to make the game look pretty. It's unfortunate that a larger resolution wasn't used to make the Konix version stand out more from the rest. On the whole, apart from the fancier front end I'd say that Konix Ninja was on a par with its rivals.