A collection of retro games for PC and Switch that includes The Last Ninja and IK+ has broken its minimum goal on Kickstarter.
The Last Ninja Collection, which is set to offer a compendium of fighting-based retro videogames from the 80s and 90s, has passed its £10,000 minimum Kickstarter goal within a matter of hours.
In development for Nintendo Switch and PC, the compilation brings together a number of hit titles from British publisher and developer System 3, including The Last Ninja and its sequels, and the one-on-one fighting games International Karate, IK+ and Bangkok Knights.
The project is the work of Mark Cale, System 3’s founder who also co-designed The Last Ninja and its follow-ups; as Cale himself explains in the campaign video below, the collection will include the various ports of the games, as well as some unfinished, previously unseen titles as bonuses, including Last Ninja 4 and IK++.
For the uninitiated, The Last Ninja was a series of isometric action adventures which began with the original Commodore 64 version, released in 1987. A huge hit, it spawned the even better Last Ninja 2, the first in the series to also appear on the ZX Spectrum, and Last Ninja 3, developed for the C64, Amiga and Atari ST.
Although published by System 3, the International Karate series was very different. Designed by Archer Maclean, they were single-screen fighting games that were arguably among the best in the genre until the seminal Street Fighter II came along in 1991. International Karate, essentially an unofficial port of Data East’s coin-op Karate Champ, came first in 1985, prompting a long-running lawsuit which Epyx – International Karate’s US publisher – eventually won.
The real corker, though, was International Karate+, a 1987 sequel that made pioneering use of rotoscoping to add realism to its fighters’ moves. Maclean even traced over clips from Grease and The Cannonball Run to create the game’s eye-catching somersaults and split-kicks.
For gamers of a certain age, The Last Ninja Collection will therefore provide a heady shot of nostalgia – even as younger gamers likely squint at all the huge pixels and wonder what on earth the fuss is about. That nostalgia has led to the campaign amassing some £35,000 and counting in its opening 24 hours, with over a hundred backers chipping in the £50 pledge for a physical copy of the collection on Switch.
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All of which means that the collection will be produced at some stage, with its estimated delivery loosely pegged for March 2025 (anyone who’s backed a Kickstarter project will know these things are often subject to delays).
Given the clamour of interest, it’s a wonder whether Cale will release other compilations of System 3 hits in the future. A Putty collection, perhaps…?
You can find out more about the campaign and its various backer rewards on its Kickstarter page.
