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George Bush has been kidnapped by a gang of belligerent ninjas!!! And you, unfortunately, are the one who's picked to go and rescue him. So arm yourself to the teeth with nunchakus and prepare to face up to the seven levels of ninjas ahead of you.
Set in the streets of some American city, Dragon Ninja has you battling through streets, sewers and forests balancing on top of swaying trucks and trains, all in order to reach the Pres. The screen is split into two levels, and you can change between the two quite easily. Very handy for ninja-dodging.
At the end of each level you will meet a mega baddy who takes a little longer to duff up, but if you keep hitting him and running away, you can escape virtually unharmed. The nasty ninjas include a Karnov lookalike with curry on his breath, a manic robot who keeps jumping up and down before you get the chance to hit him, and a ninja who has an irritating habit of suddenly multiplying into an army, and who proceeds to hit you so fast and furious you hardly get a chance to hit it back. There is also a somersaulting giant who keeps clapping with your head between his hands, and a stick wielding Lobin Hood. Last, but by no means least, there is an axeman intent on lopping your head off... and leaving you wandering around like a dead chicken.
On your travels around picturesque New York you will find the odd object dropped by your enemies when you kill them. These include a boxy thing for energy, a little clock for time and a funny looking fork which gives you a better reach and the ability to kill a few ninjas in one blow (a very useful object indeed).
As you go through the game it gets progressively harder, with the addition of the odd rabid clog from level four onwards.
A game with such potential unfortunately falls short of being addictive. The first three levels are ridiculously easy and I'm afraid the rest of the game doesn't get much harder. It looks great but a well qualified ninja gamester will probably finish this game the day before they buy it.
Dragon Ninja is an interesting game and the graphics (except the loading screen) are well thought out, but I would only recommend this game to anyone sick enough to want to rescue George Bush.

Verdict: 7/10
Review by Chris Palmer

Well what can I say about this conversion of the famous arcade game by Data East?

Imagine developed a lot of good arcade conversions for the ZX Spectrum (with the likes of Green Beret and Hypersports) - but this was about as far from a good conversion as you could get.

Anyway - let's have a look at a 'classic game' that was actually pretty crap.


Dragon Ninja - ZX Spectrum

Just like in the arcade game president 'Ronnie' had been kidnapped by a bunch of ninja's (yes really!) and in stepped the bad dudes (you) to save him, and the day I suppose. So - here we were with another 'right-to-left scrolling, fight the bad guys and recue someone type deal'.

The game took inspiration from another classic arcade game, Shinobi. This inspiration was the fact that you could fight on the upper or lower area of the screen, jumping up and down between the upper and lower portion of the screen at will.

This feature worked pretty well in the arcade game but on the Speccy the controls are sticky and your 'bad dude' doesn't really react well to your keypresses.

The graphics are pretty poor; the game characters are pretty small and not well animated, the backgrounds bland and the scrolling is average at best.

Throwing kicks and punches in the relative direction of the bad guys seems to take them out - and jumping over a gap is a lottery in itself.

By 1988 games of this quality (and especially arcade conversions) were not acceptable - we all knew the Spectrum was capable of so much more.

If you want to complete this game take the following steps: Crouch, leg sweep, walk. Crouch, leg sweep, walk. Crouch, leg sweep, walk. Repeat until you either complete the game or you're brain freezes with boredom.

Dragon Ninja on the ZX Spectrum - It's bad!Give this one a miss - worth it for the comedy value only. Like the bad dudes say - 'It's bad'.

On Release:
On release this game was generally regarded as crap.

The Test Of Time:
After more than 20 years this game is still crap.

GENRE: Arcade Game (Beat em up)
RELEASE DATE: 1988
RELEASED BY: Imagine Software
DEVELOPER(S): Bill Harbison, Paul Owens, Mark R Jones
PRICE: £8.95 (About £8.85 too expensive)