Level 1, the tutorial and the Walkthrough

In 1990 I finally managed to bag myself a new games compilation for my ZX Spectrum, with the game Last Ninja 2 from System 3 being one of the featured games. I cant for the life of me remember what the name of the compilation was, but it was a Godsend as it was budget priced and contained several titles I couldn't afford at full price (think Steam sale Ronald Reagan era).

Now if I can just explain how these titles were shipped. The original full priced game was on a cassette tape, with an inlay which had rudimentary instructions on how to load a game, the back story in perhaps two paragraphs, and maybe, just maybe, a quick tutorial on how to play, control layout and authors details.

The compilation purchaser often had to forgo these luxuries to further save costs for the publisher. It was just the cassette tape in a cardboard box, and you kind of had to wing it.

So placing the tape in the cassette player and typing Load "" and pressing play on the tape got the game going. A brisk 7 to 10 minutes later the computers 48k of memory had been filled with gaming goodness.

Now the Last Ninja 2 was an isometric action rpg. You could run, jump and search items as well as kick other non playable characters in the face. The screen didn't really scroll either, when you went from one room to another the next area was drawn in.

But here's the rub, the game was so hard, that I could never get past the first set of rooms or areas. There were no instructions, there was no tutorial to guide you along, and no walkthrough or Youtube Longplay video to show you what to do.

I mustve played the game 50 times or more, and I ALWAYS got stuck in the same place very early on. And there was nowhere to turn to make progress. I was simply stuck. I clicked every button, jumped over every river, killed every bad guy. But still, nothing.

There were many many more examples of this on the humble Speccy. In Rambo 3 I always freed all the hostages but I could never find the extraction helicopter in the North West. In Beachhead 2 I didn't know how to advance my men to rush the beach. There were even games that I couldn't progress past the title screen.

Recently I downloaded and played Last Ninja 2 as an emulated game on my trusty PSP. Maybe the passage of time and wisdom would allow me to finally make some progress. I fast loaded the rom, chose the control scheme, played through level 1 and promptly got stuck again at the exact same spot I did in 1990. 

I didn't go search for a solution on Youtube or IGN, I did what all good games players did when they got stuck in 1990. I put the game down, switched on the telly and watched reruns of Macgyver. For all I know the programmer never even made a level 2, and I am happy in my ignorance...