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The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

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Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#21

Post by nine_k »

xvxvx wrote: post #2

I remember this game, the way it drew itself on each screen, the nice graphics. Growing up with games on Atari, Commodore, Amstrad, and Spectrum, was a lot of fun. By comparison, COD Modern Warfare 3 is 6,000,000 times larger at 240GB. Imagine telling that to someone in 1987.

The Last Ninja ran at resolution 160x200, with effectively 2-bit color for graphic assets. It had amazing animations for that level of detail, but all the variety of the graphics could not take too much RAM even if it wanted to.

The quest for photorealistic "movie-like" rendering which requires colossal amounts of RAM and compute feels like a dead end to me. I much appreciate the expressly unrealistic graphics of titles like Monument Valley.

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#22

Post by antisol »

kbenson wrote: post #15
vinkelhake wrote: post #12

I grew up with and absolutely adore The Last Ninja series. I'm not going to comment on the size thing because it's so trite. Instead - here's [0] Ben Daglish (on flute) performing "Wastelands" together with the Norwegian C64/Amiga tribute band FastLoaders. He unfortunately passed away in 2018, just 52 years old. If that tickled your fancy, here's [1] a full concert with them where they perform all songs from The Last…

The first time I ever heard The Glitch Mob I had such a clear memory of this games soundtrack come to mind that I mentioned it to my brother soon after (as it was his commodore and his copy of the game I was playing when I was young). I'm not even sure if the song I heard even sounds like the game soundtrack particularly closely, but the connection in my mind was very strong.

I know exactly how you feel - The Way Out Is In (https://youtu.be/kqFqG-h3Vgk) heavily evokes video games for me

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#24

Post by hcs »

YasuoTanaka wrote: post #3

It's kind of amazing how much of those old games was actual logic instead of data. Feels like they were closer to programs, while modern games are closer to datasets.

Chris Crawford called this "process intensity", he noted it at least back to 1983 with Dragon's Lair, discussed in this 1987 article https://www.erasmatazz.com/library/the-journal-of-computer/j...

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#26

Post by socalgal2 »

Most games back then where small. An C64 only had 64k and most game didn't use all of it. An Atari 800 had max 48k. It wasn't until the 1200 that it went up. Both systems are cartridge based games, many of which were 8k.

Honestly though, I don't read much into the sizes. Sure they were small games and had lots of game play for some defintion of game play. I enjoyed them immensely. But it's hard to go back to just a few colors, low-res graphics, often no way to save, etc... for me at least, the modern affordances mean something. Of course I don't need every game to look like Horizon Zero Dawn. A Short Hike was great. It's also 400meg (according to steam)

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#27

Post by medwards666 »

beautron wrote: post #18
mock-possum wrote: post #13

Wow that search/interact mechanic is obnoxious, you can see the player fumbling it every time, despite knowing exactly where the item is they’re trying to collect.

This is sort of the defining mechanic of these games in my memory. The first thing that pops into my head when I think of Last Ninja is aligning and realigning myself, and squatting, awkwardly and repeatedly (just like a real ninja, lol), until that satisfying new item icon appears. Perhaps surprisingly, these are very fond memories. This mechanic is augmented by not even always knowing which graphics in the environm…

> LN2 had something in a bathroom? You have to position yourself in the doorway and do a squat of faith)

Sounds like every time I go to the bathroom ... :D

Re: The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes

#29

Post by chorlton2080 »

le-mark wrote: post #7

Apparently this person is referring to the available ram on a Commodore 64. The media (data) on disk or tape was much more than that.

You can access nearly 64kb of RAM on the C64, if you don't need the BASIC or Kernal (sic) ROMs. They can be software toggled in or out. Agreed that even the tape had more game data than that, but not much more.
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