In the late ’80s, when ninja games flooded the market and Altered Beast had players howling at the moon, Legend Software quietly cooked up something genuinely fresh: Ninjanimal, re-surfaced thanks to usual precious work of GamesThatWerent.
Announced in Titus’ 1990 schedules for the Commodore 64 (tape and disk), this side-scrolling beat-’em-up promised a wild fusion of martial arts fury and beastly transformation, and then vanished without a commercial trace. What survives paints an intriguing picture. Atari ST prototypes and Amiga screenshots reveal a vibrant, colourful scroller with chunky sprites and punchy animation. You play a ninja capable of morphing into powerful animal forms mid-combo, echoing Altered Beast but grounded in a ninja aesthetic that feels closer to the quirky charm of Ninja Rabbits than grim shadow warriors. The team, led by art director Didier, even sprinkled in demo-scene flair, smooth colour rasters and tight low-overscan visuals, to make the pitch pop for publishers like Titus and Ubisoft. Development kicked off in late 1988 and reached a promising stage on 16-bit machines. Unfortunately, Legend Software’s finances collapsed after a distributor failed to pay for Les Portes du Temps, forcing the studio to shut down before the game could be finished. The planned C64 conversion almost certainly never left the drawing board.
Had it shipped in 1990, Ninjanimal could have stood out as one of the more inventive budget beat-’em-ups of the era, colourful, transformative, and just weird enough to earn cult status. What we have today feels like a tantalising “what if”: a slick prototype full of personality that hints at real potential.
A tragic casualty of late-80s publisher woes, but thanks to preservation efforts (Fabrizio Bartoloni, Crashdisk, AtariMania and others), we can still glimpse the beast that almost roared. One for the “lost gems” lists and any retro fan who loves imagining the road not taken.
