[{"TitleName":"Ninja Collection","Publisher":"Ocean Software Ltd","Author":"","YearOfRelease":"1991","ZxDbId":"0011963","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Your Sinclair Issue 77, May 1992","Price":"£2.2","ReleaseDate":"1992-04-02","Editor":"Andy Hutchinson","TotalPages":67,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"WE'D DIE FIRST\r\n\r\nAbstinence is a good thing,but it should always be practiced in moderation. So just what couldn't you bear to give up? Hmmm?\r\n\r\nEditor: Andy (Flirting) Hutchinson\r\nArt Editor: Andy (300 BPM speed rock) Ounsted\r\nDeputy Editor: Linda (Brown cord cap) Barker\r\nStaff Writer: Jon (Apple pie sprinkled with cinnamon) Pillar\r\nArt Assistant: Maryanne: (Brass bedstead) Booth\r\nAdvertising Manager: Cheryl (Red lipstick) Beesley\r\nProduction Coordinator: Lisa (Chips) Read\r\nPublisher: Jane (Black Russians) Richardson\r\nPromotions Manager: Michelle (White handbag, matching stilettos and Saturday Night Fever album) Harris\r\nPromotions Assistant: Tamara (Toast and Marmite) Ward\r\nGroup Publisher: Greg ('o'er-reaching ambition) Bingham\r\nCirculation Director: Sue (Open University course) Hartley\r\nAssistant Publisher: Julie (Holidays and Harriet) Stuckes\r\n\r\nYour Sinclair (Insanity), Future (Your Sinclair) Publishing, [redacted]\r\n\r\nManaging Director: Chris (Curries. Any colour or strength) Anderson\r\n\r\nSubscriptions: The Old Barn [redacted]\r\n\r\n©Future Publishing 1992. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission from Bishop Longbottom and his band of rubber ink doughballs.\r\n\r\nISSN: 0269 69683\r\n\r\nYour Sinclair zooms out of its boogie box with such groovesome and arse-kicking magazines as: Commodore Format (The right to vote; grey area that this is!), Amstrad Acton (Third Man video), Amiga Format (Watching footie on the box), PCW Plus (Trainspotting), PC Answers (Classifying fungi), PC Plus (Sticking bookmarks in their paperbacks), Sega Power (Pork chops, chips and Kellogs Supernoodles), Amiga Power (American Hard Gums), Amiga Shopper (Sunday roasts), Classic CD (Shostakovich's String Quartet No 7 in F sharp minor), Needlecraft (Being obsequious), Cycling Plus (Pink silk whalebone basque with matching suspender belt and stockings), Photo Plus (Agfa film), Mountain Biking UK (Mushroom and hummus pittas with really hot chilli sauce), PC Format (Money), Public Domain (Pretending to like bands), ST Format (Herbal cigarettes), Total! (Giving up) and Today's Vegetarian (Lying in bed on Saturday mornings and watching Going Live) and coming soon... Fishmonger's Weekly.\r\n\r\nBut what we really want to know why is... why it that as soon as you actually get a girl/boyfriend, three other equally suitable and utterly tasty possible partners turn up?"},"MainText":"NINJA COLLECTION\r\nOcean\r\n£9.99 cassette\r\n[redacted]\r\nReviewer: Rich Pelley\r\n\r\nHi there - Rich here again, this time with a round up of Ninja Collection from Ocean. So what are we waiting for then? Oh yeah - me.\r\n\r\nDRAGON NINJA\r\n\r\nThis first ninja game came out positively ages ago (1989) and even back them it wasn't especially outstanding. This one plays in what I'd term as the familiar Kung Fu Master style. If you're not familiar then this means that you can only move left and right and not in and out of the screen. This means that the gameplay is, in my opinion at least, immediately reduced by about half. There is no choice of which order to pick off the baddies and only a mere smattering of attacking moves available.\r\n\r\nGames with this type of over-simplistic gameplay tend to rely heavily on large 'interesting' levels to disguise their flimsiness, and, quel suprise, Dragon Ninja is of no exception. Levels One to Six take place on a street, on top of a huge truck, in a sewer, in another sewer, on top of a train, in some caverns and in the warehouse respectively. Different scenery to explore and different baddies and end of level baddies to face there may be, but the repetitive walk/jump/punch/kick routine is far too boring. I'm afraid at the end of the day, Dragon Ninja gets classed as a nothing more than boring, unadventurous, not-really-worth-the-time-of-day (one player which I forgot to mention) crappy beat-em-up romp.\r\n49°\r\n\r\nDOUBLE DRAGON\r\n\r\nOo-er, this one's so old that it's even been been sequelled and re-sequelled again! Double Dragon reared its head for the first time in the arcade where it gained a cult following mainly as it was a two-player and pretty easy to beat. However, they cocked it up a bit converting it to the Speccy, and by today's standards and especially the standards of its two follow-ups, the graphics seem undeniably dodgy, the sound mysteriously lacking, the gameplay slightly repetitive and worse still, there's a strange kind of multi-load.\r\n\r\nHowever, it is far more interactive than Dragonn Ninja (you can climb scenery and pick up weapons) and it requires a lot more skill than Shadow Warriors. Waggling the joystick inanely will be of little use until you've mastered which of the eight attacking moves to use where. All in all Double Dragon is good fun but heavily dated.\r\n66°\r\n\r\nSHADOW WARRIORS\r\n\r\nAh yes, Shadow Warriors, an average beat-'em-up served with a side order of large levels and lavish graphics, also appears on the 2 Hot 2 Handle compilation reviewed elsewhere by yours truly. So why not read the review of it there?\r\n76°\r\n\r\nAnd as by way of an outroduction, I'd suggest that this Ninja collection is not the supposed bargain you people deserve. As opposed to laying your hands on three of the best beat-'em-ups ever, two average and one non-eventful games are all you getting for your money which frankly, Mr Shankly, I'd say is a bit of a disappointment really.\r\n\r\nOverall 70°","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"60","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Rich Pelley","Score":"70","ScoreSuffix":"%"}],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Ebbersley fell dramatically to the floor. In the meantime, Colin looked down and chortled."},{"Text":"Frank and the hamsters were the talk of the town."},{"Text":"Luckily, as the title screen says it all, I don't have to waste time captioning this picture."},{"Text":"Wilson, Kepple and Betty returned triumphantly after several years."}],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Overall","Score":"70%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[{"Header":"Dragon Ninja","Score":"49%","Text":"Dragon Ninja"},{"Header":"Double Dragon","Score":"66%","Text":"Double Dragon"},{"Header":"Shadow Warriors","Score":"76%","Text":"Shadow Warriors"}]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Sinclair User Issue 121, Mar 1992","Price":"£2.1","ReleaseDate":"1992-02-18","Editor":"Garth Sumpter","TotalPages":68,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Garth Sumpter\r\nDesign: Yvette Nicholls\r\nSoftware Editor: Big Al 'Bagels' Dykes\r\nGirlie Tipster: Hannah Smith\r\nAdditional Design: Jane Davies \r\nSU Crew: John Cook, Pete Gerrard, Phillip Fisch, Graham Mason, Matthew Denton\r\nAd Manager: Tina Zanelli\r\nAd Production: Emma Ward\r\nMarketing Man.: Mark Swallow\r\nMarketing Women: Sarah Ewing, Sarah Hilliard\r\nPublisher: Graham Taylor\r\nManaging Director: Terry Pratt\r\n\r\n(c)1992 EMAP IMAGES\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nColour by Proprint\r\nPrinted by Kingfisher\r\n\r\nNo part of this magazine may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system or used to wrap your chips without the consent of the Publisher (if you offer him a chip he'll think about it though). And on behalf of the SU Crew we'd just like to say that it's great to be back on Earth Even with wars, famine, disease and misery it's a better place than some of the deepspace cruisers that we've been playing on for the last two months."},"MainText":"Label: Ocean\r\nMemory: 48K/128K\r\nPrice: £9.99 Tape\r\nReviewer: Matthew Denton\r\n\r\nA deafening HIIYAAAH! signals the arrival of yet another does of chop-sockey action to try and rule supreme over the current compilations and beat 'em-ups which are currently doing the rounds. Oceans effort involves three arcade conversions, namely Double Dragon, Shadow Warriors and Dragon Ninja, which were all quite successful when first released.\r\n\r\nFirst one the sparring mat is Double Dragon, where as Billy and Jimmy Lee you and a friend can kick the excrement out of the evil gang that has kidnapped Billy's girlfriend Marion. This game is the worst on the pack. Some of the most tedious and excruciatingly boring gameplay ever devised makes the Quit feature possibly the best feature about his game.\r\n\r\nShadow Warriors is one of my favourite beat 'em up arcade games, even though it's getting on a bit now. The Speccie version features colourful graphics, with some large sprites and tasty backgrounds that can become a little confusing at times whislt I found the controls too unresponsive to generate the fun and addictiveness of the coin-op. Oh well, back to the arcade version.\r\n\r\nDragon Ninja is the last to kick it's way into the package and again involves a rescue mission - this time the President of the good ol' U.S. of A has been abducted (\"Thats happenin' - ED\")\r\n\r\nThis conversion loses the simultaneous two player option, but it's still a faithful conversion. Graphics are well defined, the sound is adequate, and the action is involving and enjoyable. This one is definitely the pick of the bunch but it cannot compensate for the other two atrocities on this pack. If you want Dragon Ninja, get it on budget, and leve this pack in the Dojo of Dreadful Compilations.","ReviewerComments":["Ahh soo. Velly silly price point means that you only save £2.00 on the budget price of the games and end up with a couple of less-than-excellent games. If you already own one of these game then don't buy it!\r\nGarth Sumpter"],"OverallSummary":"Call me The Master of Moany-Jitsu, but the Ninja Collection just fails to make it past the level of white belt in the compilation grades. This is definitely one to avoid like a rotten bird's nest soup - otherwise till leave a nasty taste in your mouth.","Page":"40","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Matthew Denton","Score":"56","ScoreSuffix":"%"},{"Name":"Garth Sumpter","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Double Dragon dance compo."},{"Text":"It's a rough life as a Dragon Ninja. Never being allowed on buses and having a real truckin' bad time getting to work in the morning."},{"Text":"See missus! I've got lots of soul!"}],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Overall","Score":"56%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]