International Crap Rabbits – International Ninja Rabbits

International Ninja Rabbits was never a big hit—nor would I call it a hidden gem—but somehow, it left an impression on me. Oddly enough, my memories of the game aren’t tied to the Amiga at all, but rather the C64. And don’t ask me how or why, because by the time this game came out in 1991, I was firmly planted in the Amiga camp. The C64 was still around, of course, but mostly gathering dust.

Now that I think about it, the C64 version must have been older than 1991… Maybe I played an early build, a leaked alpha, or who knows—perhaps it was one of those random games we loaded up while the Amiga was busy chugging away with X-Copy. You know the sound—click-click-click… BRRRRT… click-click. With the Amiga tied up duplicating disks, we turned to the C64 to pass the time. And somehow, International Ninja Rabbits ended up being part of those moments.

International Ninja Rabbits is actually a sequel to a game called something as amazing as NINJA RABBITS! and to this date, i still have issues telling them apart as that’s how similar they are to each other…

I remember i bought this game while i was away at school as i lived like 3 hours away (by car) from home ,i only went home at the weekends if money allowed it and i had no room/place to put a TV and my Amiga in the “room” of 3×3 square meters, and i having played the somehow shitty but fun game on the C64 i couldn’t wait to get home and play this Amiga version with its uber-cool graphics..

Every Amazing Amiga port of an C64 game had to have advanced manuals like this one…oh wait.. it’s the C64 manual.

Microvalue was a budget line, and that is how and why i have so many of their early games, as i had little money and buying these games for £4.99 English pounds was pretty good, even though lots of their games stunk…

Main menu screen and a cool one, same as on the C64 (which also had a cool menu), and so far so good right?, not really as everything that was broken on the C64 is broken in the Amiga version too but it’s actually much worse.

Pictures may look ok enough, but when you start moving or rather try to move. Well, then you realise that you have entered the world of a sprite animation of maximum 3 frames.. or even 2…

The in-game speed of it must be one of the most unresponsive games i have played in my now 30-year-old gaming career.

FAST ADDICTIVE GAMEPLAY is what it says on the box… (see boxshot at the start of the article)

The game is not of the scrolling sort, it’s screen by screen and that can be ok enough if it’s done right but in this game the graphics look ok, it’s a city but that’s it…for all i know this game could have been based upon an oil rig as the story and concept just doesn’t match… The first one was green and out in the forests, and well, i don’t want to spoil it just yet but somehow tricked me into buying this.

So why bother writing this article? , well as i said…there’s something about it and while i realise that time is pulling a prank on me i figured out where it all went wrong… I was expecting this Amiga version(s) to be more like a certain Bunny Ninja game on the C64… do you know which one?

Sure you do…

Samurai Warrior – Usagi Yojimbo, one of the best games on the C64 and a game i played for months upon months back when it was new and i bought the International Ninja Rabbits game on the Amiga in hope that it would be as good or based upon it due to the power of the Amiga and not like the C64 versions of them..

Just as a bottom line comment, i have no idea whatsoever if Usagi or Ninja Rabbits are connected to each other but i guess the guys behind this game took inspiration of Usagi and didn’t have the skill to pull it through.

WHY OH WHY DIDN’T ANYONE DO A PROPER OR PORT OF SAMURAI WARRIOR -USAGI YOJIMBO GAME ON THE AMIGA!!!!

Screenshots for the Amiga version are taken from HALL OF LIGHT.

Box shots are from my own collection.