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It's high time someone took the you-know-what out of the whole martial arts thing which, in my opinion, has gone on quite long enough. I don't care how many people buy The Last Ninja as long as it really is the last. [It isn't! - Ed]

The trouble with Ninja Hamster is that the joke is a bit short lived. The name of the game and the loading illustration brought a smile to my lips, but the game itself is actually is actually ten times worse than the worst of the stuff it parodies. The only difference is that instead of grown men in pyjamas rolling about in front of pagodas you are presented with a succession of small rodents and other animals. After about five seconds the joke begins to wear very thin.

Problem number one is that this is a conversion job and the graphics are still very Spectrumesque. Come to think of it, that's not really the major failing. The game is actually dead boring. What happens is that you, Ninja hamster on the left of the screen beat the living daylights out of a succession of opponents who enter stage right.

You hack and chop at the other guy until he falls over and then he loses a bit of his apple - once down to the core it's goodbye. The first opponent, Sinister Rat looks like Mickey Mouse gone wrong and, perhaps because of this, is particularly easy to defeat. Lizard of Death is more of a handful and so it goes on through a succession of stupid animals.

The blurb is quite amusing.

"Young Hamster," said old Master Yong. "An acorn is but a small nut. Years pass and it becomes king of the forest." The hamster sighed, "But master, for how long must I remain a small nut?" The master closed his eyes, "as the snow falls so the grass disappears" he muttered.

No? I thought it was quite funny. Anyway the point is the only thing worth buying the game for is these mildly amusing three paragraphs on the back, and I've just told you the best bit, so there's no point buying it now.