Last Ninja 2 Port Found For Unreleased Konix Multisystem.

[zapiy]

This is awesome news hopefully @mqarkcambie can keep us updated?

It's VERY early days yet, and there's nothing to show just yet, but one of the Developers from Attention to Detail - Jon Steele has found his archive from the development of the Konix Multisystem version of Last Ninja 2.

As it stands at the moment, we only have floppy disks - we are yet to be able to read the contents of them, so therefore we realistically only have some plastic floppy disks. Stay tuned to see if anything can be successfully read from them.

It seems to be the case that there are PC formatted disks containing the source code and possibly Konix formatted disks that would be used in the dev-kit and any prototype console that Konix may have constructed.

Needless to say this is VERY exciting news. Assuming the disks can be read, it is unlikely that the game will be available for release as System 3 still exist and would no doubt have something to say about the distribution of their product.

I anticipate (assuming everything works in our favour) that we may be in a position to record a video of the game running on the emulator - this will allow us to get a really good feel for how the Konix version compared to the rival machines in terms of Graphics and Audio capabilities. It is the case that the emulator may just work with a Konix disk image right away, but more likely, some serious development effort may need to be put in to let the emulator cope with this build of software.

And finally, regarding Audio, Jon mentioned that he believed that Dave Lowe (Uncle Art) was responsible for the Konix port's audio. Dave was responsible for the audio for quite a few Amiga and Atari ST games from the time. This is a soundtrack that I'm very interested to hear.

More updates as they happen.

Source: http://www.konixmultisystem.co.uk/index.php?id=news

[mqarkcambie]

I didn't see this topic...!

Progress report? OK - probably the first thing to do is to watch this video then...

http://youtu.be/EJbB10Z-6fo

So to sum up what's going on, Lee has worked out the raw disk image from the floppy, been able to implement disk load functions in his emulator and has emulated the game.

There's still some stuff he'd like to do, but for the moment, the game is playable. To me the audio sounds a little... I don't know the best way to describe it, but maybe lumpy, and a little discordant. However other than Jeff's computer generated music in AMC'89, this is the first real Konix music we are hearing. I haven't played through to the later levels (You can't currently play with Joystick, but when Lee gets time, I'm sure he'll look into that, at the moment it's keys only (and I suck on keys)) so I don't know if the music is different for each level - I hope it is!

All the levels are there on just one disk - the multiple disks were backups, source and different versions.

Work is in progress to try to get permission to release this - no news there yet, but we're not sleeping on it...

Regards,
Mark.

[zapiy]

My hat is off to you and the coder.. this is simply awesome and amazing and..... and..... just epic stuff..

Can i get it yet?

[mqarkcambie]

Well, apart from encouraging (nagging?) Lee the (tolerant of idiots like me) programmer, I'm not really contributing much - other than trying to reach out and find people with items and code that they don't realise are of interest to a wide audience. To this end, I'm still looking and trying to talk with people.
There isn't much more that we are likely to find (there wasn't much to start with), but we have at least lots of demos and test programs for the various versions of the machine, all of the famous demos - and 2 full games (Robocod for the later MSU version of the Konix and LN2 for the Konix Multisystem).

I'm trying my best to preserve and tell the story of the Konix - by giving everyone a voice and a fair chance to put their side of the story across. I think I have now talked to everyone concerned - or at least tried to talk to them (sometimes I get nowhere, sometimes they don't remember anything, sometimes they just clam up). Frustratingly, there are a couple of people who will probably take their knowledge to the grave with them. And I know for sure they have things worth sharing...

As for letting you have the game - don't worry, we aren't trying to keep this to ourselves, it is absolutely our intention to see the game released - but released the correct and legal way with the blessing of the copyright owner and those that were involved in writing the software.

It may be a while before we find a route through to getting it released, neither of us are particularly keen to get sued, but we are keen to allow people's creative efforts to be experienced and appreciated.

If nothing else, the act of digital preservation has been performed, and that means we actually have something tangible to talk about.