Games - Ninjaforce

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	Games - Ninjaforce

Ninjaforce is a group of German computer enthusiasts, which was active during the early 1990's on the Apple IIGS computer. (Some members originate from other computer systems, like the Commodore Amiga or the Apple Macintosh). They specialized in creating development tools, multimedia shows (better known as demos) and later games (though unfortunately they never managed to release any).

(Note: At that time there existed a similar group on the Commodore Amiga, which originated somewhere in northern Europe.)

Ninjaforce was established in 1990 with the release of the Picture Ripper II. Founding members where Jesse Blue (code) and Musashi (art support). While Musashi was never seen again by any of the later members, Jesse Blue still is the heart of the group up to today. In 1991 he met Clue (visual arts) on a local A.U.G.E. (Apple User Group Europe) meeting. In late 1993, Dreamer (audible arts) was introduced by a mutual friend. This constellation then remained.

The name "Ninjaforce" came up while Jesse Blue was pixeling a ninja on his computer screen. This picture made it into the Picture Ripper II (btw, it was the only picture the Ripper could not rip).

After releasing the Picture Ripper II (part one was lost during an unfortunate accident of volitional data loss), Jesse went to work on his own assembler, which should speed up development as soon it was able to assemble itself.

With this new power under his control, Jesse created the "Revenge of the Bobs" demo. This marked the point Clue came in, and they decided to create something the Apple IIGS scene has never experienced before, as the scene was already quite dead at that point: a real "megademo", spanning two disks, with cool new effects to show off the GS. And it hit like a bomb in early 1995, when it was released, and two years later again, when it won first prize at the Wild Competition on the Mekka_%26_Symposium Demoparty.

Ninjaforce also created several utilities, namely the multi-system at boot-time switcher TaifunBoot, the GS/OS MOD player NDA Deskplay, the animation utility Animè (which was created simply because Clue needed it), the Apple II disk image Asimov and several others.

After the release of the Megademo, Ninjaforce settled to create a game, maybe the last one ever to be released for the Apple IIGS: An adaption of the incredible Bomberman with several original features. The game, supposed to be called KABOOM!, got almost finished, but for various reasons (mostly time) never made it out of the Ninjas' harddisks.

Ninjaforce also helped with the Apple IIGS version of Wolfenstein 3D. Clue worked on the graphics, while Dreamer created new, original sound effects.

Notable Releases

NF Assembler - A very fast, ProDOS
8 based assembler programming environment. Complete with debugger and GS/OS
support.
Revenge Of The Bobs - The first demo from 1992.
NFC Megademo - Biggest demo ever made for the Apple IIGS
. Still a benchmark for every emulator developer, as it uses some quite obscure features of the GS hardware. (Accelerator card required, needs a patch for use on ROM 3 machines.)

Awards

Mekka_%26_Symposium (1997), 1st place Wild Competition, Megademo

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