Oriental Hero

• Title — Oriental Hero • Released — 1987 07 • Designer — Michel Nass Tommy Gardh • Artist — Michel Nass • Composer — Michel Nass • Programmer — Tommy Gardh • Publisher — Firebird Software • Developer — Tron Software • Platforms — ZX Spectrum • Genre — Beat 'em up

• Illustration — The player ninja on the road to Zerwin. Enemies scroll into view from the left and the right. Oriental Hero centers on the ninja protagonist, who after achieving victory in the previous game Ninja Master travels on the road leading to the palace of Zerwin the Wizard, who the protagonist must eventually defeat in order to win the title of Supreme Oriental Combat Master. The game comprises four levels, each a horizontally scrolling platform on which the player-ninja must fight several ground and flying enemies and projectiles before reaching the boss at the end of the level. The player-ninja can defend himself by jumping or ducking; his only fighting moves are punching, kicking, and flying-kicking. The projectiles appear rapidly and can kill the player with one hit but can themselves be killed with one hit. The ground enemies on the other hand take between one and three hits to kill. The bosses at the end of each level—the Terrible Indian Cobra, the Highly Technical Triple Armed War Unit, Ivan Dragovich the Russian Master, and Zerwin the Wizard —can be killed with three hits.

Michel Nass and Tommy Gardh of Tron Software, a Swedish video game development company, began working on Oriental Hero in late 1986, shortly after the release of Ninja Master, its predecessor. Nass was responsible for coding the game while Gardh produced the graphics and sound. Oriental Hero was published in July 1987 by Firebird Software on their Silver Range budget label. It was one of the last of the games on the Silver Range before parent company Telecomsoft spun off the management of that label into its own subsidiary, Silverbird, in late 1987. The game supports both Sinclair's and Kempston Micro Electronics's joystick as controllers, as well as keyboard control through the ZX Spectrum's built-in keyboard. Though the ZX Spectrum 128 was out by the time of Oriental Hero release, the game does not take advantage of that system's increased memory and supports the original 48-KB ZX Spectrum.