BMX Ninja

BMX Ninja from 1988 is exactly the kind of title only the British budget game era could have produced: ninja warriors on BMX bikes. It was written by Richard Stevenson and Paul A. Bellamy and released by Alternative Software, a specialist in cheap cassettes for the ZX Spectrum.

The budget market was a genuine phenomenon in late-eighties Britain. Games costing two or three pounds were sold in newsagents and supermarkets, and their titles routinely promised more than the contents could deliver – the fusion of two playground crazes, ninjas and BMX bikes, is a textbook case. Martial arts sold thanks to the karate game boom, while BMX bikes were the obsession of every schoolkid.

The game itself serves up action combat, with the ninja swinging fists and feet at oncoming opponents. Nobody expected a revolution from a two-pound tape; the point was to give kids an afternoon of fun for pocket money, and at that job the budget wave was reliably effective.

Today these cassettes carry a peculiar charm as sociological documents: they capture precisely what moved British schoolyards in 1988. Budget-label collectors form their own devoted sect within the retro community, and titles like this are their bread and butter.

Alternative Software was no mayfly operation, either – the label outlived the entire budget era and publishes games to this day, making its catalogue a continuous chronicle of the market's cheapest end. BMX Ninja represents the years when purchases were decided by cover art, pocket-money pricing and two minutes of playground bragging rights.

If you want to taste what a two-pound game felt like, BMX Ninja boots straight into your browser on OldGame.cz.