By 1990, Atari’s home consoles were looking seriously long in the tooth; even the Atari 7800, at that point their most technologically advanced home console, was outclassed from a technical point of view by their own handheld, the Atari Lynx.

Despite that, the console still had a few tricks up its sleeve, and one of those tricks was Ninja Golf. Released in 1990 in North America only, for years it was a bit of a Holy Grail for Atari fans outside the US, and was a pretty expensive cartridge to pick up on the secondary market until fairly recently.

Of course, fans who could find and afford it, or who had an original cartridge from back in the day already, or fans who weren’t fussed about the morally dubious nature of downloading ROMs, would have been able the sample the very peculiar charms of Ninja Golf anyway.

There’s also been much more widespread and legal availability of Ninja Golf in recent years, as it could be found on an Evercade cartridge (which has now been discontinued), or on Antstream Arcade, a retro gaming streaming service that offers thousands of games to stream for the cost of a monthly subscription.

Now Plaion, thanks to their Atari+ platform initiative, have brought Ninja Golf back in its original form, as an Atari 7800 cartridge. Given that Atari 7800 cartridges can be played on the excellent Atari 2600+ console, as well as the upcoming Atari 7800+, it’s now easier than ever to play Ninja Golf on actual hardware (it’ll also play on the original Atari 7800, if you still have one that works, and the means to use it).

So, what’s Ninja Golf about, and how do you play it? Let’s take a look.

In Ninja Golf, an opening text scroll informs you that, after many years of training, you’re finally ready to take on the hardest challenge of all: 9 holes of Ninja Golf.

In practice, what this means is that you’ll line up a shot on the golf course, with the timing of a single button press setting the strength of your shot, along with your chosen direction before you hit the ball (an overhead map at the bottom of the screen shows you the layout of the course and the position of the hole), determining where the ball ends up.

So far, so golf. Then, once the ball lands, you have to run to its position, and this is where things take a turn for the bizarre. Instead of simply making your way to where the ball is unhindered by nothing more than the course terrain and the distance, the game instead becomes a sideways scrolling beat ’em up on a single plane, much like arcade classic Kung Fu Master.

You can punch, kick and even throw a limited number of shuriken at the various enemies that’ll relentlessly attack you; at first you’ll face off against different coloured ninjas (the colours denoting their strength, speed and attack style), as well as massive gophers who appear from holes in the ground and throw deadly balls at you. As you progress, and as you find yourself in different environments, enemies will change; snakes in the desert and sharks underwater, for example.

“Wait, the desert and underwater?”, I hear you ask. On golf courses, you’ll invariably have sand or water traps, and rough areas as well as the fairway. In Ninja Golf, if you have to go through a sand trap to get to your ball, this translates into you making your way through the desert. Go through a water trap and you’ll be walking underwater.

There’s also giant frogs in the rough, and you might even need to make your way through the woods!

If you make it through these environments to your ball, you’ll then be able to hit it again, and the process repeats until your ball ends up on the putting green. Reach the putting green and yet another style of gameplay rears its head.

You see, rather than sinking the ball in a hole, you’ll instead face off against a Guardian, which is usually, but not often, a fire breathing dragon. This takes place in pseudo 3D, behind the character third person, as you control your ninja left and right, dodging the projectiles (or flames) that are being fired at you, all while you’re trying to fire your own shuriken at the Guardian to defeat it and move on to the next hole.

There are nine holes in total, each with their own layout, enemies and par; that’s right, ultimately you’re still also trying to get the best score in golf, while the mad ninja action unfolds.

This all sounds too good to be true, right? A concept that, despite being more than three decades old, is still entirely unique, with a truly interesting mix of genres to boot.

Unfortunately, it is a little too good to be true. Your ninja doesn’t feel as versatile or responsive as he should or could be, and you’ll often get stuck being attacked by enemies, unable to react properly, when things start to really heat up. As enemies spawn randomly and with no regard for the concept of ‘fairness’, you can end up being surrounded by enemies of such number and type that you can’t avoid them without taking damage.

Though you’ll occasionally get hold of power ups to restore health or Shurikens (or, even rarer still, a teleport to get you to the green), they’re few and far between, and the game can feel like a bit of a slog at times.

Especially as, when you’ve lost all of your lives, it’s back to hole 1, stroke 1 for you, with no password or continue system available; though this wasn’t uncommon on the Atari 7800, given the age of its technology, even Fatal Run managed a password system, and Ninja Golf is crying out for one.

Despite this, Ninja Golf has a lot of wonky charm up its black-clad sleeve, and it’s just playable enough that it is saved from its awkward elements. There’s a lot to like here, and that does outweigh the bad, but it’s also the fact that Ninja Golf is just so unapologetically silly and unique that gets it out of the bunker. Not quite a hole in one then, but Ninja Golf is worth picking up now that it’s available officially, at an affordable price.

You can buy Ninja Golf exclusively from Amazon in the UK.