System 3's upcoming The Last Ninja Collection + Bonus Games compilation will release on PC (via Steam) on November 27th, 2025, the publisher has confirmed.
The collection, which includes The Last Ninja, Last Ninja 2, Last Ninja 3, Ninja Remix, International Karate, IK+, and Bangkok Knights, was crowdfunded on Kickstarter last year and is scheduled to release across Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
However, as revealed last month in a Kickstarter update, the console versions of the game have run into a spot of trouble, delaying their release, with Nintendo, in particular, raising "serious objections" to the appearance Rising Sun flag artwork featured in Last Ninja 3.
As detailed in our coverage of this update earlier this month, the rising sun flag has been around for centuries, but was adopted by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy during the Second World War. As a result, has since become viewed as a controversial symbol of imperialism, especially in countries such as South Korea that fell under Japanese rule during World War II, with game companies such as Capcom previously removing the flag from their games to avoid causing any offense.
In response to these objections, System 3 suggested its possible options forward were either to "remove Amiga Last Ninja 3 entirely from the cartridge, or to secure a waiver from Nintendo," seemingly lacking the ability to patch the game itself.
However, since then, in a newer update, it seems like it has ended up settling on an entirely different, third option. This is to lock the game on certain machines "in territories where the symbol causes offense, in particular Korea". This approach, System 3 states, will respect "regional rules while preserving the historical authenticity of the collection elsewhere".
The company is waiting on final confirmation from Nintendo, at which point, the physical editions for Nintendo Switch will go into manufacturing.
In other news, System 3 has today also announced the James Pond Legacy: The Pond Is Not Enough collection — another collection of one of its most popular games, which is said to feature "faithfully emulated versions of the original Sega, SNES and Amiga titles".
This announcement was accompanied by some suspect artwork, which looks as if it had been generated by AI — something the company has been guilty of in the past.