Tom Selleck and Corey Feldman are Mr and Mrs. Ikari in "National Lampoon's Vietnam Vacation!"
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PLAYERS: 1-2 simultaneous
PUBLISHER: SNK
DEVELOPER: Micronics
GENRE: Action
RELEASE DATE: May 1987
SNK, those noble purveyors of fighting games, Metal Slug and
the occasional oddball sports affair, brought Ikari Warriors
to the arcade in 1986. It was a huge success, thus paving the way for
ports for every system known to man (Ikari Warriors on DOS?).
Out of all the systems in the late Eighties, the NES should have been
the system that got a close-to-perfect arcade translation. True, 1987
was still early in the NES' lifespan and the developers (in this
case, Micronics – SNK only published the port) were still getting
used to what the system could do. Nevertheless, this port of Ikari
Warriors is big, dumb, and the opposite of fun.
Why does Ikari Warriors work in the arcade but not on the NES?
Some would argue that it's the lack of rotary controls. In the
arcade, the rotary control system provided solid twelve-way (!)
directional shooting. On the NES, you had to contend with the stiff
four-way directional D-pad. While I agree that the controls are an
issue, for my money, it's the slowdown that makes Ikari Warriors
nigh unplayable. Every bit of the game chugs along, as if the NES
were being powered by a crank or something. Sometimes this can be
used to your advantage if the enemy fire gets too heavy. Mostly, it's
just annoying and really takes one out of the supposedly "furious"
experience ("ikari" means "fury" in Japanese).
Lastly, the bullets resemble white pellets and with all the
shenanigans and goings on, it's easy to get killed and not see the
bullet that hit you. If you really want to wrassle with this game,
look for those white pellets coming from every direction. If nothing
else, your eye sight will be much improved after you beat the game.
SNK would later refine this style of gameplay with Guerilla War
and, of course, the Metal Slug series. Both are
excellent and come highly recommended. Ikari Warriors,
however, fails to achieve even the modest task of performing as a competent
Rambo-style shoot-em-up. Perhaps the sequels will make me feel better
about donning a pink headband.
D-
I had to look up other versions of this game on Youtube. The Atari 2600 version looks one of the better games for that system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cvugs3lw5U
ReplyDeleteThe Atari 7800 looks like it plays much better than the NES one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpwyhFs4k1s
So I guess Atari wins this round?
My first time playing this series was part II on the NES, which I presume is your next one? I liked II okay I guess - and then I went back and played this game and really just did not like much of anything about it.
ReplyDeleteI remember playing this a bit as a kid. It flickered a lot and I never liked the limited bullets. I was used to most games giving unlimited ammo for the basic weapon.
ReplyDeleteLimited is realistic perhaps but not fun for me in a game of this type.
I have to disagree. Me and my best friend and his brother would stay up late into the night playing this game. We loved it!
ReplyDeleteThe three of us actually got together again a few weeks ago and were downloading old games on the Wii and were sorely disappointed this wasn't available on the virtual console.