Sometimes I miss the big dumb action movie phase of the 1980s. I will fully admit that most of those films were not good upon closer inspection. But they were at least entertaining. And they inspired a legion of awesome video games that I still revisit to this day. Ikari Warriors was one of the multitude of games that tried to recreate Commando. And it largely succeeded, at least in the arcade. Something went horribly wrong with the NES version, and despite its popularity this is one of the worst games for the system. You can quote me on that.
You are probably never going to reach this point. I did you a solid.
From the moment the game starts you will immediately notice its atrocious performance. Yes, Ikari Warriors is another Micronics hack job. The frame rate is sub optimal, leaving the game a flickering mess at all times. Unfortunately the frame rate affects the gameplay and leaves the game nearly unplayable. It also ruins what should have been a bonus in this version as there is plenty of new content not present in any other version. But I guarantee no one will have the tolerance to see all of it.
It at least has all of the arcade game’s content. As both Clark and Vincent you are armed with an array of weapons. Both your standard machine gun and grenades have limited ammo but it is never a concern. To be honest most of the secondary weapons are almost indistinguishable from the machine gun. In a stupid twist you need a power-up to shoot long distance. Considering this game’s other problems that is just…wow. The three-way shot is powerful but exceedingly rare. You can also pilot helicopters and tanks which work on fuel. Unfortunately there is no way to exit the helicopter before it explodes, meaning it is always a death trap.
Outside of the frame rate what ultimately ruins this version of Ikari Warriors is the controls. The arcade machine used a rotary joystick that allowed for smooth movement. The NES port unwisely tries to replicate that same sense of movement and fails. Moving in any direction is a slow, laborious process that doesn’t work in this game. It makes Ikari Warriors near impossible to play as a result.
The entire game is slow. You move slow, shoot slowly, turn slow, God, even exiting a vehicle is slow. Something as simple as moving slightly to the right to avoid a mine or a sniper bullet is an arduous task that mostly fails as you slowly rotate, then move in the desired direction. I honestly find it hard to believe no one noticed this. Unfortunately the enemies don’t have this problem. They gang up in groups of 4-6 and attack at odd angles that your sluggish movement can’t react to. And even worse, moving in water is even slower! And this game loves its extended water segments. If you can somehow tolerate all of these flaws for more than a few minutes and dodge an indescribable amount of enemy fire, tanks, missiles, and turrets you’ll reach the end. Then you’ll come to a stunning realization.
That was just the first level.
I’m sure someone at Micronics thought they were doing the fans a favor by adding levels to the NES version but instead they created one long, grueling mess. In the arcade Ikari Warriors comprised one long, continuous stage that changed locations frequently. It all led to an assault on the enemy fortress and one of the strangest final boss battles of all time, if you can call it that. Here the game is broken down into four stages. They didn’t take the arcade game and break it up. They’ve added three more levels as long as the arcade game itself. It is bad enough trying to reach the end of the first level. But once the realization sets in that there is more? I wouldn’t blame anyone for chucking the game out the window.
As you can imagine Ikari Warriors is one of the most difficult games in the system’s library. Death comes every few minutes and is almost unavoidable. Random land mines, tank fire, exploding soldiers, the game throws everything at you. You’ll need to watch your tank’s status like a hawk; if you don’t exit before it runs out of fuel it is near impossible to avoid dying. Any time you enter water you can expect to die at least once. Continuing is done through a code and you have a limited window to enter it. But even those are limited. Even worse, it is possible to respawn in the environment, making it impossible to move and having to reset. For a game this grueling that is the kiss of death.
In Closing
I played through Ikari Warriors more for peace of mind and to say I finally did it. But there was no sense of satisfaction or accomplishment. Playing through this game basically confirmed what I already knew: Ikari Warriors is one of the worst NES games of all times.
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