GI Joe: A Real American Hero
System: NES
Release Date: January 1991
Developer: KID
Publisher: Taxan
Genre: Action
He’ll fight for freedom wherever there’s trouble because he’s G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero! That’s right, the 1980s phenomenon has finally made its way to the NES. Cobra is terrorizing the peace loving people of the world and they won’t stop until they’re in charge. That’s not going to work for the Joes, because they never give up, they’re always there, fighting for freedom over land and air. Six missions of three levels each stand between you and the destruction of Cobra.
The levels are action platformers. Kill all the bad guys in the first stage on your way to the Cobra base. You’ll find weapon powerups and for every four you collect, your ranged attack becomes stronger with more projectiles.. You switch back and forth between hand to hand combat and ranged combat with the Select Button. Ranged attacks have limited ammo, which you find drops to replenish. Unless you’re Snake Eyes, who uses magic, so doesn’t expend ammo. Each Joe has their own life bar that can be replenished with rations that are found or dropped from enemies. If it gets low, your best bet is to press the Start Button and switch to one of your squad mates.
General Hawk deems the mission leader that you must take and then tells you to pick your squad mates. Each GI Joe has their own rankings of stamina, jumping, hand to hand attack, and weapon strength. Duke is the de facto leader of the team, with average overall stats. Blizzard is tailor made for arctic missions, but his stats are the lowest overall from the team. Snake Eyes, the most awesome of the Joes, jumps the highest and has a strong katana, but his ranged ninja magic is the weakest, though it doesn’t use ammo. Grid Iron is overall pretty strong, and I wish I would have realized that, because I used him the least. Rock and Roll has overpowered weaponry, but the lowest jump and stamina. Pick Snake Eyes and keep him healthy, because he’s the best.
Getting to the end of the first stage puts you in a boss battle. They all have patterns that you can follow or brute force your way through with enough health. The second stage of each mission puts you in a Cobra base where you need to plant a number of bombs. These stages start out pretty small, but soon become giant mazes. I lost on a couple of them because the time limit expired. Once you plant all the bombs, it’s a race to the exit. Then you fight another boss battle. They fall pretty easily, like the first stage bosses. The third stage is escape from the mission area that is like the first stage and ends with a battle against the Cobra boss that has been taunting you.
The final mission puts you in control of General Hawk, who has a jet pack, which allows you to stay in the air as long as you are jumping. I didn’t give up, I stayed til the fight was won… then they sent me on a second quest. You’re sent back to the first level, everyone goes back to the default power of their weapon, and you can only choose one extra character to take along the mission leader. I found the bombs were placed in different spots in the first maze level, but everything else seemed the same difficulty. I hear that there is a third quest where you only play as the mission leader, which combined with the passwords, gives this game a lot of content before you completely beat it. Yo Joe!
Graphics: 2.5
Stage graphics are varied, though they aren’t the best looking things you’ll see.
Sound: 2.5
I liked the music, but some of the loops were incredibly short, which got annoying.
Gameplay: 3.5
The gameplay is solid. It feels smooth and killing enemies is fun. I didn’t even touch on the vehicles you can find for short periods of levels.
Difficulty: 3.5
You can beat levels with any load out. You get a password at the beginning of each mission so you don’t have to play it all in one sitting. You can continue if you need to, but with a loss of weapon level.
Fun Factor: 3.5
This game is a lot of fun whether you are a fan of the franchise or not. Is it perfect? No, but it’s pretty great.
Overall Rating: 3.1
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero earns a B. This is a solid game that if I was a little less scrupulous I would have fudged the numbers upward, but a B is great in my eyes. Play this and enjoy!