Ikari Warriors
System: NES
Release Date: May 1987
Developer: Micronics
Publisher: SNK
Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Ikari Warriors on NES is up next… Do I have to? Ugh… fine… This game is trash. I don’t think there is anything good to say about it. It plays sloooooooow. The levels are loooooooong. You have one hit deaths and only three lives. When I say the levels are long, I mean like they take 15 to 20 minutes of perfect play to get through. That’s ridiculous and unacceptable for a shoot ‘em up. Remember how I didn’t like Commando? This game makes Commando look like something good.
The premise is similar to Commando and Rambo, you move up and shoot everything that comes on screen. This would be fine, but you have tank control. You don’t turn right when you press right, you begin to rotate in that direction. It’s not a typical eight direction movement and it suffers immensely from it. You can’t line up your shots with any precision and you die because of it. Just terrible design.
The only somewhat redeeming feature in the game is when you actually get in a tank. If you have been able to collect powerups from the pink enemy soldiers, you shoot rockets that explode and take out anything in range. That’s the only satisfying part I can remember. But if you get caught in a blast radius, your tank blows up and you die. I just can’t even bring myself to talk about the horrible design choices and awful gameplay, so I’m going to skip to the grades.
Graphics: 1.0
I feel like they tried a little here, but all the enemy sprites look like garbage with arms and legs.
Sound: 0.5
I’ve heard people talk about liking the song that constantly drones on a loop. They’re wrong.
Gameplay: 0.0
Even if you can throw grenades in other directions than up, the tank controls are so god awful that this game is unplayable.
Difficulty: 0.5
When I say the levels are too long, it took me 20 minutes to get through level one and another 24 minutes to beat level two. That’s just terrible game design in this genre.
Fun Factor: 0.0
This game sucks.
Overall Grade: 0.4
Ikari Warriors earns an E. It is a truly terrible game. Stay away at all costs.