If a gun power-up is onscreen, peasants won’t dispense arrow-bombs or extra lives. Meanwhile, killing enough grunts will get you power-ups to increase the range or penetration of your gun. Or they’ll give you an extra life instead, which is handy since you only start with three, plus the automatic one-up you get at the end of each round. To fight them off, you get an M60 with unlimited ammo (though its fire rate is anything but rapid), and in lieu of grenades, a quiver of five “arrow-bombs.” Use these to blow up the huts of nearby peasants, and in return they offer you… more arrow-bombs? Not sure how that works, but that’s video game logic for you (at least you’re not eating turkey legs from a garbage can).
(or heroes: Rambo supports two-player simultaneous co-op, though I haven’t tried it much.)
Instead you get six relatively compact and action-packed “rounds” in which a mix of pre-placed enemies and ever-spawning grunts beleaguer the hero. True, you don’t get to drive a tank or a helicopter, but you’re also spared the endless torture of Ikari‘s painfully long stages. However, one big difference is that, unlike Micronics’ horrific NES port of SNK’s arcade game, Rambo is actually playable, well-programmed, and even fun. And when grenades begin pelting you from off-screen, any Ikari veteran will instantly know you’re being punished for staying in one place too long. The methodical gameplay and slow-pivoting protagonist are strongly reminiscent of Ikari Warriors, so are smaller details like the ubiquitous flamethrower soldiers, or the rock formations that fire projectiles from their stony faces. Others, like Golden Axe Warrior, duplicate the gameplay of another title (in this case The Legend of Zelda) to the point where experience with one lets you jump right into the other, but at least they took the time to slap on a different skin.Īt first glance, Rambo: First Blood Part II seems like an example of the latter. Some tread dangerously close to plagiarism, like Super Tennis, a shameless clone of Nintendo’s “black box” Tennis.
The North American Master System library has no shortage of “me too” games brought out to compete with the NES.
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