Ikari Warriors

"If you can believe it, my friend and I played this game nonstop"

Ikari Warriors is fairly innovative if you consider both the time with which it was released and the relatively advanced gameplay it integrates. Unfortunately, Ikari Warriors is an unbelievably bad game that, amazingly, can't be finished. It's not that the game is overly difficult (which it is), instead the reason it can't be finished is because the game simply stops going after a certain point. Nevertheless, the game is fairly long and incredibly difficult. In fact, one could argue that it's harder to beat this game using Game Genie than it is to beat Contra with 3 lives. I am, ladies and gentlemen, the master of Ikari Warriors. I AM an Ikari Warrior. I know how to hijack a tank and launch grenades and follow a scrolling screen. I am one with war. I am one with the NES.

Graphics

The game looks awful. The opening scene of a plane crashing into the jungle is laughably bad, even for NES standards. Oh, but it gets so much worse from there. Remember the obnoxious "sprite blinking" effect that's so prevalent in NES games? This game is the LORD of sprite-blink. In fact, I'd say sprites spend more time OFF the screen than on the screen. Hooray for that.

Let's talk about the character models, shall we? We've got two bad dudes, one is totally ripped Rambo-style and the other is.... totally ripped Rambo-style. These guys have been pumping some serious iron and they're ready to take down anything. Man, you can tell from the pixels that their abs are hard enough to bounce quarters on. Did I mention that one of 'em has pink pants? Now that's a tough guy.

Seriously, this game looks terrible. It's a mess of pixels and blinking sprites that's almost vomit-inducing. On the bright side, tanks are pink. Everyone wants to drive a pink tank. At least I do.

Sound

Seriously hardcore, man. This game's got a soundtrack that sounds worse than a paraplegic dog being strangled. Ugh. The music is mind-bendingly atrocious and the sound effects are around the caliber of Combat. Yeah, Combat. That's the game for the Atari 2600, people. On second thought, I think Combat had better sound effects. It was more realistic, too, but we won't get into that.

Anyway, if you don't want you head to explode ala Mars Attacks , I highly recommend turning off the sound. Actually, I highly recommend turning off the game, but this is a democracy and you can do whatever you want.

Gameplay

It's an isometric action game, which is bad enough, but what's worse is that it actually managed to be worse than an isometric action game should be. Collision detection is beyond the realm of modern physics and comprehension, and weapons are completely unlike real life. Tanks? They're probably the worst contraption ever conceived by man. One would think that tanks are in this game solely to torture the player into thinking he/she is required to use them for some diabolic scheme.

This game is one hell of a rotten egg. In fact, it's worse than a rotten egg. It's probably the worst "action-packed" uber-Rambo game I've ever played.

Value

I bet you're wondering why I gave Ikari Warriors a 3. Well, I'll tell you why. When I was but a wee lad (actually, I wasn't) I thought this game was good. Thus, my childhood memories are skewed (just like the people who still like Disney despite knowing all their movies are complete junk except for Pixar-developed ones). Hooray for Ikari. Hooray for humanity.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 04/25/05