#300 - Impossible Mission II

Contrary to the ridiculous box-art, you are not playing through a Japanese monster movie.

Yes, those are goofy Einstein/Wily/Mad Scientist heads in the background. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED???

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to navigate a dim-witted gymnast through eight towers of destruction. For whatever reason, a maniacal man named Doctor Atombender (he bends them – who knew?!) is determined to kill you and you alone. To do this, he employs robots, surveillance cameras, and an overall inflated sense of self-esteem (his towers aren't that dangerous). Each room contains items you can search – paintings, safes, chairs - that will give you other items you use – bombs, mines, lights – to progress further up the towers. There is a general map you will be given, but it won't explain much. This is a non-linear quest, old man, andy ou should treat it as such! Find what you need in each room and get out of there before time runs out. You have "eight hours" of Atombender time - which in real time, equals around one hour or so – to stop Atombender from... blowing you up? Yeah, sure, whatever.

Should you choose not to accept this game, in truth, you won't be missing much. Impossible Mission II is too tedious to be of any merit. Every room is the same thing: search for items, either use said items in that room, or move on to the next room. Watch your time. Repeat endlessly. That's it. If your main character didn't always move like he was in slow-motion, this game would be a breeze. His unwieldiness is the only reason for the game's difficulty, but don't worry, you have unlimited lives. I think dying lowers your time a little bit, so watch out for that. Or don't. I'd go with the latter.

D-

#299 - The Immortal

                                Will Har-vey! YOU... SHALL NOT... PASS!!!!

                                   The Mines of Moria never looked so blue

The Immortal is an old-school dungeon crawler of devious proportions. You play a wizard who must walk cautiously through a series of rooms. The occasional fight transports you to a "battle screen," which gives you the options to fight or dodge your opponents attacks. The latter is a fantastic respite from what is otherwise an unforgiving game. Progression in The Immortalis slow and, ultimately, meaningless unless you have the patience (and underlying masochistic tendencies) of someone who relishes dying repeatedly in video games. The game isn't really hard, per say. It just desires to kill you and ensure that you stay dead. Each room conjures up new ways for the Main Wizard to die, whether it be trap floors (never marked), skulls spitting arrows, or bats you can hardly see because the pixelated rendering is borderline abominable.

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how to feel about this game. I certainly admire the gleeful enthusiasm that went into making it. Each room's deathtraps were labors of obvious love. Still, call me old-fashioned (or new-fashioned, I suppose) but I like to progressthrough my video games and get to the end without dying a thousand times. Unless you have passwords, which come from beating each level, you start over at the beginning of the level every time you die. This is pretty standard stuff for most games, but most games also reward the player for trying to progress. The Immortal– incredibly ironic title aside – hopes the player will take part in the murderous madness contained within its cavernous walls. I couldn't, but for the right person, it could be worth it.

B-

#298 - Image Fight

The space craft is placed just below the man's crotch, where he can make sure it stays out of trouble.

                                                Will the thrills never cease?!

I was going to start off this review with a "this game's title makes no sense" anecdote, but realized how inane that would be, considering a good portion of the NES' game library have inscrutable title names. But really, Irem? Image Fight? There's nothing in this mediocre shooter that would leave the player to contemplate the meaning of fighting one's own image a la Dark Link in Zelda II. You are but a simple fighting vessel that can acquire typical upgrades – seeking missiles/lasers, v-cannon, shooting pods that attach to your ship – in order to stop the Boondoggle Galaxy (a most hilarious name for such a terrible menace). Shoot... shoot... shoot, con sarn it, shoot! Shooting is all there is to do. I can get down with shooters, but there's something about Image Fight'sconstruction that feels so... half-hearted. Upgrades are plentiful, enemies come slowly (by shmup standards) and are easily destroyed. Assuming you don't die halfway through the level, boss battles are a cinch. There's very little strategy involved in the entire game, besides getting from point A to point B. The backgrounds are boring and the music is your typical space-battle tripe. I'd say there's nothing here to recommend, but the game plays as well any other competent shooter on the NES. If you've exhausted all other NES shmup possibilties, Image Fight is available. Just don't expect to look into one's own soul and pontificate on the darkness within. Hitting 'A' repeatedly is all that's required.

C-

#297 - Ikari III: The Rescue

Punk rockers try to take down a steel mill in the "questionable" part of town. Not on Paul and Vince's watch!

Four guys?! Paul can spin kick them in his sleep. Bring out fifteen guys, then maybe he'll sweat a little.

After acquiring diabetes and cancer from playing Ikari Warriors 1+ II respectively, I wondered if I should even touch the third one. What kind of death-bringing illness would Ikari IIIbestow upon my already weakened vessel? Surprisingly, the third installment of Paul and Vince's Shirtless Adventures is the best entry in the beleaguered franchise. While it doesn't quite hit the highs of Guerilla War or Double Dragon II, it's a solid beat-em-up that "rescues" the reputation of the Ikari Warriors series on the NES.

After two despicable adventures with all guns blazing, Paul and Vince decide that the best way to prove their manhood is to ditch the pea-shooters and bring out the big guns a.k.a. their fists. Yup, Ikari III makes the honorable transition from vertically-scrolling shooter to vertically-scrolling beat-em-up and it's all the better for it*. No longer will you have to worry about constantly missing your target because the D-pad won't fire diagonally. Just beat up the communistas and let Castro sort 'em out. 'A' is punch, 'B' is kick, and pressing both at once will make you jump and kick, so yeah, Ikari III rips off Double Dragon's control scheme, but at least it feels right. Thankfully, the one-life-and-it's-game-over BS is over: SNK gives you a generous three and unlimited continues. I'm not sure how I feel about the latter, but I completed the game with them, so there's that. Were it not for the continues, the game would be quite challenging, as the waves of soldiers certainly like to gang up on you. Once you figure out some of their standing patterns though, they're not so tough.

Consider my crippling diseases cured. Certainly there are better beat-em-ups for your NES, but I can't remember a series that started out so crappy, became even crappier, before improving dramatically for the final installment. Paul and Vince should be proud. Not only is their Florida nightclub flourishing, but they completed their trilogy of adventures by saving the President's daughter and destroying a third-world nation – all without a shirt. You guys have earned the adjective "ikari."

B-

* I should specify: you occasionally use guns, like during certain boss battles, or on Act IV where Paul is underwater shooting scuba divers for whatever reason. The game is about 95% brawler, though.

#296 - Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road

             Sorry Paul, the mere power of your pecs will not repel the creatures.

Shoot, blow things up, die, game over, take out cartridge, ponder it, shake head, walk away.

Paul and Vince, the Ikari Warriors (not to be confused with Paul and Vince, the gay nightclub owners), liked destroying creation so much in the first game, they decided to thunder down Victory Road and take on the entire galaxy or something. Story is not why you jam an Ikari Warriors cartridge into your aging NES console (or sprightly legal knockoff, whatever the case may be). Here's a solid question: why would you jam an Ikari Warriors cartridge into your NES? The original Ikari Warriors was a sorry excuse for an arcade port that nobody liked. Apparently, everyone's distaste for the first game was music to SNK's ears, thus Victory Road's quick release only eleven months after the first Ikari Warriors.

What's changed: Paul (or Vince) must have been hittin' the protein powder pretty hard because his sprite is incredibly large. The alien enemies are larger and faster than previous enemies as well, which means the chances for you to get hit are much greater. Despite your increased girth, your life bar is as puny as it is every was, and you still only have one life. The controls are not your friend either. While the slowdown is thankfully missing here, the controls account for your larger size and so you move slower. Also, the D-pad still feels clumsy, compared to the arcade's original rotary controls. To summarize: because you are large (but slow and weak) and your enemies are large (and strong and fast), you will die often and you will have to start over from the very beginning every time. This will insure that you turn this installment of Ikari Warriors off more quickly than the previous one. Paul and Vince may have aspirations of turning the galaxy's denizens into furious mulch, but in order to do that, they need to figure out how to move and aim accurately. Godspeed, boys.

F

#295 - Ikari Warriors

Tom Selleck and Corey Feldman are Mr and Mrs. Ikari in "National Lampoon's Vietnam Vacation!"

Is that a pink machine gun he's wielding? I'll give him this: he's committed to that color.

SNK, those noble purveyors of fighting games, Metal Slug and the occasional oddball sports affair, brought Ikari Warriorsto the arcade in 1986. It was a huge success, thus paving the way for ports for every system known to man (Ikari Warriors on DOS?). Out of all the systems in the late Eighties, the NES should have been the system that got a close-to-perfect arcade translation. True, 1987 was still early in the NES' lifespan and the developers (in this case, Micronics – SNK only published the port) were still getting used to what the system could do. Nevertheless, this port of Ikari Warriors is big, dumb, and the opposite of fun.

Why does Ikari Warriors work in the arcade but not on the NES? Some would argue that it's the lack of rotary controls. In the arcade, the rotary control system provided solid twelve-way (!) directional shooting. On the NES, you had to contend with the stiff four-way directional D-pad. While I agree that the controls are an issue, for my money, it's the slowdown that makes Ikari Warriors nigh unplayable. Every bit of the game chugs along, as if the NES were being powered by a crank or something. Sometimes this can be used to your advantage if the enemy fire gets too heavy. Mostly, it's just annoying and really takes one out of the supposedly "furious" experience ("ikari" means "fury" in Japanese). Lastly, the bullets resemble white pellets and with all the shenanigans and goings on, it's easy to get killed and not see the bullet that hit you. If you really want to wrassle with this game, look for those white pellets coming from every direction. If nothing else, your eye sight will be much improved after you beat the game.

SNK would later refine this style of gameplay with Guerilla Warand, of course, the Metal Slug series. Both are excellent and come highly recommended. Ikari Warriors, however, fails to achieve even the modest task of performing as a competent Rambo-style shoot-em-up. Perhaps the sequels will make me feel better about donning a pink headband.

D-

#294 - Ice Hockey

                                               Chuck Norris, Hockey Ranger.

Every single one of those bobble-heads in the audience is cruisin' for a bruisin'. You heard it here first!

There's really no reason why hockey players and fans alike should get so riled up over a stupid puck. And yet, blood (and teeth) on the ice are a common occurence during hockey games. Unchecked anger must be a prerequisite for enjoying such a sport as this. Case in point: Ice Hockey. I'm almost a hundred percent certain that this game plays as well as an early hockey game can, and yet the more I played, the more enraged I became. It's true that the computer was much better than me, so perhaps that could account for part of it. Still, this feels different than the typical sports game I play, where I could honestly care less if the other team wins or loses. Any country I played against in Ice Hockeywas better than mine (I think it goes without saying that the Canadians were the greatest), despite the much appreciated tight controls; passing was a cinch, as was blocking. I could say that I'm just not very good at sports games (true) or that I set the speed too fast for the games I played (you can set the speed from 1 to 5 – 3 was too fast for me), but I think that overwhelming rage – which oozes forth from the sport of hockey, like a festering wound – prohibited me from doing well. Some fans and players feed off of the anger that comes from the game. Others, like myself, who are typically mellow individuals, don't know what to do with this sudden influx of overwhelming emotions and panic. For those who can withstand the speed and ferocity coming from the micro men's hockey sticks, you will be well-rewarded. The rest of us will get by with a warm bath, a cup of tea and a lie down.

B-