Ikari Warriors.. fear.
The name that, even mentioned idly, could make a grown man cry.
The name of the grey NES cartridge filled with 131088 bytes of pure evil.

Before SNK went a bit graphics-nuts and made NeoGeo,
they made a bundle of war-oriented action arcade games.

Most of those games were also converted to NES by SNK.

One of the worst games was Ikari Warriors.
My sources tell me that the main creator of the game
ran away by setting two of the SNK staff kinetically on fire
and levitating through the roof after it was discovered that
he had actually designed this game
to retardize every potential player with its sheer crappiness,
and he's still being hunted around the globe for his horrible crime against Mankind.
Yet it is said that he still keeps experimenting on hideous ways of
lobotomizing people with terrible software,
and that he is currently working for Microsoft.
I'm also told that his real first name is in fact Damien,
and that his covername is currently Bill, which he gained by
killing someone by that name within the company, and assuming his place.

Anyway, in Ikari Warriors, you control the brave warriors, named Paul and Vince,
yes, the ruthless killers are named 'Paul' and 'Vince'.
My sources at SNK HQ tell me that they originally planned to name
the heroes Fitzgerald and Toussaint but they couldn't
learn to spell the names even with the help of lingular experts..
..and I also mean American ones.



You can select either one player or two players,
assuming that the world has bestowed you with someone insane enough
to play this game WITH you, and then whee!, you're off.


The magnificent FMV introductory sequence which tells the beginning
of the epic story sets you right into the mood for killing..
SNK staff, that is, as it's just a lame plane crashing into a lame jungle
from a lame one color sky.

But hey, this game is the most realistic reproduction of war I've seen !
Why?
Because in real life one or two men don't stand a chance against an enemy army,
they don't even survive five minutes, they don't in this game either,
as one hit kills, and the expected lifespan is about 30.. nah, 10 seconds.
And there are only three lives.

Roy Adams, a top spec ops commando of the U.S. Army, was quoted saying :
" Hot damn! This here game beats Hidden and Dangerous damn straight! "
Zltvchlt Klborsltc, the main designer of H&D, was not available for comment,
his secretary informed us that he is in the middle of something he calls happy moment
and we didn't really feel like barging in.

Playing any version, you can see that the SNK people oughta be shot
since the arcade game is just as difficult as the NES version
and the only possible way of completing the game would be
to pump about $300 into the arcade cabinet,
but from what I've heard, this is SNK's usual policy anyway.
And in the NES version, you get three lives and after that, GAME OVER.
(Unless you use the secret continue code which is certainly
the only way of completing the @#!*& game.)
Sheesh.

Paul and Vince walk in eight directions (painfully slowly),
shoot with their guns and throw grenades, enter tanks and helicopters,
and die, which they can do particularly well,
unfortunately dying in this game is counterproductive.
The weapons are supposed to be machine guns but they look like mortars
and behave like .22 peashooters, and the grenades must have been borrowed
from that milestone of screen entertainment, Commando the Movie,
since they only emit a queery puff when they should explode.
This is not the case with the enchanced grenades though,
but they're hard as hell to get, although every nasty enemy uses them.

The characters look really stupid,
and they have two animation frames except when walking straight up or down,
in which case they have four, very luxurious.
The left-right-walk looks especially lame,
and their feet are just totally black stumps,
but it is understandable since Paul and Vince walked on some landmines
on their last assignment and the lower parts of their feet were amputated,
which also explains their notoriously slow walking speed.

It is said that the HQ insisted on retiring Paul and Vince
after their feet got blown to hell but a quick threat concerning
a handicap discrimination law suit got them back in active duty.

The dying frames are also ugly;
I never knew that soldiers, when dying, turn 360 degrees and sit down.
(Death sequence? That sounds just like my dog relaxing if you ask me.)
Thank God this game cleared it up, I'll treasure the knowledge along
my ultimate realization that a winner is you
I gained during a quick bout of Pro Wrestling.

And even the aural experience of the game sucks, too.
In fact, it sucks wholesomely.
It's on the level of NES 1942, and if you've played it,
you know this sure as hell isn't a positive thing.
The sound effects are very bad, courtesy of the Sauna Simulator (TM),
and the music sounds like a series of beeps in different notes
with some wind-in-the-weeds drum sounds,
overall only a tiny level above the godawful 'musics' of 1942.
There are only two ingame tunes, and the other one of them
only plays at several points, leaving the other tune to play all the time.
It isn't a bad tune per se, as it would be OK with some good sounds,
but the horrible instrumentation makes it a pain to listen,
and there's the fact that it's virtually the only music you hear in the game.

My source inside SNK tells me that the musics of the NES version
were specifically arranged by Kitomo Harakigawa,
a born deaf musician which was recruited by SNK for NES instrumentation.


And now, the brave commando trip of Paul begins.

Be seated and keep a sickness bag ready,
and remember that there's a panic button hovering midair to the left
if you feel that you cannot endure the trip any longer.


This gray lump looks like a fortified ice cream stand
but it ISN'T a camoflaged state-of-the-art enemy machine gun turret;
It in fact is a fortified ice cream stand..

" No I don't have any cholocate chip, now get the hell outta here ! "


Suddenly, in the midst of fighting, Paul spots a wildly color-cycling tank !

His dreams of carnage on tracks are shattered as he presses fire only to see
the tank fire ancient cannon balls that Napoleon probably would've laughed at.


The enemies have their hot dog stands fortified too,
and they painted them all with a spiffy flashing skull
on top of a stick of dynamite,
obviously to scare off the bravest of American soldiers.

War veteran Tom Macklin, a receiver of the Congessional Medal of Honor, said
" There was nothing more dreadful a sight than that of these
death machines, with that dread skull on top, mocking, watching us. "
Then he resumed what he was doing, but suddenly yelled " GRENADE !! "
and quickly strafed left, only to unfortunately fall off the cliff
as what he was doing before was admiring the Grand Canyon from the edge.


The leader of the enemy forces,
after experimenting with some Finlandia Vodka and a bottle of aspirin,
decided to forget the minigun emplacements and to use
carved lion heads that fire pink armor piercing arrows in three directions instead.

He also insisted that the eyes and the mouth must glow when firing.
" It'll look mysterious in aerial recon photos ", he smirked,
" Those pig dogs will think twice about attacking! "


With some guerrilla spirit, the enemies turned this car,
which they had bought off cheap after Al Capone fell,
into a veritable automobile of destruction, complete with a red hot rod
skull sticker they decided to patch onto the roof.

Unfortunately they couldn't fit any weapons into the car,
but they did load it full of TNT so that it blows up real sweet
if someone chucks a bomb at it.


Brave commando Paul is faced with agonious crossfire of infantry,
tanks, and Round Spots On The Ground That Say Bleep.

After the bleep, a shell flies from above into the round spot, exploding.
What a clever trap!
Or more like, it would be, if the shell was faster than a one-legged dog,
which it, quite frankly, isn't.


The enemies have these special fortresses to stop hostiles from advancing.
Having an eye for the artistic, they also painted some forts red.

Of course it might also be SNK's lame attempt at trying to
make the game look less repetetive..

At this fortress Paul faces the most difficult obstacle yet --
A big tank that takes more than one hit and fires shells that actually explode !
Only his skills as a top warrior let him survive this lethal encounter.


Paul is horribly slow when walking in water.
'course, enemies walk at normal speed, and tend to close on you underwater
where you can't hurt them, not even with grenades.

And when they get near you, they flash red and explode (WTF!?)
Yeah, fair play.


Whoah, the SNK guys managed to put a helicopter into your disposal!

But the catch is, it runs out of fuel in 15 seconds,
effectively spoiling any use it would have.


Paul has finally reached something of a town.
Okay, a ghetto. A cardboard city.

You can blast the doors in an attempt at gaining some pleasure,
but what's the point ?


I'd just like to know what the heck this place is supposed to be.

EMail your opinion to me to possibly win something I dug from my nose !


The elite bazooka soldiers guard the way to a bridge.

Their purchase request was sent to the wrong place by the postal service
and instead of firing up mean shells 'o' death these brave men
fire cotton candy from their bazookas instead.
When we asked the postal service about this minor little mishap
they replied with a merry clipful of Uzi ammo and a nerved war cry.


" The bridges have some amazing perspective to them, just fabulous! "

The preceding was a quote from Arthur F. Wood,
a one-eyed color-blind bohemian artist living in north Seattle.
Unfortunately he had left his quadruple magni glasses at home
and thus would not look at another snapshots.


Ahh.. is it over?
Dammit, no, only the end of the first level.

And the next level begins with nada, ie. no tank, lousy grenades, etc.
Happy birthday, fucker.
Of course, I understand this choice completely;
If I was a crack commando and had just broken through the first enemy lines,
I would also certainly ditch all of my weapons!
Somewhy, Paul and Vince keep their machine guns, however,
but that's probably due to limited sprite space on the NES cart.


Bazooka Bills here fire homing missiles.

They are impossible to dodge.
You can't destroy them.
Have fun.


After some trekking upwards on level 2
Paul is attacked by huge punks with stupid hair cuts and (?!) tennis rackets.
These sportsmen shrug off bullets, home on you,
and whack your dumb military mind senseless.

I'd really like to know what were they smoking when they came up with this.
And whatever it was, I want some!!#*&@!


Oh GREAT, swamplands!
In mud Paul moves, once again, twice as slow,
and these watchmen have enhanced grenades,
so to dispatch them with regular grenades you must get near them, FAST.

And of course, YOU are as fast as a 286/12,
which results in an explosion that makes Paul's guts fly all over.
Naturally, you don't SEE his guts fly, so this scene is just irritating.


In a pathetic attempt to create a feeling of a new zone,
SNK added some greenery to make the place jungley.

They failed miserably.


What the hell ??

Great, uncovered a chick-in-bikinis bonus.
Amusingly, running this bitch over with my tank gets me a point bonus,
which is kind of cool in a somewhat misogynistic good-soldiers-bad-soldiers
war movie fashion.


When cutting through another humid jungle,
Paul is suddenly assaulted by some kind of dreadful bio-monsters
that are probably supposed to look like spiders or something.

Probably the 'something'.


More horrible abominations assault..

..this time in form of some weirdass wasp-butterfly-monsters.


And lo, with this display of ultimate graphical prowess
ends the second chapter of the adventure.

Oh golly, what more could be waiting yon there ?


So this is the third part of the game,

a veritable three color metal heaven.


Paul looks in horror as he faces evil doppelgangers
that look like him down to every single pixel.

Either that, or SNK just ran out of ideas.


" Locate the REAL tanks or you will be history. "

A real strenuous task,
seeing that the real tanks have rotating barrels and they flash =)


The fortresses in level three look different,
and they even have multiple doors!

Of course, other one of these doors is a fake
which cannot be destroyed.
So much for that one..


These black troopers home in on you.

Other than that, they're identical to blue ones.


Paul is caught off guard by clever snipers hiding in barrels,
that are obviously full of gas because they blow up when destroyed.

Now if only would the snipers have picked empty barrels instead...


Ah, _the_ red carpet, signifying that the end is near.



The foolish leader of the enemy forces stupidly decided to
wait for the brave hero to arrive.

Of course, our military mind here took his sweet time getting there,
and you can see the result.


After you've killed him.. nope, blasted his corpse more like it, it's The End, right?
Wrong.
One might spend a day here, wondering what to do,
if killer missiles wouldn't suddenly start pouring from above.

SNK's perfectly logical solution
(Rivalled only by the Deborah cliff part of Simon's Quest)
is " Easy! Just throw a grenade at a certain spot on the screen! "
and lo, stairs appear.


Thus ends the third part of the story.



Wow, SNK outdid themselves with the spiffy two-color (Three if you look closely)
decor of the intense final level.

Intense, that is, if compared to watching paint dry,
or travelling in Ocarina of Time.


WTF !?!

After a lot of treading Paul faces some laser-shooting stormtroopers (!?),
but for some odd reason (Perhaps his UV-resistant tan) the lasers don't hurt him.


Finally, this is the End.
Paul is frozen with horror as he gazes upon a skull on the wall.
But this skull has eyes and it fires odd round plasma thingies.

After about five grenades it starts flashing red,
and after ten grenades it explodes, and finally, FINALLY . . .


..you get the detailed, fully animated SNES grade ending
where General Kawasaki sends Paul his thanks
in perfect English.

It is said that after this mission Paul went and shot General Kawasaki
twice in the gut and thrice in the head.
I approve.


And then..

This.
Sheesh.
And no, I haven't scaled the screen shots,
the font LOOKS that warped.


So, is this game bad ?
Yes, it's bad.
It's so bad that it makes NES Total Recall a masterpiece in comparison.
I'm told that NES Ikari Warriors is renowned among the S&M scene,
and I've also heard rumors that three out of four middle-east dictators,
including part time dictator part time accordion player Saddam Tauno Hussein,
prefer Ikari Warriors when torturing capitalistic yank pigs.

This game is pure evil.
I hope the designer's dark soul burns in eternal damnation
of having to play the first retail version of Sin until the end of time.

And if you still don't believe the game to be evil, there's still proof.
Yes indeed, remember the 'secret continue code' I was talking about earlier?
Well..
The code is.. 'A, B, B, A'.
Any game that forces you to spell ABBA many times to be able to win the game
can't be anything else than a work of the demon spawn.
See.. true evil.

And back when I was a kid (and so my brother was even more a kid too),
I once made the mistake of borrowing the game from a friend for a while.
As if this wasn't pretty terrible by itself,
my brother used to start whining for me to play Ikari with him,
and when I tried to hold on to the shreds of my poor soul
with a firm 'NO' he went whining to father instead,
who then proceeded to force me to play Ikari.
Man, and then they ask me why I'm so fucked up...

For some unfathomable reason SNK made two sequels to Ikari,
named Victory Road and Ikari III, respectively.
NES Victory Road managed to outdo the original NES Ikari
by being probably the worst game of the genre I've seen,
(However - that game was not evil, just horrible)
even outdoing Silver Sword of the Action-52 cartridge !

On the subject, the amazing sole programmer of the infamous Action-52 cartridge,
Jedediah T. Hickston,
was quoted saying " Yessh, me love Wiktory Road.. GO !! Paul Vince GO GO "
after which he resumed playing Battlezone and drooling uncontrollably.


Okay.. now lessee.. anything missing on the shit review checklist?
Ah-ha. "Make an utterly redundant Hitler / bin Laden reference".

Well now! Playing Ikari Warriors is like kissing Hitler! Or bin Laden!


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