Ikari Warriors

Copyright : Elite Systems Ltd | Reviewed by : AndyH

General Alexander Bonn, C.I.F US Forces in Central America - has been seized by a band of revolutionaries and help captive in his own headquarters. Before his final capture he relayed a mayday which you and your buddy picked up.

Your plane crashlands in the dense jungle some distance from the headquarters. After decideding whether to go it alone or attempt the rescue together you set off. You are in deep Guerilla terrirory. On all sides gather trained marksmen and combateers, determined to stop you.

Graphics

The Amstrad was capable of some great graphics. A few games really captured the soul with breath taking visuals, Ikari Warriors was one of them.

Starting with the scenery, from the very start to the very end it is big, bold, colourful and clear. Such good use of colour is the key, but the detail and definition certainly play a part to make the world you travel over look gorgeous. The Speccy and C64 versions just can?t compete. From jungle to water to bridges, everything looked so polished and so powerful for the time. Even today I am impressed.

The screen layout and size, the icons and even the title screen give a great professional impression to the game.

Then there was the sprites - the player and the soldiers had a kind of style that almost made them look cartoon-like, but this worked really well. Other 8-bit versions in comparison looked amaturish. The animation in the amstrad version was smooth and you really felt like those little soldiers were alive as they ran around.

The grenades looked very meaty, with a grill-like look to them, the red extra powerful variety looking very deadly.

Overall the graphics are amongst the best to be found on the Amstrad, rating highly with others such as Renegad and Cybernoid.

The only gripe I have is that at the start of the level you do not see the plane you crash land in. Would have been nice.

Sound

Sound and music don?t let this game down one bit and compliment the graphics and gameplay perfectly. A good tune and great sound effects for everything.

Gameplay

With great graphics and sound, you may think that gameplay would be poor or non-existant as is the case with some games. Not Ikari. The gameplay is well balanced. You start off int he thick of it with enemy soldiers attacking you in set patterns as you scroll up the screen. They have an intelligence to them where they will carry out their initial orders and if they are still alive they might fall back before turning to have another go at you. Others will take you by surprise in charging or even just trying to get behind you.

Some soldiers carry rocket launchers, others sit in bunkers or buildings. For these you can use your grenades to try to take them out.

You have a set number of grenates, and bullets for that matter. This sounds like it could be harsh, but fortunately as you progress you can pick up extra bullets and grenades from the soldiers and targets you destroy. You can even upgrade your grenades to the super variety that do much more damage.

Along the way you will also encounter the odd hostage, which is a nice touch. But best of all you will find tanks you can take over and drive. With these you fire a kind of grenade (with super power up if collected) so you need to keep your ammo topped up. Also the tanks need fuel, so you need to keep that on the go too. What is particularly satisfying is that you can run over the soldiers by driving over them and at times there seems to be plenty of willing victims.

Tanks will start to flash when damaged or low on fuel, so you have a few seconds to get out and clear of the resultant explosion.

The enemy also have tanks and helicopters which begin to make things tricky as you go along.

Then there are mines, these are invisible until you are almost on top of them.

And you will also come to rivers - your lower body gets submerged when you wade through the water, which is a neat touch. The enemy use water to their advantage to sneak up on you, but you can see their siloette shape and can grenade them or wait for them to pop up on the bank.

There is so much in the gameplay that I could go on for a long time about it. It all fits together very well and the result is a perfect game, I dare say I prefer it to the Arcade version. Now that is saying something. If you never played this game back in the 80?s you missed out on a milestone of arcade-conversion gaming!