Ikari Warriors (Arcade & NES & Atari 7800) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 449

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I'm Gaming Jay: CZcams gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the CZcams gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...
Ikari Warriors
from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikari_W...
Ikari Warriors is a vertically scrolling, run & gun shoot 'em up arcade game developed by SNK, published in North America and Europe by Tradewest, and released in 1986. Originally titled Ikari (怒, "Fury") in Japan, Ikari Warriors was SNK's first major breakthrough US release. The game was released at the time when there were many Commando clones on the market. What distinguished Ikari Warriors were rotary joysticks and a two-player mode.[6]
The player characters in Ikari Warriors are Colonel Ralf and Second Lieutenant Clark of the later King of Fighters series (known outside Japan as Paul and Vince in the Ikari series) battling through hordes of enemies. According to designer Keiko Iju, the game was inspired by the popular Rambo films and takes its name from the Japanese title of Rambo: First Blood Part II (Rambo: Ikari no Dasshutsu or "The Furious Escape").[citation needed] Ralf and Clark also make an appearance as playable characters in Metal Slug 6 and Metal Slug 7, as well as the King of Fighters series.
Stan Szczepanski holds the official Guinness World Record with 1,799,000 points.
Ikari Warriors is the first popular video game to have used rotary joysticks, which can be rotated in addition to being pushed in eight directions. The less successful TNK III, released in 1985 and also from SNK, is the first to have used such joysticks.[8][9][10][11] The system also features two buttons: one for the standard gun and another for lobbing grenades. It is one of the few games at the time to allow two-player cooperative side-by-side gameplay, and to use vehicles. The game cabinet is a standard upright model.
Ikari Warriors printed circuit boards (PCBs) were manufactured in two different versions: SNK pinout and JAMMA pinout. Most SNK-pinout units were put into Ikari Warriors cabinets, while most JAMMA-pinout units were supplied as conversion kits. The SNK-pinout boards have a 22/44-pin edge connectors. The JAMMA-pinout PCBs have a 28/56-pin edge connectors. Both types consist of a stack of three boards, with interconnects.
Ikari Warriors uses SNK's model LS-30 joysticks, which contain a 12-way rotary switch box. The joysticks are connected to the PCB via auxiliary wiring harnesses.The game is known simply as Ikari in Japan and Ikari Warriors in the United States and Europe. In addition to changing the names of the main characters from Ralf and Clark to Paul and Vince, the military commander the player rescues at the end of the game is named General Kawasaki in the Japanese version (named after SNK's founder Eikichi Kawasaki) and Colonel Cook in the US/Euro version (named after Tradewest's founder Leland Cook). General Kawasaki's name was unchanged in the NES version. The enemies in the game were actually Neo-Nazis, as evidenced by the presence of a swastika at the middle of the final room.
Ikari Warriors was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, IBM PC, Apple II, Atari ST, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC. The MSX port and conversions for 16-bit machines were released in 1987. The PC and Commodore 64 ports were developed by Quicksilver Software. In 1989, a second C64 version was released in the UK by Elite Software. The NES version was developed by Micronics. Both the Atari 2600 and Atari 7800 ports were released in 1990 as one of the final published games for those systems. The game was also included on the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.

[@jordanmurphy8774]

Ikari means anger in Japanese!

[@Vampier]

I used to love the MSX version - it was hard as ..... well you know :)

[@bajinaji]

As usual for me, jay, I'd highly recommend the Commodore 64 version - UK, not US, there were two released for normal weird Commodore reasons.
Great sound and I'd humbly suggest the best 8 bit version all around.

[@ChickenThug55]

I beat the NES version on a single play and no cheats when I was 8yrs old, in like 2-3hrs, (it felt like.)The arcade looks harder than the NES version. I would love to play the arcade since I’ve never played, even til today! Thought you were gonna do better w the NES version, but maybe your skills aren’t for this type of games lol. Great video comparison!

[@Jay1001]

Haha don't worry I thought I'd do better with the NES version too. Sometimes it just wasn't meant to be though!

[@DanielLopez-999]

There's a bootleg of this in MAME called Rambo 3 which is hacked to use a normal joystick, so I've been playing that for an Ikari fix. Though the home ports are quite varied and, including these two, not half bad.

[@gumdeo]

SNK made such good stuff.