Ikari Warriors is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up game developed by SNK for the arcades in 1986. A year later, the game was converted to several gaming consoles and home computers such as the Apple II, Amiga, Atari ST, Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, C64, MSX2, ZX Spectrum, Nintendo NES, Atari 2600 and Atari 7800. The NES version was developed by Micronics.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY
During a special-ops mission, your plane crashes in a jungle many miles away from your headquarters and this hostile jungle is your starting point of action! You can play the game alone by choosing one of the two available commandos (Ralf or Clark) and there is also the option to play the game with a friend in a 2-players mode. Your main mission is to shoot your way to the Ikari Village and destroy the enemy forces (which vary among soldiers, tanks, cannons and more). Your main weapon is a machine gun and you also carry a limited supply of hand grenades that, thankfully, can be restored by destroying enemy buildings and barracks. Additionally, the game offers the opportunity to ride a battle tank and bomb everything on sight. Your tank is immune to bullets but vulnerable to mines and cannons. This means that you must immediately abandon it once it's badly damaged. In that case, the tank will start to warn you by flashing and you have 3 seconds -or so- to get out and go away from it, otherwise you'll be killed by the explosion. The fuel is limited but you can replenish it with extra gallons found along your way. Ikari Warriors is a unique arcade shooter for its time and many similar games that followed were actually based on its formula. It was SNK's attempt to "out-gun" Capcom's great Commando arcade game, a title that plays the same way but lacks some features like the use of a Tank.
GRAPHICS / SOUND OK, graphically the game is not quite as good as the coin-op (or the 16bit) version but the vertical scrolling is smooth (although slow). The game is utilizing the CPC Mode 0 (160x200 pixels with 16 colors on screen). The sprites look "blocky" though. The aural performance of the CPC conversion is great, offering a few sound effects like explosions, gunfire etc. There is also a nice introductory tune taken from the original arcade version.
CPU: ZiLOG Z80 4MHZ MEMORY: 64 KB or 128 KB of RAM depending on the model (capable of being expanded to 512k using memory extension boards) GRAPHICS: Motorola 6845 address generator, Mode 0: 160x200 / 16 colors, Mode 1: 320x200 / 4 colors, Mode 2: 640x200 / 2 colors, A colour palette of 27 colors was supported SOUND: The CPC used the General Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip, providing 3 channels Mono Sound (via internal speaker) but capable to offer Stereo Sound provided through a 3.5 mm headphones jack (with pretty impressive outcome!). Also, it is possible to play back digital sound samples at a resolution of approximately 5bit. This technique is very processor-intensive though.
The Amstrad CPC 464/664/6128 (default) color palette
RGB 27-colors palette (16 on screen)
Comments
comment on 2009-09-20 20:14:18
Wonderboy
Join Date: 2009-09-12
The best of it's kind! Still playing it. Loads of action here. The most innovative at that time was the ability to capture a tank and use it as long as you could, firing with its cannon. A difficult game though, as I never did it up to the 3rd level!
comment on 2019-05-02 08:59:28
alex76gr
Join Date: 2017-03-19
Αν το τερματίσεις 10 φορές στην σειρά, τα τανκς αλλάζουν σε τζιπ με πολυβόλο. ;)