Ikari III: The Rescue

Ikari III: The Rescue

NES - USA - 1st edition.

Developer SNK Publisher K. Amusement Leasing, SNK Published 1990-03-16 Platforms NES Genres Action, Beat 'em up Themes Action, Terrorism Series Ikari Warriors Multiplayer Simultaneous co-op Distribution Commercial

Ikari III: The Rescue is a beat 'em up video game developed and published by SNK on the Nintendo Entertainment System on 1990-03-16. It is a port of the original arcade game, but is different enough to be considered a unique title.

In the game, the daughter of the US president has been kidnapped by Crime Ghost, a world-wide terrorist organization. The players control Paul and Vince who are sent to rescue her. They arrive in a tank which is immediately destroyed leaving them with nothing but their bare hands with which to defeat an entire army with guns. But don't worry, they have superior martial arts skills, so they'll be fine.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes. USA.
Finished	2024-02-11.

I first played this game when NES emulators were becoming popular around 2000. Seeing it was just another mindless beat 'em up, I had no interest in playing it. Decades later, I saw it on a list of very easy NES games, which I initially found difficult to believe since the first game in the series is notoriously difficult and several other games on the list weren't very easy either, but, after seeing it had immediate respawn and infinite continues, I understood. The next day, I played the game through to the end and was annoyed with every second of it.

Review

3	2	4	4	2

Best Version: NES

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• Some of the cinematic cut-scenes look decent for the platform.
• Though neither is particularly impressive, the background graphics and music are decent and fit the game.

Bad

• Turning a scrolling shooter series into a beat 'em up doesn't fit with the feel of the franchise. Downgrading the violence from machine guns and grenades to punching and kicking seems childish.
• Even regular enemies are damage sponges. Some require you to punch them nine times before they fall.
• There is noticeable slow down when several enemies are on the screen at once.
• Having enemies attack you by repeatedly jumping and performing 360 roundhouse kicks looks ridiculous.
• Enemies walk through walls when moving in a scripted pattern, which looks dumb.
• By giving the player infinite continues, and respawning them immediately where they died, the player just has to button-mash their way through the game to win. However, considering how difficult the game is, it's pretty much necessary.
• SNK released Guerrilla War a year and a half earlier which had a similar concept and was a superior game. Companies should be learning from their past successes, not be making inferior titles.
• The box art and manual are both low-quality.

Ugly

• This game just isn't fun or interesting. By 1990, so many other better games existed on the NES that this wasn't even worth considering.
• The controls are terrible.
  • Your character moves far too slowly to avoid the enemies and their weapons effectively. Unless you memorize most of the maps and can predict when enemies are coming, it is extremely difficult to stay alive.
  • When you respawn, your character is forced to walk straight up the screen, almost to the top, during which time you can't control him. Even if there is a wall in your character's way, he will just keep blindly walking into it until his invincibility runs out. This looks silly and is quite annoying, and never should have made it out of testing.
  • On the rare occurrence when you do have a gun, you can't shoot diagonally, which makes it a lot harder to hit what you want.
• There are a lot of problems with the art.
  • The character animation looks awful.
  • Most of the levels use the same background graphics giving an overall sameness to the game.
  • There are only a couple unique enemies. Otherwise, every enemy soldier in the game looks the same. A simple use of palette swapping could have at least been used to let the player know which enemy is a mere 1-hit grunt or a more powerful foe. As it is, it's difficult to plan a strategy for who to hit first.
• Playing with only a single player is made even more difficult because enemies are programmed to surround you and hit you from all sides.

Media

Box Art

• 

  Famicom - Rather poorly-drawn, and Vince and Paul rarely use guns in the game.

• 

  NES - More fitting to the actual game play. I guess the hulking body builders are so strong the bullets will ricochet off their muscles?

Documentation

• 

  Manual - USA.

Font

The font from the NES port is in the video game font collection.

Videos

Longplay - USA.

Play Online

Famicom, NES

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	The sole female is a damsel in distress.
Bechdel test?	Fail	The only girl never speaks.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	Everyone appears to be white.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	Ikari III: The Rescue
Japanese	怒III: Ikari Three	Ikari III: Ikari Three	Ikari III: Ikari Three

Links