Hi there!

As usual delivering something completely different than what I was hinting at in the previous entry, I served me once again some more blasting mayhem with Ikari Warriors:

I ususally prefer playing Arcade conversions on consoles, but with this one the NES version is a trainwreck. And while I remember the 7800 version being pretty good, I'm not really interested in this system.

Besides, the C64 version might very well be the best home conversion available. Done by superior "Last Ninja" programmer John Twiddy who was supported by an unusual (at the time!) 4 artists, the game is both excellent executed and looking very good. Very playable and polished.

I still didn't have the greatest time playing it though, as it is a game that is very repetetive and rather limited. You have enemy soldiers in four colours red/green/blue/yellow, enemy tanks, helicopters and canons and they're doing their individual attack patterns wave after wave after wave.

The game is just one giant vertically scrolling level, maybe 100-150 screens stacked on top of each other. What also doesn't help the growing feeling of boredom, is that 20 second loop of rattling military drums serving for background music noise.

Well, I guess one can't really blame the C64 conversion team in this case, they were most likely doing their best, but were also restricted by staying true to an older and rather primitive Arcade original.

Finally getting to the end took just ~ 2 hours using savestates:

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see another vertical scrolling soldier game in the form of "Fernandez must Die!", but first it will continue with something else.

Greetings,

Manuel