Ikari Warriors 2600 Description (and more?)

[Maztr_0n]

I'm a recreational fan of writing/talking about factoids i know to endless detail until i either tire myself out or someone leaves the room, attempts at comedy aside, i just want to contribute to the site, maybe i'll put more here as time goes on. Feel free to correct the grammar here, and also there might be some did you know facts here too!

i plan to add onto this later if possible, originally i was going to do three on this thread but it was very late as i was writing this so i had to leave it to just the game i was most familiar with

IKARI WARRIORS - NTSC (1991)
Ikari warriors is an arcade port of the SNK shoot-em-up/commando run-and-gun game of the same name, starring Ralf Jones and Clark Still from Metal Slug and King Of Fighters fame or as they were known at the time in the west as "Paul and Vince",

Spoiler

in the game they must proceed through a series of gates and at the end they would  blow up a corpse on a desk allowing them to reach their captured Colonel Cook (or in Japan/NES version General Kawasaki). Also in Japan its also revealed the enemy army are neo-nazis, and there are swastikas in the final stage. The NES version also has extra stages beyond the final "corpse" in every other version, with extra stages, enemies, vehicles and a "true final boss".

their goal is to "reach the village of ikari" but they must also rescue their captured Colonel Cook, they could also hop into tanks to run over enemy soldiers or blow up pillboxes, helicopters, and other baddies. Provided they have enough fuel, if that fuel runs out, the tank explodes with you inside! It also featured a rotary joystick, which allowed independent movement and aiming/shooting akin to a twinstick shooter like Robotron 2084. It was also unique for the time because it allowed two players to play at once, each with their own rotary joysticks and buttons on a cabinet.

The atari 2600 version omits many features from the arcade game and controls more like the 2600 version of Commando, Ikari Warriors only uses the joystick controllers so you must move in the direction where you'd want to shoot and due to the joysticks on the 2600 only having one button you'd have to hold down the fire button to throw a grenade or exit your tank for example. The power ups/gas refills are almost all cut from the game, spare for the occasional [S] power up, which acts as a refill for your ammo and grenades, and fuel if you're inside a tank. And unlike other versions of Ikari, co-op play is not possible, however 2 player is kept in the game as alternating turns.

The game is still very faithful to the arcade title for the 2600, it has fairly large levels, the tanks that you can ride are still in this version, the gates you must destroy are also in the game, you and enemies still battle it out in various terrain including waist deep water, bridges, and land, and there is the same definitive ending as in the other versions, there is also a game over screen and demo mode.

The game was programmed by [as far as i know] Dan Kitchen for Atari in 1989, but wasn't released until around 1990-91 in PAL regions and March 1991 in North America via Mail Order along with Xenophobe, Motorodeo and the Atari published version of BMX Airmaster. being some of the last 2600 games officially released until Atari Inc's Mr Run and Jump.

Spoiler

oddly despite having a 7800 title, the sound effects and soundtrack on the 2600 version are completely different from said version.