Retro Game of the Day! Rambo III
Rambo III by Sega for Genesis, released at the system's launch in 1989. Hmm. A game about Rambo. What kind of game could this be? A racing game? A poker game? Perhaps a city sim? No dummy - it's about killing your foes with your bare hands, watching the blood pour out of their ears as you crush their heads - while you laugh maniacally!
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Alright, well you don't really get to crush people's heads with your "bare hands," but at least you get to do some knife-stabbing. And there's my review, "Rambo III is knife-stabbingly good." This was a welcome addition to the Genesis launch lineup, a top-down military scroller where you're a one-man army out or Truth and Justice. Armed with the aforementioned knife, a machine gun, bombs and explosive arrows, you must go deep behind enemy lines to rescue your buddy Trautman in Afghanistan.
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The game was very standard stuff, advance to your goal without getting mauled by your opponents - and do as much damage as you could along the way.
This was what I wanted when I first got my hands on
Metal Gear. Simple, straight-forward action with plenty to shoot at, suspenseful music, and lots of nice detailed graphics of military vehicles (well, at least Metal Gear got the suspenseful music down).
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In between some rounds, you'd switch to a first-person (behind the shoulders) mode where you needed to take out some artillery (copter or tank) with... an arrow, 1-on-1 style. A little silly, but it looked particularly cool so no one complained much.
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All in all, a stylish, classic game which unfortunately only appeared at the genesis (ahem) of the Genesis' career and was little seen as a genre otherwise (we got Mercs, Cal. 50, and not much else!) I guess top-down military shooters weren't in vogue anymore or something, which is a shame because it is a very fun genre, which was well-represented in the 8-Bit days.
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Ah well. At least it was miles better than the 8-Bit Rambo game! Groan!
Rambo III was a great game... and the Nintendo version wasn't that bad, it just didn't feel like "Rambo".
ReplyDeleteYou didn't mention the two Arcade versions either...