Two more of SNK’s pre-Neo-Geo arcade classics are now available to download as PS Minis for play on the PS3 and PSP. This time we have the side scrolling brawler Gang Wars and the top down shooter Time Soldiers.

Gang Wars is typical of the glut of side scrolling beat ‘em ups that filled arcades around the time of Double Dragon and Final Fight. A girl has been taken somewhere (seriously, that’s what the story says), and now you must beat up all sorts of street thugs to rescue her, presumably. Your character can punch, kick, and jump as you beat up waves of punks in various urban locations. The muffled voices are laughable, but this was 1989 we’re talking about here. Overall the game is passable, but rather repetitive. There are certainly much better beat ‘em ups you can download.

The other game in this batch is Time Soldiers, which plays VERY much like SNK’s more popular Ikari Warriors shooter series (same control scheme and everything). Shoot and aim in eight different directions as you mow down baddies (choose auto aim in the control settings, it’s much easier that way). The gimmick here is that you can warp through time portals. Battle cavemen and dinosaurs in the prehistoric era (they can still shoot missiles somehow, even the dinos), fight Roman soldiers in the Rome era, and shoot army guys in the World War era, etc. The time travel aspect allows for some branching stages. Collect power ups like special weapons and my favorite: a P Ball that turns your guy into a super buff fighter ripped out of his shirt, who can rapid fire his bazooka and take more hits. Only problem with this one is the insane difficulty. I know this was supposed to be a quarter munching arcade game, and luckily now you can have unlimited continues right where you left off. But I still think people will get tired of hearing the muffled “AAAHHHHHH!” of defeat every five seconds.

The only other problem that both games share is common with many other of SNK’s arcade classics that have been ported to be PS Minis. Several of these games offered two player support in the arcade, and since they’re directly emulated here, they still do. But possibly because of the difficulty of working that out on the PSP, you can only do one player here. Which is a shame since both games would be way more fun with two. Even though there have been better SNK arcade classics as PS Minis in the past, if you enjoy playing and collecting obscure arcade releases (like me), you’ll only be out a couple of bucks with these. So it’s really not that bad.

Kid Factor:

Gang Wars is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Violence and Blood, and Time Soldiers is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence. You do punch and kick bad guys in Gang Wars who just disappear when defeated. And a few splotches of pixelated blood can be seen from time to time. In Time Soldiers, enemies just explode when defeated, and your guy just falls to the ground with a muffled scream when shot. The primitive graphics really negate a lot of the violence. I played these kinds of games in the arcade all the time as a kid and I think I turned out OK, so I’d be fine with most kids younger than teens playing these, too. Reading skill isn’t needed as everything is pretty simple to figure out, although some kids may get bored of the repetitive gameplay and frustrated at the steep difficulty, even with unlimited continues. But it’s still a great way to show them what video games used to be like.

PS: Note to SNK: Please release Neo Mr. Do! on PSN someday.

Tags: Game Reviews