Ah, Ikari Warriors. So many memories. Thanks to movies like Rambo, the original Ikari Warriors was a huge hit in arcades, and I remember playing it there, on the NES, and even on the PC! The sequel, Victory Road, was quite a departure, pitting our army men against a demon filled underworld instead of a soldier infested jungle. But I only saw the arcade game of Victory Road at a Wal-Mart near out house, and I hardly ever played it since the other game there was Super Pac-Man. When the third game came out, I was very impressed with the jump in visuals. Characters were much larger and looked more like people instead of marshmallow soldiers, and even the water had ripples and waves! Now you can enjoy SNK’s pre-NEO-GEO arcade classic Ikari III: The Rescue as a PS Mini, playable on your PS3 or PSP.

Since you always had a gun in the first two Ikari games, they felt more like shooters. But in the third game, you mostly fight enemies with punches and kicks. So it feels more like an overhead brawler. You’ll pick up the occasional knife or machine gun, or toss exploding barrels or TNT at enemies sometimes. Again the graphics are quite good for 1989, and the adventure is surprisingly long for an arcade game.

Ikari III has some problems, like wonky hit detection and some choppy transitions. And even though this is a straight up arcade port, you can’t play two players due to the PSP compatibility. But that’s always been a problem in other SNK PS Minis as well. Still, fans of SNK’s arcade classics and all things Ikari should pick this one up regardless. Beats having to use up all your quarters anyway!

Kid Factor:

Ikari III: The Rescue is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Blood and Violence. Even though you punch, kick, knife, and shoot enemies, they just fall over and disappear with a muffled scream when defeated. I didn’t see any blood in the game at all, but they might have changed some of the red pixels to white like what they did with the PS3 ports of Metal Slug games. Honestly I’d let nearly any kid play this, as the dated graphics negate a lot of the realism anyway. I played this in arcades when I was a kid and I turned out OK.

Tags: Game Reviews