Ikari Warriors

The Good
Being a huge fan of the superb IKARI Warriors arcade game, I eagerly awaited this PC port by Quicksilver. The graphics are fairly faithful to the original, with a nice colourful EGA version, and good use of the limited CGA palette. The scrolling is very well done for its time and is very smooth compared to other PC arcade action games released around this period. Game play is just as good as the arcade version, with all the same weapons, the tanks, and a great two-player version and four levels of mayhem. The control has been simplified to firing in the direction your player is moving in, but this still works very well and is nice and easy when using the keyboard.

The Bad
The music is very annoying, fortunately it can be turned off. The graphical area is only a small window on the screen, and therefore not as much detail is on screen as the arcade and Atari ST versions. The action is slower than the arcade version also, and only 4 enemies at a time appear on screen which makes the difficulty level a lot easier than the arcade version. After you master the game it is possible to keep playing it through (it loops back to the start) 4 or 5 times until your score clocks itself and goes back to zero or you get bored and turn it off. And the cool plane crashing in the jungle intro isn't here either.

The Bottom Line
A furious, second-generation version of Commando, with cool weapons, great jungle-based level design, tanks and a great two-player version. Nice looking graphics and it retains the great feel of the arcade version. Its very cool chasing around grunts in a tank and running over them!