Let me just start off by saying that I have played this game many times when it was new in the arcade and it was great. The rotary joystick made the game a blast. The large character sprites made it easy to see everything on screen. There was plenty of fast paced action right from the beginning of the game.
Your mission is to storm the enemy base that terrorists have taken over, which so happens to be a nuclear missile site.
Once inside the base you need to kill the enemy leader. The game view is on a top-down style much like Commando and Ikari Warriors. You start outside and must fight your way into the underground complex. There are the occasional boss battles that you must fight through to get to the next level. Levels include Surface Defenses, Weapons Assemble Area, The Quarry, The Maze, The Reactor Area, and the Abyss.
To help fight through the levels, there are many different weapons that you can use. The Machine Gun is the basic weapon that you start out with that has unlimited ammunition. The Laser Gun shoots blasts one at a time with a limit of 90. The Pellet Gun sprays out five
bullets at time – limit 90 shots. The flamethrower has a limit of 90 fireballs. Grenades come in a two varieties. The regular grenade is a basic one and the user can carry up to 50 of them. The Super Grenade is twice as powerful as a standard grenade and the soldier can carry 40 at a time.
Destroying certain enemies will allow the character to pick up keys that enable the user to unlock chest. In the chest there are weapon power-ups, protective shields, and even pieces of the super weapon “Heavy Barrel”. Heavy Barrel is a weapon that you can shot as many times as you can in 99 seconds. After 99 seconds your weapon reverts back to the one you had before you found all six pieces of the weapon. Once you find all six pieces and the 99 seconds of using Heavy Barrel is over, you can begin to collect all six pieces again to have the weapon once again.
Controlling the character consists of using the number keypad. Moving forward, backward, and side-to-side is easy enough, but when the need to stop arises the user would need to press on the number 5 key, which makes it a little difficult in tricky situations.
It is still a fun, fast-paced game with addictive game play, regardless of its age.
