![]() ![]() Prisoner of War you’re a military prisoner who breaks free from his cell and is looking for an extraction. Despite being virtually the same game as Ikari, it definitely feels more polished and is one of the better games in the collection. Players take control of ‘not Che Guevara’ and ‘not Fidel Castro’ as they look to liberate the unnamed Caribbean Island from the evil dictator. The tank combat would later be utilised in another SNK title, Guerilla War, which is a spiritual successor to Ikari with similar mechanics, larger sprites and a more frantic pace. This actually predates Ikari Warriors but plays in similar style to the other featured top-down shooters with all the action confined to a tank. Ralph certainly gets around, appearing in another SNK entry, T.N.K. You can still find guns and other weaponry around but most of your time will be spent round house kicking bad guys Chuck Norris style, on your way to rescuing the President. Ikari III feels stripped back compared to the first two, with the camera zoomed in for more intimacy and the combat focus shifting more to melee. After the craziness of Victory Road, SNK decided to dial it back with their final entry in the series, Ikari III. It maintains the fluid gameplay of the original despite being a little jarring in its setting. Its sequel, Victory Road, went to a whole other level of madness, swapping out the realistic environments and thrusting our heroes thousands of years into the future to fight an evil alien race. Innovative for its time, Ikari was one of the first of its type to use rotary joysticks, which could be rotated in addition to being pushed in eight directions, making the action feel fluid. If you can’t tell from the front cover, the game is heavily inspired by the Rambo films and the action certainly fits as you run and gun through soldier tanks and helicopters, using whatever weaponry you come across. Ikari Warriors puts you in control of Ralph (of KoF fame) and Clark (the most Commando names ever) as they trek through the various enemy filled levels, to reach the village of Ikari. The collection includes a series of games that have “80’s action” written all over them. Now considered a cult classic, Crystalis fits perfectly in this collection as one of SNK’s greats. ![]() It’s clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda, with its top-down perspective, control scheme and combat being all too familiar to fans of the genre. ![]() For years, many have phropisised the end of the world, and one of gaming’s earliest dives into this subject came in the form of Crystalis – an action RPG adventure set in 2097. When you’re ready for something different there’s Crystalis. You play as Athena Asamiya (yes that one from King of Fighters), a descendant of the previous games protagonist on a missions to destroy the evil monsters that have invaded her hometown in Japan. ![]() Thank God for the collection’s rewind button.Ī year later, a spiritual sequel to Athena would be released called Psycho Soldier, taking place in present day as opposed to the fantasy setting of of the original. Why does that feel like it should be accompanied by “You will be ashamed of your words and deeds?” This detracts from the fact that Athena is a pretty hard but enjoyable platforming game, clearly designed to eat change. It’s very clear that Athena is a product of its time a time when people considered games to be a man’s thing so the why not put a girl in a bikini on the front cover and have done with it? One of the developers actually said the reason Athena starts in a Bikini is to show that she gets stronger as she finds armour. Moving on, when a small princess leaped out of a window and all her clothes fell off, I wondered what on Earth I was playing. ![]()
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