Rush'n Attack

The Good
The graphics in Rush’N Attack (RNA) are clean, and I haven't encountered any flicker or slowdown. The music and sound effects are also pretty darn good by NES standards.

As for gameplay, RNA is fun to play for short periods of time. A nice touch is that some rudimentary strategy comes into play when you pick up special weapons (pistols, grenades, shoulder-mounted launchers, and the like). If you use your limited ammo at the opportune moment, you can often take out multiple enemies with one shot. Deadly efficiency is always gratifying. :)

The Bad
First, the superficial criticisms. The soldier sprites (including the player-controlled Green Beret) are all just palette swaps, so there is almost no variety in the appearance of your numerous enemies. The backgrounds are similarly well-drawn but monotonous. The sameness of enemies and backgrounds adds to the gameplay difficulties described below.

Gameplay suffers from two major problems. First, it's very repetitive. There is little in the way of platform jumping, a la RNA's cousin, the undeniably classic Contra. But this is just as well, really, since the control scheme is so counter-intuitive (you jump by pressing UP on the directional pad, and not with the usual button-press) that you'll try to avoid it as much as possible.

As for the second problem, this game is very difficult. It's not because the enemies are so smart or devious. Rather, it's because 1) your only weapon throughout most of the game is a simple knife for short-range stabbing, 2) one hit kills, and 3) you lose ground EVERY TIME YOU DIE! You can't just keep dying over and over and immediately replaying one brief segment (even if you are cheating with a Game Genie and have infinite lives to burn), because the game will restart at earlier and earlier restore points on that level until you are eventually set back to the very beginning.

I suppose this design decision was intended to increase the overall challenge and add a sense of urgency to the game. It certainly does that – all too well. You have to replay way too many stretches of game you've already been through before. But guess what? The visual sameness of the game, along with the sheer madness of the restore system, means you'll keep forgetting exactly where you are in the game, which means you'll fail to execute the precise combat movements you need to fend off the hordes of bad guys, which means you die, which means you get sent back to an even earlier restore point…

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGH!

Not fun stuff, not one bit. As far as I'm concerned, all the saved states and Game Genies in the world couldn't rescue this maddening game from the reject pile.

The Bottom Line
You can have some fun with this game, but not much, and not for long. The design is just too darn frustrating. Walk, don't rush, to play it—but only to see what paved the way for Contra and other, much better Konami games.

The Good
This game is fast-paced, exciting, challenging, and has some great music and sound effects to keep your energy level up while playing. The graphics are great, particularly the level design. All throughout the game, there are well-defined girders, weapons, stopped vehicles, and other easy to identify and realistic-looking objects. The flamethrower is fun to use and the death animations add to the game's fun factor. Although it's very difficult, the game setup is extremely user friendly compared to certain other Commodore games, with quick death sequences and a simple start screen so that you don't waste a lot of time waiting between game overs.

The Bad
It's hard! You have to take on an entire army armed only with a knife and the occasional weapon you find along the way which only allow a maximum of three shots. Almost every enemy you encounter is armed with a rifle and can shoot without warning giving you almost no time to duck. It also kills you to touch any opponent, meaning your timing has to be very good, especially since your main method of attack is stabbing.

The Bottom Line
Your mission is to rescue hostages from a huge army. It's a fun, intense action game. It takes a lot of care to survive the large waves of enemy troops, but you don't want to take your time either because the longer you take, the harder the enemies that come at you. This is very difficult, but not overly frustrating and the background drum rolls play a great part in informing you when harder enemies are on the way. Very fun game, but takes a lot of skill to master.

The Good
It's not too bad for being a BASIC game written by a fifteen-year-old, if he had only spent some thought on the game balance. The BASIC of the Plus 4 is rather good, so it's quite likely that it could have been pulled off without resorting to machine code.

The Bad
The problem is that this is a commercial game with a respected name from the arcades slapped on. Slapped on, because apart from the name and some backdrop graphics, there is not a smithereen of likeness to the arcade game, or even to any other port of the same. The game mechanics, which are what made Green Beret a well-remembered game, are nowhere to be seen. If you step back and look at the game beyond its backgrounds and sprites, you find that it is just a game programming exercise of the kind every teenage programmer made in the eighties. There is no game logic, just a randomised counter throwing enemy objects at you from both directions, some of them shooting at you based on another randomised counter. You can't wield weapons, there is only one enemy type (a copy of your own sprite with a different outline colour) and in the end, it's just a kind of Pong with the ball replaced by multiple enemy sprites.

The Bottom Line
The poor programmer (as in someone who programs poorly) can't have had much more than a week to finish this game for Imagine, who just wanted to milk the Plus/4 market a bit after having paid for an expensive licence which didn't leave enough money to pay for a properly programmed game to be released on the small Plus/4 market. Apart from the non-existing game mechanics mentioned above, and fact that it takes a superhuman being to clear only the first few screens, the game is on a technical level so low that Spectrum users can laugh at ports like this. Running in high resolution mode with some very odd choices of colour, the monochrome soft sprites aren't masked, making the game seem even more like an exercise in BASIC programming.

This is not the first sub-standard Plus/4 port of a famous game, nor is it the last, but it is probably the worst.