Rambo

 Here we are again. It's the dreaded NES movie adaptation.

I have talked in the past about how certain genres have been prevalent throughout gaming history, from mascot platformers to tournament fighters to first person shooters. But as a subset of games, licensed movie titles for the NES were as popular as anything. If there was a major action movie between the years of 1982-1993, it got made into an NES game, usually a terrible one. One need not go deep into the bowels of the internet to see how derided these games, or the infamous developer responsible for most of them, have become in recent years. It didn't matter how good the movie was, how appropriate the subject matter or whether its plot made sense as a video game, as long as money could be made it was getting released. I was a bit young for the true mid-80's boom here, but these things were definitely still a thing when I started playing games in the early 90's. It may have been several years old at that point, but the NES was still my first gaming console and licensed tie ins were a major part of its lineup.

Which brings us to Rambo, released in 1988 and based on the 1985 film and the second in the series. Although it was based on the second film, the game actually came out the same year as Rambo III. Great, now for the second time in four weeks, we get to talk about Rambo movie titles. "Rambo" is actually the second movie, its full title is "Rambo: First Blood Part II." The first movie is just "First Blood." So, if you are following, that means there is no "Rambo II." It's kind of like how Final Fantasy IV and VI were known as II and III in the U.S. It gets even more confusing when you consider the 2008 film, just called "Rambo." Yeah, it's confusing, but all you need to know for the purpose of this review is that the NES game is based on the second movie despite the fact that it came out the same year as the third. I will be referring to the game as just "Rambo" from here on out. There was absolutely no way that a game based on the first movie would ever have existed in 1988 anyway. It probably wouldn't matter much, you know how all of these licensed games play. You move from left to right, shooting enemies and jumping on platforms, like a rip-off version of Contra. Believe it or not, that wasn't the case here. Rambo does rip off another more mainstream NES game, but it's not the one you would think.

You see, Rambo for the NES is essentially a clone of Zelda II. No, that isn't a mistake or misunderstanding, they took an action movie about finding POWs in Vietnam and made it a copy of a fantasy adventure game about triforces and wizards. Does it work? Kind of, but not really. I have to give Akklaim and developers Pack-in-Video some credit here, they at least tried something different. It was nice to see a licensed game that wasn't a run-of-the-mill platformer and it was kind of nice to have some sense of freedom. But...if there was one movie that would have been better served as a more linear, traditional run and gun game, it would be Rambo. I mean, the movie is basically just two straight hours of shooting. Even on the cover of the game, you see Rambo blind-firing a machine gun. So it came as a bit of a disappointment that most of the game saw you stabbing snakes and bugs with a knife. It's still got it's charm and it's nice that it follows the movie, but there are far better NES games out there that capture the spirit of the Rambo films better despite not being licensed.

My first criticism has to be the graphics, they aren't horrible but they are still below average for a mid- to late-era NES game. Rambo looks a bit ridiculous and the enemy sprites are weird and generic. I swear I thought I was getting attacked by pink flamingos at one point. It wouldn't be so bad if the character portraits were a little better, but they all look ridiculous. Rambo looks more like a Muppet than he does like a hardened war veteran. The jungle environments look ok, but anything involving water just looks absolutely terrible. The biggest annoyance is that the screen flashes whenever you are low on health. I can't even begin to explain how obnoxious this is, it's to the point that you want to heal as soon as it starts happening even if you don't necessarily need to. At least the sound is solid, not great but not terrible either. It's not really fitting for the game or environment but it's still okay. The controls are solid, the jumping is a bit weird but everything is generally responsive. The hit detection is weird, but it's consistent and once you get it down it's far less difficult to deal with. Switching weapons and healing is a little slow, but it's more a function of just not having enough buttons than of being poorly designed.

The gameplay is pretty much identical to Zelda II, Rambo moves about the jungle in a semi-linear path, fighting enemies for experience. You get slightly more powerful as you level up and can also collect weapons. This might be the biggest disappointment, it takes so long to get a gun that it almost doesn't feel worth it. While there isn't an overworld map like in Zelda II, you can reach the occasional safe spaces to progress the story. Here, you will acquire and deliver quest items (it feels really weird calling something in a Rambo game a "quest item," but that's what they are) and learn where you need to go next. Moving to the left or right of the screen will advance you to the next area and you aren't always necessarily moving left to right. One difference from Zelda II is the inclusion of north and south movement, there will be tile on the ground that Rambo can use to move between areas by pressing down. These are important for reaching your objectives and exploring. I think it's kind of cool but it, is ruined by one fatal flaw: there's no map. The movement itself isn't a problem, but you never really know for sure where you are going or where you have been. The areas aren't that big, but you are still going to have to move around essentially at random to get where you need to go.

I found fighting enemies to be okay, but the hit detection was a little off. Once I got it down it wasn't a huge issue, but it did take some time to get down. A lot of the enemies are very small and I actually had more problems with the early enemies than I did the later ones. It's a lot harder to hit a bug with a knife than it was to hit a soldier with a gun. You do have a ranged weapon from the start, a throwing knife, but it takes quite a while to find any guns. I think that's the biggest disappointment here, there is too much of the bug stabbing and not enough of the shooting. I'm not one of those people that's all about violence in video games. In fact, I think there's entirely too much violence in modern video games, everything has to be a dark and gritty open world game or realistic FPS. But this is a game based on Rambo, a movie known for its gratuitous violence. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I don't think Rambo stabbed any pelicans or threw any knives at bugs. I know games don't have to follow the movie completely, but it was disappointing. Again, I appreciate that they tried something different, but maybe Rambo wasn't the best IP to try it with. I do have to give some credit here for following the movie. It's almost too much, they re-create just about every scene from the movie, but I would rather them at least pay attention to source material than make something up.

Rambo does some things right, but it's really not worth going back to today. It was nice that they at least tried something different, but I don't think this was the right platform. I like the little bit of exploration and the leveling system, but it wasn't fleshed out enough to counteract the average at best gameplay. Rambo is an inferior clone of a game that is pretty divisive to begin with (to be fair, Rambo actually came out before Zelda II in the U.S., but Zelda II was first in Japan). It wasn't the worst gaming experience by any means, but Rambo isn't really worth playing today for anyone other than fans of the series or gamers looking for more Zelda II. I can't imagine that's a huge cross section of gamers, but you never know.

5/10