G.I. Joe (Arcade) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
635A playthrough of Konami's 1992 run-and-gun arcade rail shooter, G.I. Joe.
Played through as Duke on the default (medium) difficulty setting.
G.I. Joe was always one of my absolute favorite arcade games, and I have a lot of good memories playing this one. Back in 1994, when I was in seventh grade, we had a restaurant/community center on the school grounds. Nearly every day at lunch time I'd head over there with a couple of friends, grab a piece of pizza, and make for the corner where the four-player G.I. Joe cabinet sat. There was always a crowd around the machine so you had to get there early if you wanted to play, and I distinctly remember that no matter where you were in the building, you could hear the constant drone of explosions, screams, and orchestra hits over the din. We never actually got through it - lunch was only a half-hour long, and nobody ever had enough quarters - but still, it was always a fantastic way to temporarily put schoolwork out of mind.
Unlike most of Konami's early 90s cartoon games, G.I. Joe isn't a beat 'em up. It's a pseudo-3D rail-shooter that has you running "into" the screen as an endless barrage of bullets, enemy soldiers, and heavy artillery rain down. The effect is similar to what is used in many of Sega's arcade titles like Galaxy Force 2 and Power Drift, making heavy use of sprite-scaling to create a smooth 3D effect with 2D graphics. Though it might not be "realistic" by any means, it still impresses me to this day as much as it day back in the 90s. It may only be running at 288x224, but the smoothness of the animation and the tendency for everything to blow up non-stop means that you'll hardly notice. It's pretty amazing to think that under the hood, a 16mhz 68000 CPU is running the show, especially when you compare the game to its original incarnation: it's essentially a high-octane remake of a 1988 arcade release named Devastators, but the improvements made for G.I. Joe are so vast that the games barely resemble one another. Still, Devastators is an interesting oddity if you're curious about how G.I. Joe came about.
With up to 2 or 4-players depending on cabinet configuration, you get your choice of Duke, Snake Eyes, Scarlett, or Roadblock to play as. The game automatically scrolls forward, and you use the joystick to aim the crosshair: while you don't control the character directly, your crosshair controls your position, so be careful that you don't put yourself in the line of fire while setting up your shots! You have two buttons - one fires your standard gun and can be upgraded to rapid-fire, while the other fires the missile launcher which can be refilled by breaking barrels and other random on the battlefield. It's careful to not overcomplicate itself, but don't worry - you'll be too distracted by the constant chaos on-screen to notice how simple the action really is.
The graphics, especially by 1992 standards, are absolutely incredible. The characters all look exactly like they did in the cartoon, the backdrops are bright and colorful (even the underground ones!), and the sense of scale is suitably epic. When Cobra's ship rises from ground right in front of you during Mission 2, prepare to be amazed. The environments deserve a lot of praise for their sheer destructibility, too. Pretty much anything that isn't the ground or the sky can be blown sky high - fire on the gas lines at the chemical plant and you'll see entire buildings go up in a ball of flame, or shoot the stalactites free in the cavern base to crush tanks and garages. Everything goes.
The sound is just as good as the graphics, and it stands out as one of my all-time favorite Konami soundtracks. It uses the classic Konami combination of brash horns, synthesizer leads, and orchestra hits, and all of it will get you hyped as s**t, I promise. It's all super energetic, dramatic, and loud, and it's all very memorable. Throw in some of that classic old-school voice acting and you've got a top audio production.
I really wish that this had appeared on console systems. I have no idea why it never did, but this would have been epic on the Sega CD, Saturn, or PlayStation. Regardless, if you like Konami's stuff, this is one of their best coin-ops, and absolutely deserves some time spent with it.
Note: The last known revision of MAME to run the game properly is version .115 released back in 2007. I recorded this video using Mame32FX .115.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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