Rush'n Attack Longplay (NES) [60 FPS]
18Developed and published by Konami in 1987
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Time for another NES coin-op conversion and, this time, I decided to check out Rush'n Attack (AKA Green Beret) for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
As a child who grew up during the 1980's in Britain, my reference point for games of this particular generation has always been the 8-bit home computers available at the time. Sure, the Commodore 64 and Spectrum had some extremely talented developers working on those platforms, but arcade conversions were typically attempts to copy the game based on what the programmer could see and hear in the real arcade hardware, unlike the NES who had often had third-party support from the arcade manufacturers themselves.
Rush'n Attack is a side-scrolling platform game where the player assumes the roll of an elite special forces soldier en tasked with going deep behind enemy lines to destroy a doomsday missile (changed from rescuing hostages in the original arcade version).
Your commando is initially armed with a knife to defeat enemies, although heavier ordnance can be recovered from high-ranking officers on the battlefield. As with the original, additional weapons include the flamethrower, rocket launcher, grenades and, new to this version, a pistol! Unlike the other weapons which feature limited ammunition, the pistol has unlimited bullets, but limited time - make the most of it while it lasts!
Fans of the arcade will recognise familiar foes, ranging from regular grunts to high trained, hand-to-hand combatants who try to take you out with a well time flying kick to the face. Konami also decided to include a couple of new enemy types, including futuristic jet-pack troops and fortified guard towers, each manned by a machine-gunner.
The gameplay remains very much a test of timing and reactions, hardly deviating from the arcade version at all. I was very pleased to discover that Konami had been pretty generous in terms of how close enemies can get to the player before registering a collision - all to often, these types of games can have poorly implemented timing systems that require the player to attack at times that seem incongruous to the enemy's position on screen. Fortunately, this game suffers from none of that and it allows you to pull off last minute attacks that can save your hide at the last moment. This is most welcome, considering that the game introduces more and more obstacles and traps as the levels progress.
Having been released in 1985, the arcade version of the game was never the most visually attractive of titles in my opinion. Fortunately for home gamers, the NES was perfectly capable of delivering a similar level of visual fidelity and number of on-screen colours to the original, all whilst maintaining a very solid frame-rate throughout. The amount of sprite flicker does become quite pronounced at times when the screen gets busy with enemies, but things soon get back to normal once you kill a few of them off.
As for sound and music, Konami did a great job here. Each level has different background music that sounds suitably dynamic and there's even separate tunes for each of the end-of-level bosses. Those of you with particularly keen ears might notice that the music at 5:03 sounds rather similar to Long Distance, one of the tracks that Yuzo Koshiro would create for The Revenge of Shinobi on the Mega Drive a couple of years later - coincidence?
It's interesting to note that while developers were obsessed in trying to recreate an one hundred percent accurate recreation of the original arcade game, NES conversions typically expanded on the original game by adding addition levels and content, or changed the game to play the strengths of the NES and deliver a game that was fun to play, rather than a half-baked port. On the flip side, Green Beret on C64 cost roughly £2.99, whereas Rush'n Attack would have cost upwards of £25 (I can't even confirm the price because the only place I knew that stocked NES games was Toys 'R Us).
Even with the extra levels, I would be hard-pressed to say that the NES version warranted the higher price tag over the C64 version. Having said this, the quality of games for home computers varied considerably and most of you who owned those machines back in the day will be all too painfully aware of this (Double Dragon on the C64 is a painful reminder).
What you would have gotten for your money with the NES version is a near-perfect version of the arcade game with some additional content and a level of polish/attention to detail from the original developer that simply didn't exist on other platforms. It might have stung you in the pocket, but you could be assured that this would be the best you were going to get outside the arcade.
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