GOTD 5/17/2016: Rambo III (Master System)
Well, I've been enjoying the most recent Rambo game on PS3 lately, which made me decide to pull out the Sega Master System game based on Rambo III. While there are other games based on Rambo III, this one is a light gun shooter not on any other systems. Following the plot of the movie fairly accurately as these things go, you must infiltrate a Soviet controlled Afghanistan in order to rescue the only man John Rambo trusts, Colonel Trautman. Rescue him, aid the Afghan freedom fighters so that they can take their country back from those evil commies and get the Taliban installed, and make your escape. If you've got the guts, I hope you're ready for the intensity...
Actually, Rambo III is nothing if not intense. Unlike many othe gun games, past or present, enemies come at you guns blazing from the moment they appear. Make no mistake, you will take damage in this one any time multiple enemies appear on screen. You can mitigate this by quickly mowing those spetnaz yokels down with your machine gun, which will auto-fire as you hold the trigger, or can be fired in semi-automatic fashion, which it defaults to after your ammo runs out. The definition of semi-automatic is for each time you depress the trigger, one round will go off. That's what I want to give you; I want you to spend one round at a time.You also have one grenade and one bottle of... let's call it medicine per level. You use them by shooting them in your status bar. The grenade will kill everything on screen, and the medicine will refill your health bar. You can get a bonus for not using them, but it's much less than you get for remaining health, so use them.
There are seven stages to complete, and to the game's credit, each has its own unique background, enemy layouts, and often even unique sprites for the different positions those layouts afford, making it less predictable and fresh to look at. The music fits well enough, though some of the sound effects are a little shrill. The graphics look good, though, and the digitized Stallone between levels looks impressive. The game culminates in a scaling (sort of) Space Harrier-inspired stage simulating the escape at the end of the film, and while it's not pulled off flawlessly, it's a cool idea that breaks away from the Operation Wolf model a bit. Good stuff.
Rambo III is a short, fun addition to the excellent Master System light gun library, and it gets a lot more right than not. It's a quality licensed game, and a must for the kind of person who still buys Master System games and loves Rambo.
Played it?
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Originally Posted by Emperor Megas
