Developer: Pack-in-Video Publisher: Acclaim Released: May 1988 Genre: Action Platform: NES
Rambo for NES is commonly accepted as one of the worst games of all time. That is a pretty lofty statement. And you know what? It is true. It really is pretty amazing just how badly a game can fail on nearly every conceivable level yet Rambo does so with style. I distinctly remember my family going into it with low expectations and still coming away disappointed. For gamers Rambo was another reason why licensed video games had a bad reputation. For Acclaim it was Tuesday.
Even though the title is Rambo the game is based on the events of Rambo: First Blood II. For those unfamiliar the first movie ends with Rambo in jail as a result of his psychopathic rampage. The game begins with the military in need of someone to go behind enemy lines in Vietnam and photograph the POW camps but not free the hostages. For some god forsaken they decide Rambo is the man for the job. For the most part the game follows the events of the movie. It quickly goes off the rails when you start fighting flying skulls, giant spiders, sea serpents, and flaming tigers. Despite everything I’ve just said that’s not even the strangest shit in the game!
I’ll give the developers credit for trying something so different. It would have been easy to create a side-scrolling action game along the lines of Contra or the Master System version of Rambo. It probably would have been a better game too. Instead they crafted a game that borrows from Zelda II and Metroid. There are villages, NPCs, levels, and even fetch quests. With its role playing elements mixed with action Rambo had the potential to be an interesting title. Boy is it no good.
Where to start? Rambo begins the game with a small knife as his primary weapon. The knife has little range and is swung in an overheard arc before stabbing. This will be the cause of much frustration as you have to wait for the swing to finish before it hits. While it starts out weak the knife can be leveled up with experience points and can become the strongest weapon in the game. Experience won’t increase your maximum health though; bosses grant hearts that raise it by 100 points. There are also easily missable stronger enemies that do so as well which sucks.
There are a large number of secondary weapons you can collect ammo for. Unfortunately the majority aren’t worth a damn. There are throwing knives, regular and explosive arrows, and grenades. The problem is the awful hit detection. The hit detection is poor, meaning you’ll waste ammo taking down the simplest threats. You can rely on the knife but its reach is so poor you will almost always exchange hits in every encounter. Once armed soldiers replace the animals it becomes even worse. It also doesn’t help that most of the secondary weapons are weaker than the knife too. That cool assault rifle on the cover? You won’t get to use it much as ammunition is scarce.
Rambo brought over RPG elements like experience points but it also brought over the genre’s worst aspect: grinding. The knife is your best weapon and it is crucial to raise its level and damage. That means lingering in one spot killing the same enemies for well over half an hour in the least case. It gets worse later on. You’ll have to grind for weapon ammo as well which quickly becomes tedious, hence focusing on the knife. It’s a painful god damn process, because Rambo has no balance like every 8-bit game with RPG elements. The amount of experience and time required to make the knife viable is ridiculous. But that isn’t the worst part of the game.
All of the above problems could probably (a big probably) be tolerated if simple navigation weren’t an issue. The map design in Rambo makes no god damn sense. Walking in a straight line will sometimes loop you back to where you started. Exiting one side of the screen and doubling back will warp you to a completely different area. The North and South teleporters are just as bad. Sometimes they are one way, sometimes after a boss battle the same teleporter will take you to a new area. There is no in game map and the environments repeat constantly. It is completely absurd and is an issue for the entire game. Words cannot express how much the botched navigation ruins the game, not that it wasn’t bad already. But it makes an already bad game worse.
In Closing
Rambo is a spectacular failure of a video game and one of the worst titles in the NES library. It is just as bad as its reputation suggests. There are no redeeming qualities here. When people say licensed video games suck titles like Rambo are the reason why. Avoid this trash.
