Jackal - Konami / Konami - 1988 - Top-down Shooter
Funny story about this game: I don't like most top-down shooters, especially the ones I've played on the NES. This game, however, is a complete blast. You, and that friend you pulled from whatever they were doing to play with you, take control of two jeeps, drive around shooting machine guns and throwing grenades/missiles, drop off saved POWs on helipads, and fight spiffy bosses. From a purely formulaic point of view there is absolutely nothing special about the game.
Except that it is, mechanically, amazingly fun to play. Your machine gun always shoots north regardless of where your jeep is facing, which sounds bad at first but actually works out great since you always have that direction covered and never have to stop and aim up when you'd rather be moving in a different direction. Additionally, you have an unlimited supply of upgradeable missiles/grenades that fire in the direction you are facing, providing the flexible fire your machine gun does not.
The screen also moves with you instead of auto-scrolling like in most other shooters, and you can move backwards if you want to as well, unless you are fighting a boss of course. This means you can always move how you want, when you want, unless your friend decides to hold you up while they rescue POWs.
Speaking of which, POWs provide a nifty upgrade mechanic to the game. Your jeep starts out with a basic grenade as its secondary weapon, and reverts to it when you die, but certain POWs (as well as unloading chains of five or so normal POWs onto a helipad) can upgrade it to a missile, then to a missile with a larger blast radius. This gets pretty valuable as the game follows the genre staple 'one-hit, one-death' mechanic, and filling the screen with fiery death does a good job protecting you from enemies. Fortunately, POWs are super easy to find and collect, so there are plenty to go around and keep you upgraded. They are also oddly satisfying to collect, especially when you steal them from your buddy's smoking jeep when they die due to you not scrolling the screen.
4dAikK0.png
(I'm a terrible person, please never play games with me)
Konami made an amazing showing on the NES, and I've always felt Jackal was one of their least appreciated releases. It has a great set of mechanics in the machine gun, grenades/missiles, and nonrestrictive camera, the POWs are a great and satisfying way to do power-ups, and the game is an awesome multiplayer experience. If you have a friend around and are even remotely open to the genre, give this game a try, even if the videos on youtube don't seem that impressive. It's a lot of fun, and while it may not be Gradius or Gun Nac, or even Konami's best multiplayer NES game, it still remains . . .
an awesome game you should know about.