A Quick Jaunt Through Vietnam

Rambo: First Blood Part II was such a massive success that everyone wanted to get in on the action. Sure, that meant making a bunch of other war movies that could play off the character, but primarily it meant grabbing the license for the character and putting him into as many different works as possible. Lunchboxes, toys, cartoons, comics, and, of course, video games. Ocean had the license for the movie in most applications, and they put it to work as many ways as they could, as frequently as they could, until all interest dried up.

We’ve already discussed a few of these adaptations, including most recently Super Rambo Special, but there are still plenty of them to get through, and as we venture along all the various permutations we get to Rambo: First Blood Part II for various personal computers (that didn’t use DOS). Developed by Platinum Productions and published by Ocean, this adaptation of the 1985 sequel film was released on the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum systems. And as is so often the case with games that were released for that variety of personal systems, the resulting title feels compromised to suit the lowest common denominators of those systems.

The basic game is fairly slight. You start off as John Rambo, making your way up the screen, shooting bad guys like in various other arcade style adaptations of the Rambo license. After a little walking, though, your mission changes. You’ve reached the POW camp and now you’ve got to get in and find the hostages so you can free them. Naturally this involves continuing to shoot at anything that moves and blowing up anything that doesn’t until the specific building is found and the POWs are saved.

From there, Rambo has to once more venture upwards in search of a helicopter. Once at the chopper, Rambo then has to fly north, avoiding the attacks of an enemy helicopter, looking to find the landing pad that marks home base. Handle all that and the day is saved. You’re the true war hero, having finally “won” Vietnam. Of course, then you can go back and do the mission again for more points and more valor, over and over until you get bored.

On its face, Rambo: First Blood Part II for these personal computing consoles seems like a solid title. It has action, it has shooting, it has arcade style that would, seemingly, help it measure up against all the other Rambo games we’ve seen. March upwards, shoot enemies, collect their weapons, shoot more enemies, and occasionally blow shit up. That’s all you need for a pretty solid, arcade-style Rambo game, and many companies (like Sega with their adaptation of Rambo: First Blood Part II) understood this exactly.

The problem with this version of Rambo: First Blood Part II is that there isn’t much to this game. You have what amounts to a three part mission, but each section takes no more than two minutes to complete. The entire game can be burned off in six minutes or less, assuming you aren’t terrible at the title, and the only replay factor comes from doing the mission over and over to run up points and get a better score. But considering this was in the days without the internet, and this was a home title (and not a true arcade experience) there’s little reason to rack up those points except to show off to friends or your siblings. That would get old, fast.

With that said, I think the game could have been fleshed out to add more to the experience. In general the action isn’t bad, with a variety of weapons (thrown daggers, machine guns, grenades, exploding arrows) that you can use. Some have limited ammo, so balancing what to use when is part of the strategy of the game. I could see a version of this with Rambo tracking up several levels of the game, slowly infiltrating deeper and deeper into Vietnam until he finds the POW camp. Then a mission set there would see him finding the prisoners while blasting away at everyone. Finally, the game could cap with the helicopter mission, leading to a lengthy dogfight before the game ends. It could easily be stretched to twenty minutes or so, long enough to feel like a complete game instead of a truly slight experience.

But then, that really wasn’t the way of licensed content. A company like Ocean would snatch up the licenses they could, pass them off to development houses to make the games, and then rush them out the door as fast as possible to strike while the iron is hot. It’s entirely possible that Platinum Productions wanted to make a more involved, lengthier experience but they had to work within the constraints of the contract with Ocean, and that meant fast turnaround and a hard deadline. Under those conditions, a slight game like Rambo: First Blood Part II was to be expected.

Which is sad because I think, at its core, there’s something that works about this game. Setting aside the length of the title, the action (at least on the Commodore version, which is what I played) is smooth and fairly responsive. There’s fun to be had here, mindlessly blowing up guys all over a jungle, which is part of why so many other games (Commando, Ikari Warriors) used the same formula to great effect. If Platinum had been given more time they probably could have made something really good, instead of a title that was over before it even found itself.

If you’re interested in the game, even as short as it is, you will want to pick the right version. The Amstrad has better graphics, but the viewport for the game is small, making the action harder to parse. The ZX Spectrum has a longer, more arcade-style viewport, but its graphics are probably the weakest of the set (which should be expected, considering the hardware). The Commodore’s graphics fall somewhere in the middle, but it had the biggest viewport to see the action, making it the best simply for staying alive. None of them look exceptional, and you have to balance these factors to find the version that’s right for you.

Still, none of them are as good as they could have been. This game needed more time, and more length, to really be something good. It’s a pity it feels so rushed because, with just a little more work, I think this version of Rambo: First Blood Part II could have been a real winner.