When the genre was at one of its highest points SNK tried to take advantage of it with this title, which was well-received despite its problems.
The acronym P.O.W. stands for Prisoners of War, and international treaties also recognize them. And in that interesting, idealized period of the 80s, the social and political panorama also permeated culture and leisure. Of course, video games were no strangers to this – on the contrary! They became richer for it.
Overview of the game
In 1988, the fighting gaming genre was booming, with the anthological and mythological Double Dragon leading the way. The following year saw the release of Final Fight or Golden Ax, but its presence in the arcades was clearly visible. SNK had evolved its shooting games with a few melee-specific additions – which here are jungles and barracks – made their way in. Well, we have to wage war with a joint and a military boot on the enemy’s face.
The games of this genre that we tried directly in Arcade were very few. The most popular titles were fighting games. However, the taste for Beat’em Up was reinforced with the SNES because there were 2 controls. They were a way to play cooperatively and spend the afternoon.
This game was released in 1988, which puts it at the point where the plot worked as an excuse to throw us into the action, but at least it was present, in this case through static images between levels and on-screen text explaining what’s going on.
Gameplay
We control Snake and Bart, a couple of prisoners of war who manage to escape from their cell and attempt to flee an army of enemies who want to eliminate them, to do so they must traverse different levels, communicate with their allies, and obtain a means of extraction from the area.
This game belongs to the Beat’s up category of the tape, which means that we should end up hitting the opponents, but instead of moving only from left to right in a single shot, we can also scroll the screen to align ourselves with the enemies and be able to hit them, which is, it looks more like a Final Combat than a Bad Dudes.
Attacks and Weapons
To control our characters, we have an 8-way lever and 3 buttons, one for kicking, one for fists, and one for jumping, and we can do a few extra moves by combining them, like a header or a flying kick. Our life bar is made up of 4 fragments, which are halved according to the attack received, and each piece gives us 3 lives.
We also have access to a couple of weapons that leave us with enemies to defeat, the knife that can be thrown by pressing down on the fist and is single-use, and the machine pistol that comes with a few shots in 3-shot bursts or can be used as a blunt object if we want to save ammo for when things get dangerous.
Enemies
The enemies aren’t very varied, but they’re all extremely dangerous. They attack us with bare hands, knives, flying kicks, grenades, and even motorcycles. Even the simplest ones can easily cost us a life because they do so much damage and are difficult to dodge.
Disadvantages
One of the main problems with the title is precisely its difficulty level, it shows too much that it’s designed to get money out of us quickly because many things can take a life from us almost instantly, and any enemy can catch us in a combo that easily over half the energy we have no way of recovering.
Collision detection leaves a lot to be desired, moves that should have been effective are simply ignored and attacks we should have dodged will greatly reduce our lives, it’s very difficult to connect an effective sequence of attacks, and lining up with opponents isn’t natural either, so it feels particularly unfair and unbalanced.
Graphics
The visual aspects are one of the game’s strong points, the characters are a good size, allowing you to see the details in their designs, they are well animated, and even though various things are happening on screen, it never gets slow. Enemies aren’t very varied, but they clearly stand out in appearance and use a vibrant color palette.
The stages have quite a few elements that give it a differentiated aesthetic despite the fact that we’re sticking to the Bad Guy’s Lair theme almost all the time, there are even a few interactive elements here and there.
Sound
The music is pretty catchy, with each stage having its own song, and even in the face of the game’s few bosses, the melody changes. A lot of synthesizers have been used and the rhythm is frenetic to represent the action on screen, the duration is well-defined, as you’ll hear barely a few repeats per level.
The effects are barely adequate, giving me the feeling that they’ve reused the company’s sound library with few new ones, making the weapons particularly good and the others only satisfying.
Is it worth it?
This game is not one of the great representatives of the genre, it falls short in many aspects and has several balance problems that make it unfair, more focused on taking our money than giving us a reasonable challenge, although its technical elements were above the average of the moment. It can still give us a few minutes of fun if we play with a friend trying to spend as little credit as possible.
In addition to the Arcade version which is easily achieved thanks to the SNK Anniversary Collection, the game has an NES edition which is much higher in terms of content, balance and plot, than if the technical aspects are way below and it’s only for one player and it’s still available at a good price.
