SNK‘s famous arcade shooter, Ikari Warriors, was released in 1986 at a time when many Commando clones were saturating the market, but managed to stand out against the competition.

Probably because it used rotary joysticks (allowing up/down/left/right movement of your guy, with precise 360 degree directional shooting), and also had a brilliant, coin-eating two-player mode.

Ikari Warriors is a fairly simple vertical-scrolling run-and-gun game with a jungle setting. You play as either Ralf (red) or Clark (blue), armed with a machine gun and a bunch of grenades, and must blast your way up the screen in a Rambo fashion. Actually, Ikari Warriors is very heavily influenced by Sylvester Stallone‘s infamous Eighties action film Rambo: First Blood Part II.

As you fight through the waves of enemies you will also get the opportunity to jump into tanks and commandeer them. Tanks are impervious to enemy bullets but will explode if they run out of fuel or are caught in too many explosions. And, of course, your guy will perish if he’s inside one when it brews up.

More: Ikari Warriors on Wikipedia