Overview
Guerrilla War is a vertical scrolling run-and-gun game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in late 1988 / early 1989. It is based on the Japanese arcade game Guevara, in which you play as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro trying to retake Cuba. To distance itself from Cold War tensions in the West, the game was rebranded as Guerrilla War and the two main characters were stripped of their names.
You play as revolutionaries trying to take back your island nation. As a one- (or two-) man fighting force, you’ll use machine guns, flamethrowers, and grenades against waves of enemies. Sometimes, you’ll even be able to jump inside an unattended tank for a short period as you battle your way to the capital. ¡Viva la revolución!
Gameplay
Guerrilla War is a one- or two-player game divided into 10 stages. Most of the stages end with boss fights. You can fire your weapon or throw grenades in eight directions, though the NES D-pad makes firing on the diagonals a bit uncomfortable. All of the power-up weapons, as well as your base weapon, come with unlimited ammo.
Unlike some earlier SNK games, your character in Guerrilla War moves quite smoothly. And being able to simply point and fire is a big advantage over titles like Iron Tank, where the movement of the tank and turret were independent of one another. In fact, Guerrilla War feels nicely tuned for the NES, even if there’s some slowdown during hectic fight areas. The game goes a step further to separate itself from its arcade roots by granting infinite continues. You still have to finish Guerrilla War in a single sitting, but you’re not badly punished for getting a game over.
On the other side of the coin, some of the weapons in Guerrilla War feel greatly overpowered. Blasting through a stage with the flamethrower can make you feel close to invincible. It helps that while there are some challenging enemy placements, nothing about the game comes off as unfair; you don’t need to memorize pixel-perfect enemy placement patterns to achieve victory.
Graphics & Sound
A lot of SNK’s arcade ports were known for their baseline level of quality, and that’s certainly the case here. While many of the outdoor environments in Guerrilla War appear similar, none of them look bad. Plus, the towns, sewers, and jungles all have their own personalities. Fighting in the forest or on a riverbank leaves plenty of room for maneuverability, unlike the close cobblestone streets of the cities, where it’s easy to feel boxed in. The graphics for these stages play to their characteristics well.
SNK’s sound team, comprised of Kazuhiro Nishida, Yoko Osaka, and Toshikazu Tanaka, handled sound and music. Once again, the music fits the medium well, giving you high-energy beats as you blast through opponents. The sound effects, too, match their respective weapons, whether it’s the dut-dut-dut of machine gun fire or the whoosh of the flamethrower.
Final Thoughts & How to Play
Guerrilla War is an easy game to like because you get exactly what the package advertises. Players who often become frustrated with run-and-gun games will enjoy having unlimited continues. Even blasting through foes with an overpowered weapon can feel enjoyably satisfying for novice players.
For experienced fans of the genre, Guerrilla War still has playability in trying to achieve a high score or a complete run without getting a game over. There’s even a community of speedrunners who have been putting up records on Guerrilla War going back more than 10 years.
Loose copies of Guerrilla War cost about $15 on the secondary market, while complete copies sell for around $50. Versions of the game have also been rereleased on several platforms. That makes this an easy one to recommend for folks who collect NES cartridges or who simply want to play on a digital service.
