Heavy Metal Kings: The Six Most Bad-Ass Military Action Games

May 22, 2009 by Jeffrey L. Wilson · 6 Comments
Filed under: Features, Run and Gun

Image courtesy neogeoforlife

This Memorial Day, the 2D-X crew pays respect to the courageous men and women who’ve bravely entered the line of fire by looking back at some of the more awesome videogame examples of soldiers at work. We’re not talking realistic first-person shooters like Call of Duty; it’s all about hardcore, near-mindless twitch soldiering that dominated the 8-bit and 16-bit era just as the Cold War began to thaw. No need to carefully manage supplies or call for back up: Simply check your brain at the door, grab the AK, and prepare to leave a foreign body count higher than anything Stallone, Arnie, Dolph, or Norris ever tallied.

During my “research” (which consisted of me playing naked, at 3AM,with a box of Dominos at my side), it became obvious that these war games were more than simple recreations of humanity’s flawed (and recurring) activity; they were also snapshots of time. It’s no coincidence that these titles emerged in a period where the threat of global nuclear annihilation had combat on everyone’s brain, particularly SNK, a company that takes half of the slots if this countdown. Go, America!

Tags: 16-bit, 8-bit, bionic commando, capcom, contra, guerrilla war, ikari warriors, iron tank, konami, metal slug 3, shocktroopers, snk