Ikari Warriors

Ikari Warriors is a vertically scrolling, shoot 'em up arcade game developed by SNK, and published in the North America and Europe by Tradewest in 1986. Originally titled Ikari (怒?, 'Fury') in Japan, Ikari Warriors was SNK's first major breakthrough US release and became something of a classic. The game was released at the time when there were many Commando clones on the market. What distinguished Ikari Warriors were rotary joysticks and a two-player mode.

The player characters in Ikari Warriors are Colonel Ralf and Second Lieutenant Clark of the later King of Fighters series (known outside Japan as Paul and Vince in the Ikari series) battling through hordes of enemies. According to designer Keiko Iju, the game was inspired by the then-popular Rambo films and takes its name from the Japanese title of Rambo: First Blood Part II (Rambo: Ikari no Dasshutsu or 'The Furious Escape'). Ralf and Clark also make an appearance as playable characters in Metal Slug 6 and Metal Slug 7.

The player takes the role of commando-like warriors named Ralf and Clark, who must try to reach the village of Ikari. Enemy units attempting to kill the player include tanks, enemy soldiers and helicopters. A number of power-ups along the way help the player achieve victory.

Ikari Warriors was the first popular video game to use rotary joysticks: those which could be rotated in addition to being pushed in eight directions (TNK III, released in 1985, also from SNK, was the first to use such joysticks). The game also featured two buttons, one for the standard gun and another for lobbing grenades. It allowed two players to play cooperatively, side-by-side — one of the few games to do so at the time — and to use vehicles. The game cabinet was a standard upright. Stan Szczepanski holds the official Guinness World Record with 1,799,000 points.