Hello everyone and welcome to the latest installment of the Weekly Contests!  A generic enemy nation is preparing for nuclear war and you've been called upon to secretly invade and take out their army.  And you get to do that as the greatest action star of all time!  No, not Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Nope, not Sylvester Stallone either.  Um, no, not Jean Claude Van Damme.  Dolph Lundgren is wrong as well.  Nope, not Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, Jason Statham, Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, or Mel Gibson.  Look, this is a video game and not an action movie.  No, you're not Mike Haggar.  Or Zangief.  Or Billy Lee.  Or Simon Belmont.  Or Johnny Cage.  Or Kratos.  Or Solid Snake.  You get to play as the mighty, the unstoppable, the muscular, the overly-sweaty...Paul.  And no, he is not a “wahrwilf” (if you get this reference, you are awesome), he is an Ikari Warrior!  So join Paul as he straps on his headband, rips off his shirt for some strange reason, rubs on an unnecessary amount of body grease, grabs a monstrously huge machine gun that would make Rambo proud, and makes for the generic enemy nation.  Once his plane predictably gets shot down, you must lead him through the enemy's army and to their leader, where you must help Paul defeat him.  Who is the leader, you say?  I don't know, the instruction manual doesn't say who it is.  Just make up an enemy.  It can be anyone you want.  Bo Abobo, Dracula, Shredder, Zachary Hale Comstock, Dr. Wily, Flintheart Glomgold, Wario, The Red Skull, Alduin, Shao Kahn, Freddy Krueger, the thimble token from Monopoly, Higharolla Kockamamie, you name it.  That's the enemy leader.  Look, in the time we have been wasting trying to decide who could be the main villain of the game, the enemy has had time to amass its troops and point their nukes right at our peace-loving country.  And if those nukes hit us?  Well, then you can kiss a lot of things goodbye.  Things like your homes, your belongings, video games, hotdogs, the NintendoAge Weekly Contests, Kickle, Bimmy poetry, and most importantly, your lives!  So, get together with Paul so you two can form the Ikari Warriors and save the world!  The first casualty of war may be innocence, but war also has rules and this war you are fighting has specific rules.  Here they are:

• 1 player only
• Play until you lose all lives.  Take your picture during your final death animation, but before you disappear (you can pause the game as you are dying).  To help you with how many lives you have, you start the game with 3 lives, earn an extra life at 50,000 points, 100,000 points, and every 100,000 points after that.
• Use of the ABBA continue code is strictly forbidden.  Anyone suspected of using this code will have their score disqualified.
• No looping of the game allowed.  You must collect the heart after you defeat the skull mask in stage 4.
• If you beat the game, take a picture of the end text screen AND the title screen when it comes back up to get your score.
• Highest score wins
• Participation: 10,000
• GENRE: Shooter/Shoot 'Em Up

The contest ends Sunday, 5/6/18 at 11 PM NA time.  Your user name MUST be written or typed on a piece of paper and be in the picture for your score to be valid.  The entire TV screen, or computer monitor if you are playing on an emulator, MUST be in the picture for the score to be valid.  No partial screenshots will be considered or accepted.  No screenshots by hitting "print screen" on a computer will be allowed.  You must take a picture of your computer monitor.  There may be instances where this will be acceptable, but it will be at the discretion of myself and the contest organizers.  Also, the use of turbo controllers is forbidden, as well as any cheat codes, Game Genies, slow motion functions, or save states if playing on an emulator.  Also, we will only be using NTSC systems for the contests.  The use of PAL systems will NOT be allowed.  Good luck everyone and have fun  

1st	arnpoly	551,000
2nd	bertsampson	414,500
3rd	gutsman004	42,100
4th	Krunch	37,500
5th	tablew/chairs	26,300
6th	Richardhead	20,600
7th	mbd39	20,300
8th	Murray	18,800
9th	Ausden	16,800
10th	smick	12,100
11th	Seppatoni	11,200
12th	the tall guy	10,900
13th	Yoshi	10,500

No looping allowed.
This is most sad. I was practising to loop it once per day for my mod score.  
Oh well. I will try to put up a paltry mod score tonight then!

I decided not to go for a gauntlet this time.  I'm sure there's some people who can do really well at this game (you included), but considering how tough and long it is, I decided to do one loop.

Remember when we played Jackal a few months ago? Remember how much better that game was than Ikari Warriors?

I'll try to at least get participation this week.

i'll be away all week so here's my participation, good luck everyone

26,300

Yep.

I dont like this game.

Can we expect another "Tetris" video in the near future then?  
 

Lol. Probably not. That tetris cart was out of my personal collection. I thought I would be able to find another copy yard sales for $1 but I haven’t been able too. And I’m not going to pay retail for tetris. How is that game more than $3 btw? 
 

Shooting at an angle in Ikari Warriors is a pain.

This game is practically unplayable, haha.

I kind of like the look of the game with the large sprites, but what's the point when your guy moves like an arthritic sloth? This is a real botched port that should have been much better.

Oooooh boy this is a rough one

Edit: Damn, I just tried like 10 different runs and I havent even come close to participation yet.  I can see why some peopel were saying this is the hardest NES game now

Why cant we take our picture on the title screen? It shows the high score and we're using all our lives anyway. (And ABBA code resets the score, right? I'm refraining from even practicing with it).

42,100

There are a lot of things about this game that you can criticize but I do like the theme of the game and while the soundtrack is extremely limited,at least the tunes that are there are great!

20,300




I couldn't get a good picture of the score when pausing the same so snapped another picture at the title screen. I agree with Krunch that the title screen should be acceptable.

 

I like the music and the large sprites. I like that the game has so much content with the long levels.

It would be a pretty good port if your guy moved at a playable speed and it wasn't so glitchy.
 

I thought it would be fun to see how far everyone can get in the game this week.  I did contemplate having the scores taken on the Title Screen, but ultimately decided on the rules that I posted.

I kind of agree, it won't be a problem for me personally to do it this way cause it's easy to freeze the screen on emulator. Pressing pause is a little harder and the score flickers.

The graphics are actually really impressive especially for the release year, and the mapping is great too. Even skimming over a FAQ I can tell they put a lot of development into the different attributes of the different types of enemies. But oh man I wish they would have tweaked the movement and shooting mechanics more. Maybe the sequels are more polished? This game is so clunky it's kind of tragic.

So the last time I really played this was two years ago when I beat it. I seem to remember all the level layouts and none of the enemy spawn points.  

After several attempts I made it to Level 2. I'm interested to see how far I'll get this week.

Well, at least someone made it past level 1 then.  
But I am sure all our skilled players will be beating this game by the time next Sunday runs around!  
 

I guess it's possible for a good player to beat the first level in a week. But beating the entire game would be like learning how to beat Battletoads in a week, or even worse. So that isn't going to happen.

It's amazing that this came from the same company that made Guerrilla War, one of the best run-and-guns on the system.

I wish they used Smash TV's dual controller scheme to independently move and shoot so you could strafe, and map the grenade to a double-tap move.

 

It was published by SNK, but was actually developed by Micronics who are kind of infamous for shoddy/glitchy NES games. No doubt the game would have been much better had SNK developed it themselves as they did Guerrilla War and P.O.W.: Prisoners of War.