Platoon (NES Review)

Platoon
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1988
Original Game Designed by Simon Butler and Mark Jones
NES Port Directed by Cho Musou
Licensed by Ocean
Developed by Sunsoft
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I like this picture of this GOTCHA trap because it looks like my foot was blown off.

Based on the 1986 Academy Award winner for Best Picture (seriously one of the most competitive and stacked Oscar fields EVER across all categories), Platoon for the NES is a direct port of a 1987 Commodore 64 game. Now whether or not you like the film Platoon or Oliver Stone, Platoon is most certainly not an action flick. It has action, but it’s not Rambo. It’s not Missing in Action. It’s a brutal watch and not exactly something that lends itself to action games, especially in 1986. Hell, a modern game developer, even with today’s acceptance of blood, gore, and crimes against humanity, would struggle to turn that narrative into a video game. They basically didn’t bother and just slapped the “Platoon” name and poster (which is literally a guy being lit-up with machine gun fire before dying) on a generic action game that’s so wrong it made me feel unclean.

Well, it’s not ENTIRELY generic. What stands out most about Platoon is it offers four levels that each has its own unique play style. One of the four made me sit up in my chair, nodding with excitement, and it wasn’t level one. The game starts with this insanely dull maze set inside a jungle. It’s one of those side-scrollers where navigation is done by moving up and down paths, like in Mickey Mousecapade. Since there’s no way to logic-out the correct paths, it’s one of those games that expects players to draw their own map. I planned to play along with that, but Platoon’s “action” consists of more cheap shots than happy hour and I ended up using a guide. The game literally rains enemies down on you from close range, so close that you can’t reasonably be expected to not die.

They don’t spawn until you’re practically above them. Okay, this is TECHNICALLY an accurate depiction of being ambushed during guerrilla warfare, but for the purposes of a video game, it’s SO cheap.

You can survive three hits before dying on the fourth and you get all the way until “Status 005” before you’re in danger of gaming over. It seems generous, but the level one maze is huge and requires a lot of coverage to complete. I found the exit fairly quickly but it’s not enough. Before leaving, you first have to find explosives to blow up a bridge. The explosives were all the way in the bottom right corner while the exit is in the top right corner, and the pathway between them is a full zig-zagging from right to left and back again. That’s a LOT of screens to survive guys raining down on you IN ADDITION TO the ones already on the ground moving quickly and shooting quickly. And that’s really all there is to the level. Those raining guys are still the same basic enemy that represents the only enemy in the entire stage besides instakill tripwire that’s hard to see.

In the Nintendo Vs. System coin-op (yes, it got a Vs. System release) the visibility of the tripwire is even worse thanks to the lighter colors.

The only thing that changes up the action is that you can throw the most useless grenades in gaming history. The enemies move quickly, while grenades freeze your character to pull out the grenade, pull the pin, and lob it. By time you actually throw it the f*cking war would already be over. For you, I mean, because you’ll be dead if you were trying to throw it at an enemy walking towards you, either from their bullets or by contact. I only successfully killed enemies that were walking away from me, IE ones that were no longer an immediate threat. It’s one of the most useless weapons I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, the gun comes with no risk besides ammo conservation and happens instantaneously. What were they thinking with the grenades? It’s SO badly done. Level one isn’t over when you take out the bridge, as there’s a brief section in a village.

That isn’t an enemy. Not that the game warns you about this ahead of time.

In the village,  you have to search for a torch and the entrance to the tunnels. You press UP to search, and some of the stuff is booby-trapped for an instakill. It’s trial and error random chance and it sucks. While enemies still attack, there’s also villagers that are just there to penalize you if you shoot them. This is what that “morale” meter is about. Shoot a villager and the meter drops. Okay, so I smirked a LITTLE because your morale is almost empty right from the start. War is hell. Nice touch. But why isn’t this “don’t shoot noncombatants” element part of the rest of the level? Because it REALLY needed more than just the one enemy and the same background over and over. The bridge? It’s blown up automatically. You don’t do anything. Platoon starts with the anti-Super Mario 1 opening stage. It’s just so tedious and boring.

Is it just me or does that look more like Leatherface? He’s even wearing a smock!

Level two is the highlight of the game and one of the best usages of the first-person perspective on the NES. Seriously, for the scathing reputation that Platoon has, I didn’t expect THIS. You have to explore a relatively large tunnel looking for two flares and a compass. Usually when the NES tries first person navigation, it’s hard to know your relative position in the map. Here, the map is on full display, including which direction you’re facing. When enemies pop up, you have a tiny grace period to move crosshairs over them and shoot before you take damage. Once again, you can absorb three hits before the fourth kills you. I enjoyed this level so much I played it straight-up without using a guide to walk me through it and I thought it was actually fun. Had the designers built the entire game around this engine (adding more items and enemies of course) a YES! would have been likely. But what’s actually here is a little stripped-down.

There’s various rooms where the game briefly becomes a point-and-clicker.

In the above screenshot, you can see that I found an “enemy weapon.” I was excited to get a new gun, but I actually didn’t. The only thing you can get besides the key items are health refills and ammo refills, which are handy since I ran out of ammo once. I suspect the developers originally had bigger plans for Platoon and then cut a lot of features like changing your weapon type. Not that it could have saved the rest of the game. The tunnels were fun, but I finished them in around twenty minutes even with controls that were a little loosey goosey for my tastes. Then the third level is a glorified mini-game where you just shoot enemies from a first person perspective. The screen is dark and you’re supposed to click a thing on the screen to light up the sky, but you actually don’t need to. Plus, I didn’t stop every enemy in time before they got a shot off, but I usually didn’t take damage from it. Weird.

They’re easier to spot in motion.

The final level sealed the NO! with some of the most infuriating gameplay I’ve seen. The game switches to a third-person perspective for another jungle maze. Enemies appear at the top of the screen and spray bullets at you, usually three at a time. If you kill an enemy, it doesn’t matter. Another will appear almost immediately, PLUS you’re being shot at from the sides by unseen enemies you can’t attack. You have to rush up the playfield to the top of the screen while also avoiding landmines and barbed wire. When you reach the top of the screen, the enemy usually disappears immediately. There might be a fork in the road where you have to choose left or right. I don’t know what happens when you go the wrong way. The action is so relentless and unreasonable that I just threw the towel and used a guide to get to the end, which is a boss you throw grenades at.

The stuff circled kills you.

The stuff circled kills you.

And that’s Platoon. I almost can’t believe this game exists. Okay, some weird decisions have been made about which movies get made into games. I’ve reviewed NES games like Back to the Future, Blues Brothers and Hudson Hawk where the premise alone made me say “who saw the action game potential in *this* IP?” But Platoon is on a whole other level. A complete bore of a game that doesn’t explore any of the themes of its film. Well, besides the token morale meter that only applies to maybe 10% of the first level and is forgotten about completely afterward. Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d think they threw that in the game so when they pitched their concept to Oliver Stone, it almost sounded like they might be including the point of the movie in the game. But surely an artist with the integrity of Oliver Stone would have made sure he wasn’t selling-out on his semi-autobiographical epic about the emotional toll of war by turning it into a video game so generic and glorifying of war that it could pass for a game based on Arnold Schwarzenegger action schlock. (nods) Surely not!

The final boss changes up the action by having you throw grenades that feel about as powerful as those grenade-shaped water balloons. I loved those as a kid.

Whether it’s on the NES or the original home computer version, Platoon the video game is the type of product licensing that sounds like a satire and should never have happened. Do you really think Steven Spielberg didn’t get flooded with inquiries about a Saving Private Ryan game? How do you think we got Medal of Honor? He helped create a new brand because he didn’t want to merchandise THAT story. Oliver Stone was fine with that for Platoon, good taste be damned, because one of the most profitable films of all time (nearly $140 million on a $6 million budget) needs merchandising! That’s where the REAL money is! Though I’m sure he had his heart set on doing Happy Meal toys instead.
Verdict: NO!