Retro Weekends Episode 72: Green Beret/Rush N' Attack

"This is the hardest game we've ever played for the channel and yet I have to say that I love it, I think its great, its just a fantastically fun and energising fast-paced game. There's so much you can pull off if you're good enough. Graphically it does what it needs to do for the year it came out, its colourful, and it just puts so many sprites on the screen as well. Music wise the start music is well beloved in the C64 community for good reason, and the millitary drums during game play set the tone well. Sure its too difficult, but its a trendsetter, it shines in presentation and I had a fantastic time playing it for the last four weeks."

"This is a very frenetic game and its quite impressive just how fast and smooth the game runs for the time as this is 1986, which is when you first started to see the big scrolling arcade-action games appearing really. An argument could be made that Green Beret was influential as a sort of proto run n' gun game as well, as whilst it doesn't have the shooting action it does have the twitch game play, one hit kills and swarming enemies that those games would be known for. Difficulty wise this is completely unfair in a lot of respects, the main problem being that the enemies don't pause before firing like they did in the arcades, causing you to have too little time to react when caught close to the enemies. The game also really requires you to be aware of your surroundings at all times as death can come from any direction. I think the graphics are quite good, they're somewhat blocky but colourful, and everything moves smoothly, sound effect are good too. There's a lot of good stuff here, prior to Contra this probably was the best adrenaline-fueled action game you could play and its certainly an exciting game, but as I said it's just too difficult, however, truth be told most of the arcade games coming out at this time (such as Ghosts N' Goblins) were too difficult, so its kind of forgiveable for the era in some ways."