Ikari Warriors is a top-down run and gun shooter similar to the arcade hit Commando. This was originally an arcade game developed by SNK and ported to the NES by Micronics. The arcade game was a big hit and featured a unique rotary joystick that allowed the player to tilt the stick in a direction to move, but twist to change the direction you fire in. It featured fast-paced, co-op fun that made it successful as you attacked the enemy base like John Rambo yourself. Enter the port to the NES where everything goes wrong. You cannot replicate the same controls allowing you to move and fire in different directions, which the fast-paced action requires. You only fire in the direction you move, but its made even more painful by the fact that you move like molasses AND that you need to turn your character around (so to make a 180 you don't immediately change direction, your character moves forward and turns). This makes the controls for the game feel like the worst.
The port is made even more painful by making you under-powered on top of the poor controls. Your shots and grenades need power-ups to be of any use...however, you die so often that power-ups themselves become useless since they don't persist beyond death (unless you get another rare power-up). So, you are walking through this murder field of a game dying every couple of steps to inch the screen forward and you find out that this game just goes on FOR-EV-ER. Seriously you can beat the arcade game (if you are good enough) in under 15 minutes, but a single stage (there are 4) in this game may last well over 15 minutes. So, you are in for over an hour of pain. The only real redeeming factor for Ikari Warriors is that it is an early NES game that features co-op play. This can actually make the game more bearable and fun as you commiserate your suffering with someone, but by all means find some other game to play if you can!