RAMBO III

 RAMBO III is a strategy/arcade game from Ocean Software and Taito. It offers
excellent graphics and animation, three missions, joystick and mouse control,
and copy protection. The color-only Atari ST version is the basis of this
review.

 Like the film of the same name and number, RAMBO III concerns the capture and
imprisonment of Colonel Trautman, Rambo's friend and mentor. The goal of the
game is to find the Colonel, release him, and escape. While this is easier said
than done (even for Rambo), you'll find yourself stuck in an enjoyably
frustrating and wonderfully realized world. Taito's press release states that
RAMBO III is a role-playing adventure; that's stretching things, unless, of
course, you really do want to be someone's worst nightmare.

 Colonel Trautman is being held in a fortress in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. In
Mission One, you must search the rooms and corridors of the fortress, find
Trautman, and release him. In Mission Two, you must plant eight explosive
devices in the vehicle compound, and escape from the fortress in a waiting
helicopter. In Mission Three, you must escape from Afghanistan by stealing a
tank, and battling your way through those parts of the Soviet army that you
didn't destroy in Missions One and Two.

 Useful equipment includes arrows (with and without explosive tips), a pistol
(with silencer), a machine gun, infrared goggles, a mine detector, first-aid
kits, keys, rubber gloves, and a glow tube. Certain items need batteries or
another piece of equipment before they can be of any use.

 Obstacles include a maze of a fortress, zillions of Soviet guards, electrified
doors, pressure-sensitive electronic detectors, and pits with poisoned stakes.
The vehicle compound is mined.

 In Mission One, the Atari ST graphics display consists of a room in the
fortress. Guiding Rambo through a door or off the edge of the screen promptly
displays a new room. Soviet guards, marching in patterns, patrol just about
every screen. Until he finds other weapons, Rambo is armed with only a knife.
You can avoid the guards (no points are earned, though), or rip them to shreds
with the knife. Returning to a room resurrects the guards.

 To the right of the action screen is your score, and a graphic of Rambo's head
-- his energy indicator. As Rambo gets hit by bullets from the guards, red lines
replace a bit of his face; when it has become a skull, Rambo pirouettes into a
grave, and the game ends. A first-aid kit restores all lost energy and can be
used only once.

 Below the action screen are two windows: One displays a graphic of the current
weapon; the other displays a graphic of the current item. Arrows and magazines
come in lots of 99: If you have 20 arrows left, picking up another quiver brings
the total back to 99, which means you can carry only that number of arrows,
regardless of how many you pick up.

 In Missions One and Two, Rambo is controlled with a joystick: The stick move
him in any of eight directions; the button uses the current weapon. In Mission
Three, the mouse moves the gunsight on the tank, and either button fires the
gun. Also available in Missions One and Two is an Inventory screen, activated by
pressing the spacebar: Moving the gunsight to an item or weapon and pressing the
button selects it. If a piece of equipment is not complete (the infrared
goggles, for example, need batteries), it cannot be selected. When you're out of
arrows or bullets, the knife is automatically selected.

 The graphic displays are excellent. The fortress is made of stone blocks with
wooden floors. There are tables and chairs, plates and silverware, steel
cabinets, space heaters, maps and wall charts, radios, and all manner of detail
accurately depicted. Weapons and equipment look like weapons and equipment. In
the vehicle compound, there are camouflaged trucks and jeeps, piles of junk, and
bunkers. The guards wear green fatigues and helmets.

 The game itself is not easy, and it'd certainly help matters if Rambo were as
invincible here as he was in the movie. Stealth is vital. You can't rush the
guards, nor should you get in their line of vision; doing so sets off the klaxon
horn and alerts guards in other rooms. Tripping an electronic detector really
irks them, and for a long time.

 I realize this is an arcade game. Still, because there is strategy involved,
and because Rambo's death sends you back to the beginning, I would have welcomed
a save option -- say, a non-permanent RAM save. Taito's price for RAMBO III is
$29.95, making this great-looking, great-playing game a real bargain, even
without the save feature.

 RAMBO III is published by Ocean Software and distributed by Taito.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253