Guerrilla War

Overview

Guerrilla War is a 1987 vertically-scrolling top-down shooter game developed and published by SNK. It was first released for arcade, and then later for multiple home platforms. The Japanese version of the game is called Guevara, and is based on the exploits of famous Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.

Setting

The game takes place during the Cuban Revolution of the late 1950s, with player 1 as Guevara, and player 2 as Fidel Castro. The game was modified for Western localization, and all Marxist and Guevara references were taken out.

Gameplay

The game play is similar to the earlier SNK arcade game Ikari Warriors. The player moves through levels shooting and throwing grenades at enemies, while benefiting from unlimited ammo. Numerous power-ups including grenade launchers and flamethrowers are scattered throughout the levels, and the players are also able to use vehicles like army tanks for a limited amount of time. The player has an additional objective to rescue hostages that are scattered throughout the levels. The player is awarded 1,000 points for rescuing a hostage, and has 500 points subtracted from their score for killing a hostage.

The original arcade version controlled with 8-way joysticks that allowed the player to move and shoot simultaneously in different directions. The NES version features unlimited continues, however the player's score is wiped to 0 every time a continue is used.