Probotector review - Nintendo Entertainment System

Intergalactic peace seems to be a very unlikely event, at least according to game writers. In Probotector, Alien robots have invaded, and it's up to one man - or two, if wanted - to stop the conquest and destroy the mother alien and her island bunker. To achieve this the commandos are armed with the latest peashooters - although power-up token are available at certain points during the action.

Most of the eight levels are left-to-right scrolling blasters, with the heroes jumping, somersaulting and ducking their way through the platforms that make up the battlefield. However two levels are viewed in 3D, similar in style to Dynamite Duke or even Operation Wolf. Here the heroes dodge a hail of bullets and bombs until they blast through the walls, leading on to the next challenge.

The trail of devastation finally leads to the source of the invasion, an island fortress infested with Aliens (yes, those Aliens!) and assorted nasties. Getting to this stage is far from easy, though, as there are Ice Worlds, bunkers, and bases to fight past. But who said destroying an alien race was easy?

What the Mean Machines staff thought

This is one of the Playchoice Ten games to be found in many pubs and arcades, although the name is Contra on that system - are Nintendo starting to show some political sensitivity? Anyway, Contra was a boring and repetitive game, and changing the name and the look of the sprites hardly alters that fact. The commandos are awkward to control, and have an annoying habit of crouching down facing in the wrong direction. The graphics improve throughout the game, but then again they have to; the early levels look primitive in the extreme. So considering the NES games coming out at the moment - games that have outstanding graphics, sound and playability - this really can't be recommended.

The problem with this is that it's not particularly challenging. It takes a few goes to get used to the slightly ropey control method, and after that it's simply a case of blasting your way through the pretty weak alien defences. It's fun at first, due to the fact that you can get pretty far into the game, but once you've completed it, it all gets rather predictable. Gryzor fans might enjoy the action, but really you'd get far more out of something like Snake, Rattle 'n' Roll or Megaman 2.

Have your say about this review

Chris - 28 Feb 2008, 14:42 GMT

Hmmm, this didn't score very highly back in the day did it? I thought this was fun to play, especially when you had a friend playing along, and featured a sound track that, although a little repetitive, I absolutely loved! And the 2 3D levels added a nice bit of variety to the game. It was however a touch on the easy side to any average gamer!

James - 10 Jan 2009, 12:19 GMT

This review was very surprising! It's weird how the review mentions several times that the game is too easy: everyone says it's one of the difficult games of all time now!

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