We should all remember the Rambo films. The first thing that comes into our heads is probably Sylvester Stallone standing half-naked and holding a ridiculously large machine gun with a red headband wrapped around his long and wavy black hair. As iconic as that image may be of the American Action Movie genre, it’s a real shame because this very portrayal of the character takes away a lot of the seriousness behind the first Rambo film First Blood which was quite decent and entirely character-focused, a bit like the first Rocky movie. And I’m sure we are already well aware that there will be a 4th instalment coming soon.

Just on headbands though, why is it that so many characters wear them (and often red ones too)? Why is this piece of cloth so appealing? After First Blood (and Rocky) came success but instead of continuing on with the drama theme of the original movie Stallone and the film producers then went and turned the whole thing into a crazy series of action films with absolutely wild one-man-army plots that, as bad as they were, were so bad that they are actually quite worth watching for a laugh. That’s just what I do, that’s my thing.

For instance in Rambo: First Blood Part II (great title!) the story sees Rambo sent back to Vietnam (he always finds a way to go back to Vietnam) in order to rescue American POWs who were left behind a whole 15 or so years after the end of the war. Not only that, but the Vietcong AND the Soviets are conspiring together with an evil plan for world domination! The best parts of the movie are probably the scenes involving Rambo and the Vietnamese chick who helps him, as well as a bit where he shoots the bad Vietcong boss with a missile. The movie contains some funny dialogue too with the standout possibly being this classic line right at the beginning:

Rambo (Upon accepting the mission): Colonel, are we gonna win this time?

Colonel: This time, Rambo, it’s up to you…

In looking for a decent reason/excuse for watching these movies I guess the good thing about the character of John Rambo is that he wasn’t your typical grunt; he was a patriot who really believed in governments ‘doing the right thing’, and was surprisingly very literate when it came to giving humanitarian lectures even though you had to turn on the subtitles in order to understand him.

Now onto Rambo III: the plot for the 3rd film has something to do with Rambo’s Colonel being kidnapped and him going into Afghanistan to rescue him, where our hero is assisted by Afghani rebels. Anyway sure, a rescue operation like this could very well happen in real life, but how often would you see this massive dude in a black singlet running around blowing things up in the middle of the desert with his bow & stinger-missile-arrows? How unrealistic is that?

But instead of the movie I wish to focus on the game for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis which I absolutely loved back then at the age of around 8 or 9. It was very similar to the old Metal Gear games and Secret Command on the Master System with an overhead perspective and 8-way aiming. You also had 4 weapon choices: Machine Gun, Knife, Detonator, or Bow & Missile, but the best parts of the game were the boss battles where you controlled Rambo from a third-person perspective and fought off tanks and helicopters with your bow while taking cover behind these big rocks on either side of you. Rambo would even do the headband-tying view-from-the-back pose!

As I remember it was a hard game and the controls took a while to get used to and definitely weren’t helped by the crappy boomerang controller, with the trickiest aspect being charging up the power for your bow and hitting your target whilst also running away from bullets. Despite this it was still a highlight of my childhood gaming. Speaking of which, when I had my Master System II as a kid, I owned a fantastic 2 player co-op game named Secret Command, never realising until recently that it was actually an officially licensed Rambo II game, but the name was changed in Australia for whatever reasons. I feel cheated, somewhat, about that.

So even though I enjoy poking fun at the unintentional humour of the films, there were some innovations that came about such as the close-up shots of Rambo ‘suiting up’ for battle. Also if it weren’t for the movies then the Metal Gear Solid series would either not exist at all or be very very different seeing as how Richard Crenna’s character of Colonel Trautman was most definitely the inspiration for Colonel Roy Campbell. Even Solid Snake’s cool headband might have something, possibly, remotely, to do with Rambo’s…

Game Rating: 8/10, Nostalgia Rating: 10/10

If you have a Genesis emulator and want to play this game, click HERE for the ROM! And what the hell, here’s a link for an emulator!