 It bums me out to see what Konami's become over the past decade or so, because man, they just churned out quality game after quality game back in the 80s and 90s. Here's another one, Jackal, that takes the idea of a run and gun game like Contra, but switches to an overhead view and puts you in a tank. There's an actual objective here, other than make stuff go boom. Your mission is laid out right away, and uh, pocket full of miracles? Who's talking to me here, Frank Capra? You also get a rundown of some characters here, and they're introduced with the sound you hear at the title screen of Blades of Steel? I always like that kind of stuff. You gotta rescue hostages, or POWs, prisoners of war, in these aluminum sheds, I guess. You die in one hit and lose all your hostages, but they don't run far. I always laugh at this for some reason, like, oh hey, you're back! Anyway, you get five lives per go round and unlimited continues, so while Jackal is pretty tough, it's at least somewhat forgiving. You get two weapons, a rapid fire, machine gun that only shoots forward, which is kind of irritating, but you get used to it, and there's grenades that have a short range, but you can launch them over barriers. Those at least fire on the direction you're facing, and you can move in eight directions. So yeah, it's a little like Total Carnage for Super Nintendo, but a better game in my opinion, because I mean, you're in a tank, and you can run these dudes over. How do you not love that? You can upgrade your grenades to missiles if you come across prisoners that are flashing this orangey color, and the missiles can level up as well. I will say the grenades and missiles take a bit of getting used to. The missiles are pretty user-friendly, but the grenades, you gotta learn to gauge the distance properly. It's not that hard to get the hang of, but it does take a little bit of time. I should point out that Jackal is in fact an arcade port, and I know that can scare some people off because the NES, and even the SNES arcade ports, can be hit or miss, but this one delivers big time. One big reason is because this game is co-op. Yep, all the good gameplay stuff I already went over, you can do it with two players on the screen at the same time, and as a neat little bonus, if your partner loses their last life and you have to go it alone, just press the A and B button at the same time, and that'll lend a life to your fallen comrade. So yeah, while I always hear people rave about stuff like Contra, Double Dragon, and Bubble Bobble, I think Jackal is right up there as one of the best co-op NES games. I mean, the game is good enough on its own as a one-player experience, so it's that much better playing with somebody else. Plus, Jackal is a hard game, but it's not gonna cause a bitch session between the two of you complaining about cheap deaths or whatever. The cartridge is also still somewhat cheap at only about $7 on eBay, so Jackal is an easy recommendation all the way around.