Difficult & repetitive 2D beat them up game

P.O.W. was released by SNK for the arcade and Nintendo system. In P.O.W., your goal is to escape from military camps. During the process, you will encounter numorous enemies. You can pick up items like knife, machine gun to dispose your enemies. Most of the time, you fight with bare hands.

The music is great, but the game becomes quite repetitive. Unlike the arcade version, the nintendo version only supports one player. The difficulty level is high. If you really want to enjoy this game, I recommend you playing the arcade version- but prepare to feed the machine with your quarters.

Worth a looksy

P.O.W was one of my early NES games. I remember distinctly going to a K-Mart that doesn’t exist anymore and dropping 40 some dollars from what I believe was birthday money. I was only about 11 or so at the time. Since I only had a handful of games, I played the hell out of them. P.O.W definitely gave me a run for my money and some fond memories to boot.

Being based on an arcade game that I had limited exposure to, all I knew about P.O.W was that you were a prisoner and you had to escape. The biggest gimmick was the fact that when you procured a rifle you not only could pop rounds into anyone unfortunate to be in the way, but you could also use the butt of the gun as a weapon. Versatility like this in games of those days was almost unheard of. Alas, it didn’t take much for me to make my decision.

Fortunately for me, and the fact that if P.O.W sucked I would have been stuck with a crappy game in my limited library for years, P.O.W wasn’t too bad of a game. The graphics are very detailed and bring a richness to the levels. The music does well to set the tone. I love the first level’s music. I would play that level and then press reset just so I could play the level again just to listen to the music. Man, I’m a tool.

The game play is entertaining, but as a previous reviewer has mentioned it can get repetitive, I am inclined to agree. You have at your disposal a limited move set of a punch, kick, and jump kick. I think you might have a back hand move as well, but I might be thinking of another game. The point is, you will be using your one punch and one kick a majority of the time.

You do get a few weapons to spice things up. You get a knife which you throw, not too useful against a group of enemies. A rifle with 10 three round bursts is also your more useful weapon. As mentioned before, you can use the rifle as a bludgeon to help conserve ammo. Though it is difficult to use the butt of the gun against many enemies. You also get a grenade. I think you know what that does. There are some pickups that are useful. Body armor protects against throwing knives and brass knuckles lessen the amount of hits it takes to kill an enemy with you punch. The brass knuckles are very useful since some of the enemies can take what seems like twenty hits to kill.

P.O.W is a very difficult game. Aside from your limited arsenal and the amount of enemies you have to battle, you are only given a couple of lives which won’t last you very long. I had to use a cheat code that upped it to ten lives and even then I had to earn my dues. Though the levels are a bit much on the repetitive side, the boss fights do help mix things up. They do live up to their boss rank and pose a significant challenge. Can’t count how many times I barely made it through a level only to be quickly extinguished by the boss. But that is how games rolled back in those days.

P.O.W is a slightly above average game for the NES. Above average graphics and music with average game play. If you are looking for a decent NES game, P.O.W should fit the bill. It may not be of the caliber of Super Mario Bros or Mega Man, but for a slightly obscure game, P.O.W isn’t half bad.

Great Game!

Bought this to replace one I had. A fun game for all ages, hard to find these days but worth a play or two!

Qualité et rapidité de vos services, merci beaucoup meilleures salutations

Très bon jeu de plateforme pour tous ceux qui veulent se rappeler des bon vieux souvenirs ou bien découvrir quelque chose de nouveau