Rush'N Attack on NES: One of the most frustrating games of my youth

There are two things I truly recall about this game: One, the title was definitely referring to Russians even though they didn't spell it that way, and 2, it was fustratingly difficult in a way that would probably encourage me to rage-quit these days.

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_{at no point in the game do you wield the weapon in the box art}

There were a lot of games like this back in the day but this one just seemed a bit better. For the most part your character, who was special forces or a Green Beret or something had to dispatch most of the enemies by knife. This wasn't always an easy task considering your enemies frequently had guns. Ok, maybe not frequently, for the most part they just ran at you looking to give you a death hug and like most other games at the time, you were were very susceptible to being touched. I'm relieved to see the military has gotten a bit tougher since 1985.

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The enemies would never stop coming, as was tradition in gaming back in these times. you could run away from them if you wanted to but there was one failsafe introduced to prevent this as a tactic, the enemy was slightly faster than you were so you were gonna have to address them eventually.

For the most part you only carry a knife but every now and then some dude in a orange shirt would be crouched in front of you just hanging out that way for some reason. Once you kill him he drops an upgrade weapon such as a rocket launcher or grenade. However these weapons only have 3 uses before they disappear so choose your shots wisely!

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The bosses would normally just be some sort of mechanized something or other while the constant onslaught of dudes trying to hug-kill you continue from both sides.

The musics was pretty good even though it was only 2 songs done in 8-bit glory. I never completed this game and when you see youtube videos of that it seems silly that i couldn't. It is a lot harder than these experts make it look.

The musi was pretty good even though it was only done in 8-bit glory and the alarm that sounded at the beginning of each level... i'm not sure why, but it sticks with me to this day. I never completed this game and when you see youtube videos of the experts doing the levels perhaps it seems as though I was a terrible player. Emulate the game yourself to see if that is true - it is not as easy as they make it look.

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Me and my next door neighbor would take turns having a go at this, normally celebrating if someone was able to get past certain key areas such as the dreaded guard tower section of level 2 where not only do you have to avoid the immense hugging capabilities of the ground troops but there were a series of towers that fire very slow-moving bullets (as one would expect from Russian technology.)

Certainly not impressive by today's standards, this was one of the early NES games, and one that I hold in high esteem probably moreso because of the company I played it in, rather than the game itself.