In the late 80's the beat-em-up genre became a staple of arcades, with games inspired by Double Dragon pouring into the market. Before they introduced their innovative NeoGeo arcade system, SNK dropped this beat-em-up into arcades around the same time as Bad Dudes and Double Dragon II. Naturally, it was ported to the NES. Is this a generic copycat or something unique?
In P.O.W. , you play as a solider who has been captured and is being held behind enemy lines. You manage to fashion an explosive to blow off the door to your cell and the action begins!
While the arcade game was 2 players and the box art even depicts two players, this is a single-player game. For a beat-em-up, your arsenal of attacks is skimpy. You basically have a punch, a kick and a jump kick. You can also do a back punch by pressing punch and the opposite direction that you're facing on the d-pad.
Though you're not limited to just your fists and feet. Enemy soldiers will drop weapons that you can pick up and use. Knives and grenades are a one-time weapons that you can throw, the machine gun is extremely powerful and comes with about 10 bullets (plus you can alternatively do an attack using the butt of the gun if you want to conserve ammo).
Additionally, there are powerups you can grab to give your soldier a boost. There are huts and buildings you can enter where after defeating the enemies inside these rooms, a powerup is spawned. These range from health refills, to brass knuckles that increase your punching power and even armor that defends against knife and gun attacks. These powerups stay with you until you die and you can see which ones you have in the lower right part of the screen.
The game features a wide range of enemies to get in your way, including basic soldiers, knife-wielding acrobats, machine-gun-toting dudes, motorcycle soldiers and aquatic "frogmen". They all require a different approach to avoid taking hits.
You begin the game with the standard 3 lives, and can earn additional lives every 30,000 points and after losing all your lives, you're given the ability to continue a few times before truly seeing the 'game over' screen.
The game is quite fun and a decent challenge. Enemies do a lot of damage, so its vital to play as defensively as you can since life refill powerups are few and far between. The lack of variety in attacks is a bit disappointing and the jump kick seems to be overpowered, but beyond that I had a lot of fun with P.O.W.
For an earlier release on the NES dropping in 1988, P.O.W. looks and sounds like the type of game you'd find closer to 1990. The character sprites are large and well-drawn, though a bit on the 'fuzzy' side. Stages have a decent amount of variety based on the theme, but what's here is nicely drawn, detailed and colorful. Lots of work was put into many of the background graphics, including some nice 3D illustration like in the industrial area pictured above.
Sound effects have a nice array of slashes, punching and kicking sounds. Explosions sound good too, though everything seems to be lacking the low-end bass oomph that would give them a lot more weight. Music is good, catchy and fits the theme of the game quite well. There are some very nice compositions here that are definitely above average.
P.O.W. seems to be very overlooked. When people think of beat-em-ups on the NES the only games that ever seem to get mentioned are TMNT II: The Arcade Game, Double Dragon and River City Ransom. While not quite at the level of those classics, this is definitely worthy of being mentioned among them.
Most games in the beat-em-up genre take place in the same urban/city environments and start to feel a lot like they're clones of each other. P.O.W. does something original and unique with this genre and that deserves to be commended.
At under $10, this is definitely something beat-em-up fans should consider adding to their collections. I think its truly a hidden gem that will eventually get the attention it deserves and the price will start to climb.
Current value:
Loose: $9.07 | Complete: $30.85