You control one of 4 characters from the hyper-popular toy/cartoon series. Much like Cabal that came before it, Konami has made this a 3rd person game in which you control a cursor to aim all your shots, only moving your character left and right. It's impossibly fast at times, never even flickering or slowing down except at the largest bosses.

If this game didn't attract you in the arcades back in the day, you were dead. Everything is hand drawn in the vein of "Afterburner," but not even the massive explosions of Segas classic match this one. In the first stage alone, the body count (nicely displayed in your players box on the bottom of the screen) could easily reach 600-700. Not only are the enemies abundant, but the explosions are insnane. 2 seconds won't go by without something going up in flames, made easier by the fact that everything is destructible. Of course, each explosion is accompanied by an equally astounding "BOOM!" There's a ton of voice as well, everything coming from the Saturday morning cartoon.

Yes, these explosions and the orgy of violence is nice, but the game is downright impossible. Your cursor is constantly lost on screen, made worse by the 4-player option. 2-players make this issue a little less apparent, but then you have to account for the lack of firepower. The bosses are impossibly fast and no mere human can keep up with them. Oh, and the amount of bullets on screen at one time is ludicrous. This is entire issue is somewhat rectified by the short length, but you'll still spend a decent amount of cash taking down Cobra.

Still, this is an action game in the truest sense of the word so it's only natural for so much to be happening. The game is an absolute blast to play (pun intended) even today and it has that special, unexplainable "Konami touch." There was never a home port of this one and it's almost dissapointing, but there was no system that could handle it. Even the latest version of MAME has graphical issues late in the game. This is a hardcore G.I. Joe fans dream game.