The Weekly WTF: Pink Camo and Shooting Soap Bubbles Just Doesn’t Scream ‘Predator’

There was such potential for Predator on the NES. The movie would make for great survival horror and/or balls-out shooter fare: cruising through the trees as Arnold Schwarzenegger, not havin' time to bleed, shooting up guerrilla camps and having all the usual gung-ho manly funtimes.

That scene where everybody unleashes their entire stock of ammo into some freaking trees, bellowing furious war cries and alerting every opponent within a thousand mile radius to their position? That was the most masculine scene we have ever, or will ever, see. It brings tingling tears to our testes just thinking about it.

Well, y'know, survival horror wasn't a thing at this point. The NES had the processing power of a digital watch too, but let's not get pernickety. We expected a full-on Predator experience, replete with badassery and special effects and perfect likenesses of the stars of the movie.

What we got, instead, was a piss-poor rendition of ol' Arnold shooting at soap bubbles under the sea. Well, it's one way to take a big ol' steaming dump on the source material.

As you'll see from retrojunk's report, it all begins effectively enough. The intro screen brings us a huge movie-flyer-style shot of Major Dutch. It's pretty wank, and cycles though colors like he's at some shitty 90s disco for no damn reason at all, but it's recognisably him. From there, a rudimentary ‘cutscene' relays the story of Predator. Commandos enter the jungle, find the bad dudes' camp, tear them several new bodily orifices.

'But on the way home they are killed, one after another, by an unknown creature.'

Oh yes. Spare undercrackers at the ready, it's getting dramatic now. Which is to say, it would be, if everything remotely interesting hadn't already happened before the game itself effing begins. Stage one starts after your men are all dead. After Poncho has failed to GET TO DAH CHOPPAH, after Billy has stripped off and dicked about with his knife on that bridge.

This leaves us against the Predator, mano-a-extraterrestrial-with-weird-dreadlocks-o. It's just us, him, and some wandering guys in red/green. Who we also need to shoot, for some reason.

Once you get to the bizarre living rocks with duck hieroglyphs painted on them (which chase you, naturally), you're probably about maxed out for weirdery. But if you're curious to know how you get from that to punching seahorses in the face on the seabed, you'd better take a look below.