As featured in Retrogaming Times Monthly issue #18, November 2005.

This time we take a look at one of the lesser celebrated Tengen NES ports and also one of the most overlooked arcade games period in my humble opinion.  Destruction?  Strategy?  Tanks?  It must be Vindicators!  Rolling into arcades in 1988, Vindicators dropped players into one of the most powerful battle tanks ever created, a Vindicator.  Up to two players can play at once, each in their own Vindicator, and using teamwork to your advantage in a two player game is paramount.  Trample from stage to stage on a mission to destroy an evil force of alien space stations.  Searching for fuel, picking up battle stars to trick out your tank and finding keys to open the doors at the end of the level - all the while battling through an army of enemy tanks, turrets, mines and more.

Vindicators mixed some basic design elements of games like Scramble, Gauntlet and Super Sprint but sped things up and offered a unique yet realistic control method.  Like in Scramble you must collect fuel tanks to keep moving.  Like in Gauntlet you must collect keys to open the door to the next stage.  Like Super Sprint you can pick up special currency to trade in for vehicle upgrades at the end of each stage.  However the control method in the arcade added a ton of realism in that as with a real tank your movements were controlled by a pair of vertically sliding grips.  Slide them both forward and your tank moves forward, both back and your tank moves back.  If slid in opposite directions your tank would rotate without moving forward or back.  Only one grip forward or back would make your tank turn in the opposite direction.  In other words the left grip controls the left tank track and the right grip controls the right tank track.  This gave the game a little bit of a learning curve until one would get on top of the controls but once they were mastered there was pretty much nothing a skilled player couldn't get out of.  Of course due to the NES controller limitation, movement becomes relegated to up, down, left and right.  Not that it detracts from the game itself a whole lot, just the experience a little bit.

As your Vindicator progresses along you will need to pick up fuel that both powers your Vindicator and is used as a health gauge once your shields are depleted.  Scattered throughout the game are battle stars which work very much along the same line as wrenches in Super Sprint.  Pick them up and at the end of the stage you can trade them in for various upgrades to your tank such as additional shields or more powerful shots.  It is here that the only really big limitation between the NES and arcade version becomes apparent.  In the arcade each grip had a button on top in addition to a pair of triggers.  Once purchased from the upgrade shop the left button would rotate the tank turret left, the right button would rotate it to the right.  This would allow the Vindicators to make strafing runs at targets and to be able to shoot in a different direction than they were moving.  As with the movement control differences, due to the NES controller limitations this feature was completely removed from the Tengen NES port.  In the upgrade shop the option for turret rotation is replaced with an option to purchase additional fuel.  Each stage has a pair of keys hidden somewhere along the way which are used to open the armored doors at the end of each stage.  This is a bit like Gauntlet as if you don't keep your eyes peeled in the later stages chances are you'll fight your way to the end and then have to turn around and go hunt for the key you missed.

Graphically the NES version is quite detailed even though the sprites are far smaller than in the arcade version.  Just the same each tread on each Vindicator spins when the tank moves, the enemy turrets are well animated and the levels well designed.  Vindicators plays just as smooth and quick on the NES as it did in the arcade.  As for audio a decent mix of sounds and music make it over onto the NES port although the voice clips that are few and far between in the arcade aren't present but with the NES hardware they're not expected to be.

If you have yet to play Vindicators I suggest picking up a copy, they seem to go pretty cheap since it's one of the lesser appreciated Tengen NES games.  Two player mode lends the game a decent amount of replayability and it's a great way to spend a day retrogaming with a friend.  This also opens up some strategy elements such as having one player draw turret fire while the other drives up and destroys them from behind.  It's twitch gameplay with some strategy and micro management thrown in on the side and a game everyone should at least give a try.  On a side note if you happen to want to try out the arcade version under the MAME emulator I recommend using a PlayStation dual shock controller through a converter box, mapping the movements to the analog sticks, and your fire and turret rotations to the shoulder buttons.
 

"InsaneDavid" also runs a slowly growing gaming site at http://www.classicplastic.net/dvgi

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