Rating: 4/5
Cross Fire is an action game featuring a terrible opening level with way too much going on that slowly evolves into a unique, interesting game that holds its own. I think with a little more polish, this could stand side by side with Contra as a top NES game of the run and gun genre. The problem is that you start the game with just a punch and arching grenade against never-ending streams of enemies including baddies, tanks, turrets, and more flying at you from every direction in the fore and background. You can't run and you can't gun. Even when you get the first gun, you still can't just run and gun. Due to the mechanics of enemies, this is much closer to a sidescrolling action game where you need to plan your moves and work around obstacles in the levels. Controls are multi-functional with foreground attacks and background attacks, hence the name Cross Fire, as well as crouch and jump. Sound was pretty good. BGM had depth and character I wasn't expecting and could be 5* if they just weren't so obsessed with the high pitches. Seems like that was impossible back in the day... Graphics were pretty lame. Purple dudes, blue dudes, repeating textures abruptly chopped up... There were some cool backgrounds here and there but overall, eh. Overall, the idea was pretty awesome and I think this coulda been a winner. Worth a play if you go in knowing the challenges.
You also need an emulator to run this game. To grab one quickly, please check out our NES emulators section.