Guerrilla War

Taking a brief break from the Neo Geo, I'd like to talk about another one of SNK's pre-Neo titles which was an old favorite of mine from back in the day. Probably one of their more controversial ones, depending on who you are and/or where they come from. Guerrilla War was first released in arcades in 1987, and ported to the Famicom in December of 1988, and it's english language counterpart, the NES in mid 1989. The original japanese version of the game was called "Guevara!" and was about marxist revolutionary, Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928-1967), who was a major figure of the cuban revolution in the 1950's, which is what the game's original japanese version is based on. To add to the controversy, the second player controls future notorious dictator Fidel Castro. I first heard about this game in 1998 when I was either only 11 or 12 years of age. I had never heard of Che Guevara or Fidel Castro at the time, and when I heard that you played as them in the original japanese and that it was set during the cuban revolution, I was just like "Okay cool, whatever.". But then a few years later when I got older, I learned that neither of these two men did anything that should really be celebrated, despite Guevara's likeness appearing on T-shirts and elsewhere being used as some sort of symbol of rebellion or "sticking it to the system" as they say. But anyway, let's not try to make this thread too political for safety reasons. I got inspired to revisit it once again after recently seeing a post about supposed "overrated historical figures". The arcade and Famicom/NES versions have their share of differences, with the arcade version having fewer and differently designed levels, and being more historically accurate, with final boss Fulgencio Bautista (the man Guevara and Castro overthrew from power) escaping at the end of the game, whereas in the Famicom/NES port, Bautista is killed. From what I remember reading in the design notes in SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, the game was originally meant to be a game about two police officers overthrowing a terrorist group that occupied a major city, but they changed the setting and story to be about the cuban revolution when one of the designers was reading Guevara's book "Guerrilla Warfare". For the game's english version, they changed the story line and (kinda) removed any and all references to Guevara, Castro and the Cuban Revolution and made it a more simple story about two soldiers just trying to overthrow an evil dictator to avoid any controversy overseas. I guess Fidel Castro wasn't as controversial of a public figure in Japan. *shrugs* I myself prefer the NES version of the game, because the original arcade version is too damn difficult to play casually, whereas the NES version is much easier and because of the toned down difficulty is much more fun to play. Although it does take a lot of the challenge away by giving you unlimited continues, which allows you to finish the whole game in one sitting on your first try if you care enough to do so. I don't know who did the music for the arcade version as there is no credit sequence at the end, but in the Famicom/NES version, some of the music and sound was done by Toshikazu Tanaka (aka TARKUN) and Yoko Osaka, who later worked on certain Neo Geo titles, like NAM-1975, 2020 Super Baseball and Fatal Fury. Both the arcade and Famicom/NES versions are available on SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, both the localized english versions and the original japanese where you play as Guevara and Castro. Guevara even appears on the cover of the collection in the lower right where he can clearly be seen staring at Athena's behind. 







It's also worth noting that the japanese Famicom edition has a code that lets you play a version of SNK's early 80's title "Sasuke vs. Commander", which the original arcade version of is also included in the collection: