G.I. Joe was so goddamn cool. Among the things that dominated my time, watching Transformers and the Joes bust up Decepticons and Cobra's forces was only made better by playing with the toys and acting out the same thing while being fueled on nothing but Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Hi-C juice boxes. Hell, during the late 80's, I wished so hard for a video game based on the United States' favorite mobile strike force.

And whereas the U.S. never saw a port of the Japan only Transformers game, Convoy no Nazo (or Mystery of Convoy. Convoy, or Optimus Prime.), there would be two G.I. Joe games, both produced by KID (Kindle Imagine Develop). One was just titled G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and published by Taxan, and The Atlantis Factor, published by Capcom. Both games came out for the NES as late as 1991 and 1992, so these games were based on the DiC run of G.I. Joe that ran from 1989 to 1992, rather than Sunbow Entertainment and Marvel's 1983 series that ran until 1986. Okay, I feel like I'm talking way too much about this, this is what happens when your mere existence is being a giant bucket of trivia that nobody ever asked for. 

While developed by a Japanese company, G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor has only seen a U.S. release. Cobra Commander survives a previous battle against the Joes, and in retaliation, raises Atlantis from the sea with ambitions of using the ancient powers from the lost city to defeat the Joe's forces and take over the world. Hawk, Duke, Snake Eyes, Wet Suit, Roadblock, and Storm Shadow are capable of being recruited throughout the game once missions are completed to provide aid. Storm Shadow really bounces around alliances over the course of the various incarnations. Other Joes can be found in sub stages to help, like Big Bear, Spirit, and Gung Ho who provide support abilities like health replenishing or ammo drops.

A side-scrolling action game, G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor starts out with initial mission. You begin as Hawk and you play your way through this introductory stage. You have a melee attack and a firearm that has a finite amount of ammo that has to be replenished with item drops. Upon completing this level and defeating a mini-boss, the game opens up with levels that you can complete at your choosing. Clearing each stage unlocks another ally you can use. The game progression and map layout in The Atlantis Factor is structured very similarly to Capcom's Bionic Commando, which is why I thought it was a Capcom produced game back in the day. The map has different objectives to complete in order to proceed, like rescue captives, placing a series of bombs, or finding keys to open a door, ending with a boss fight in the end against Cobra forces. Cesspool, Destro, Overkill, Major Bludd, and Firefly serve as the bosses, with meeting Cobra Commander in the finale. 

Despite being made after the TAXAN published G.I. Joe game, The Atlantis Factor isn't packing the same visual punch or variety, like enemies that leap from the foreground, but it looks as good as most NES games around this time. The Super Nintendo being out ages the visuals even more. The pixels of the Joe and Cobra forces are...okay. They're barely two color palettes for each in-game sprite and just vaguely resemble the characters they're supposed to represent. Hawk looks like he either fell out of Rush'n Attack, or was released from a Dollar General blister pack of generic army dudes with parachutes and a WWF folding chair. 

The boss battles all have the same room with a different hue. It's oddly inconsistent. Some of the color choices just don't sit well with me because of the lack of contrast. The forest level looks pretty good, and some of the base facilities are fine. Then some stages will stick with a solid red as a primary background color and it's straining to stare at, I already have deteriorating eyes, this does me zero favors. The warm colors are also accompanied by lots and lots of flickering and screen tearing, it's intentionally trying to cause an epileptic fit. The in-game graphics are overall okay, these shortcomings are made up by the use of creative story cut sequences, which there are more than I thought there would be. It's almost as fleshed out and detailed as Ninja Gaiden. Yeah, I often trash stories in video games, but I like seeing this kind of stuff during the NES, it's ambitious. 

The gameplay is fine. Again, very little about The Atlantis Factor feels unique, and KID went out of their way to make the Joes play as annoying as possible. They do have a few different feats that separate each of them, like agility and jump heights, as well as different health bars. Duke can shoot at an angle and straight up. Wet Suit can dive in underwater portions to make certain missions easier. Roadblock can crawl, but can't do so if you have a gun equipped. The ninjas Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow can both jump very high, but have very low health. I get what they were doing, but characters like Hawk in the previous game had a jetpack and all the characters should shoot at multiple angles. You can level up the Joe's physical strength, melee, and ranged attack power, which makes the missions bearable when you run into enemies that have no discernable pattern and just wail on you. Since each Joe acts as a "life", when you lose them, they don't respawn until you continue. You also get this jump kick that I mostly used to clear large jumps with rather than attack, its hit box is totally sus.

The game has infinite continues, so there's no penalty for continuing to play. I really hate the password system, it's one of the most bizarre formats I've ever seen. for an action title, The Atlantis Factor can become pretty lengthy. You want to be able to go back to your game as efficiently as possible. So KID decided to give you an unnecessarily convoluted code key so cryptic and weird, it may as well grant passage into the nation's defense files.

G.I. Jo: The Atlantic Factor starts out okay, but the game teeters more and more into the average as it goes on. The level design is very rudimentary, they're mostly just large open areas with little in the way of creative jumping puzzles that seldom break up the monotony of the fetch-quest structure of the missions.

It's also a touch disappointing that I was deprived an 8-bit rendition of the G.I. Joe theme music, but the tunes are pretty damn good. The controls are fine and get the job done, but the limited weaponry deprives the game of a lot of personality. Its prequel may have been a little more of a linear game in execution, but felt better made. One of the trademark traits of G.I. Joe is its weaponry, so I remain a little miffed that there wasn't more mission variety, like an overhead flying SHMUP stage or an auto-scrolling speedboat or APC based vehicle section. If The Adventures Of Bayou Billy can pull that off, why can't G.I. Joe? They fight over land, sea, and air, it's in the theme song! The Atlantis Factor tries some nice ideas, there's just better action games on the NES.