Rescue: The Embassy Mission – Review

Nintendo Entertainment System – NES

1989 – Infogames

Today i’d like to cover a less talked about NES title that really deserves more attention. The 1989 mixed action shooter, Rescue: The Embassy Mission.

The Story:

Rescue honestly doesn’t have much setup. The manual in fact doesn’t even offer many details. An unnamed embassy has been invaded by terrorists of unknown origin and all hostage negotiations have failed. Your team of commandos must infiltrate the embassy and save the hostages at all costs. Flimsy story for sure, but the real focus is its core gameplay.

The Gameplay:

As mentioned earlier, this game has a mixed style of gameplay. Much in the fashion of Bayou Billy, Rescue has very different game modes spliced together to make for a more varied experience. Side-scrolling stealth, sniper shooting gallery, and over-the-shoulder game modes round out this title. The stealth sections are very tense as you advance your snipers to their firing positions while dodging enemy searchlights and gunfire. You have several evasive maneuvers such as crawling, tumbling, and hiding in dark recesses and bushes. The following sniper section is a nice cooldown as you methodically fire upon enemies exposed in windows. It is a tad on the boring side as you wait for them to appear, so thankfully the best section is up next.

After a short rappel mini game you smash through the window to finally infiltrate the embassy to neutralize the remaining terrorists. This mode is way ahead of its time with over-the-shoulder, fully aimable gunfire in a pseudo 3D environment. This pre-dates fps titles like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom as well as the shoulder perspective made popular by Resident Evil 4 almost 15 years later! The action is quick and exciting as you dash from room to room dispatching enemies, but with the last terrorist defeated the game comes to a close. Short and sweet but very replayable.

The Controls:

Not a whole lot to say about the controls. Everything is responsive and feels just fine. The cursor aiming in the final section works great and is very reminiscent of the tommy gun firing mechanic in the Sega Genesis Dick Tracy, in which this game also pre-dates.

The Graphics:

The character graphics are pretty good in this one with nice big sprites, especially in the final section. In that final section you are in a 3D space but it is represented by a series of still frames much like the cabin areas in the Friday The 13th NES game and a number of others. The map/radar that is given is a welcome addition to combat the sameness of some hallways and rooms to keep you from getting lost and frustrated.

The Sound:

I find the soundtrack of this game to be fairly memorable and pleasing. There is really only one overlying main theme but it is altered and remixed in various ways to suit the tenseness of the game mode you are currently playing and even dynamically changes when action picks up. In menus it is slower and more subdued while in the final infiltration section it ramps up and really starts pumping.

The Difficulty:

Rescue isn’t the type of game you sit down setting out to complete. In actuality it is more like an arcade style game such as Duck Hunt where the point of the game is to just have fun and not really have an ultimate goal. There are several difficulty settings though to challenge you further that will make enemies more numerous and deadly.

The Verdict:

Rescue: The Embassy Mission is indeed a short game, but also very replayable. It has some sections that may not appeal to everone, but was also ahead of its time with third person over-the-shoulder shooting during the game’s best part. It really is a unique game on the NES that I believe deserves a second look.

3.5 out of 5 TROGS