Rambo is back… In the video game world

Sylvester Stallone has been incredibly lucky to play a pair of iconic big screen characters two decades in a row: Rocky Balboa and John Rambo. 



To tell you the truth, I had forgotten about those old Rambo video games, but really, the character was such an icon of popular culture, so how could they keep him away?

The image of a shirtless, buffed out Rambo with bullet belts wrapped around his shoulders, and a machine gun in his hands was one of the most iconic images of the eighties, and it being a right wing time, he was embraced as a hero by the right, even though the character was pretty left.

Like the Rocky movies, Rambo got fairly ridiculous after a while, but after a long period of dormancy, Stallone brought both Rocky and Rambo back to the big screen, and both recent sequels got good reviews and pretty decent box office.

 

Now Variety reports that Rambo will again return in a video game, the first new Rambo game in twenty-two years. The older Rambo titles were created for the Amiga and Sega Genesis, and Reef Entertainment is determined to bring him back in more modern digital trappings.

 

As Variety points out, “While he may not have had a physical presence in the game world for the past few console generations, Rambo has had a spiritual one, with a great majority of the action heroes in first person shooters owing a tip of the cap to Stallone and his character.” 



With the kill Bin Laden game coming right on the heels of his assassination, it’s a shame we couldn’t have John reaching the terrorist at his hide out in a game, and delivering one of his classic lines, “I’m your worst nightmare.”

 

I’ll end this story with some of the best dialog from the Rambo movies I’ve found on YouTube, and with gaming technology the way it is today, maybe they can incorporate them into the game. (Sorry, not enough room for the whole big, incoherent speech at the end of First Blood, but you can find it and download it easily from YouTube.)

 

“What most people call hell, he calls home!”

“I didn’t come here to rescue Rambo from you, I came to rescue you from him. You’re dealing with an expert in guerilla warfare…a man whose been trained to ignore pain. Ignore…weather. To live off the land. To eat things that would make a billy goat puke.”

“Do we get to win this time?”

 

“I want (pause) what they want, and every other guy who came over here and spilt his guts, and gave everything he had wants! For our country to love us, as much as we love-it!”