The sequel to Commando, MERCS was one of the first SACS games with the ability to have three players playing at the same time. It also was somewhat unique in the fact that each character had a life meter. The Genesis version was a slightly different animal... besides having an arcade mode, there was also a story mode that let you control up to five soldiers (one at a time, of course) as well as do a few other interesting things that weren't in the original arcade version.

Gun.Smoke (the reason for the "." in the middle was to avoid confusion [and possible legal problems] with the 1960's TV series Gunsmoke) was the first SACS game with a Western theme. As such, verious elements from Westerns were introduced - among other things the bosses were wanted criminals and you could find and ride your horse. Also unique was the fact that you couldn't fire backwards; you could fire forward and diagonally left and right only.

Ikari Warriors was SNK's first entry into the fray. By itself, Ikari Warriors was only an average game (its NES incarnation fared even worse), mostly due to limited ammo. However, it was popular enough to spawn two sequels - Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road and Ikari III: The Rescue. Ikari III dropped the steady use of heavy artillery in favor of hand-to-hand combat (which frankly looked pretty ludicrous). One feature of the original that was unique for the time was the ability to comandeer an enemy tank. SNK continued to produce SACS games - two of the most well known ones are next up.

Believe it or not, the Japanese title of Guerilla War is Guevara, and the game is about Che Guevara and Fidel Castro's revolution against the Batista government in Cuba during the late '50s. Of course, the title and story were changed when it came to a U.S. release. IMO, Guerilla War fares a bit bit better than Ikari Warriors - it's faster, you don't run out of ammo, and the subject matter is fairly unique - after all, very few SACS games are based on real-life events.

This time around, SNK used a plot device that's fairly unique in SACS games - time travel. As such, it makes Time Soldiers' environments and enemies quite varied. The gameplay itself is marred by one tiny flaw - the heroes, Yohan and Ben, have shoulder cannons. This changes the strategy of the game - whereas most heroes fire straight ahead from the center of their bodies, you have to work with the cannon fire being slightly off from what you may be used to in Time Soldiers.

One of Data East's initial SACS games, Heavy Barrel introduced a new feature to the genre. You could collect keys from downed red soldiers and unlock chests scattered along the ground. What you would find inside the chests were pieces to a superweapon - the Heavy Barrel bazooka. The sheer amount of firepower from this thing would really clear a path for you - but, like most superweapons, only lasted for a short time.

Bloody Wolf was one of the first games in the genre to not emphasize mindless action - instead, it went for more of a thinking man's approach. If you just charge in blindly, you'll get wasted extraordinarily quickly. Make your approach wisely, and you'll stand a chance of making it through alive. It became a fairly big hit when it made its sole console debut on the Turbografx-16.

Caliber (or Cal.) 50 isn't on the list because it added anything new to the genre. It didn't do anything remotely special. It's still a decent representative of the genre, however - nothing too special, but still a solid, fairly appealing game.

This was Toaplan's only attempt to create a SACS game. They succeeded with a degree of style rarely seen nowadays. It was also one of the only SACS games to have almost a shmup-esque feel to it... rather than playing as a standard soldier fighting off an earth-based army, you play a cyborg soldier out to stop an alien invasion. It still plays like a typical SACS game, however, which is the most important thing.