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Yo Joe!

G.I. Joe is an arcade Shoot 'Em Up released by Konami in 1992. Based on the Hasbro toyline turned cartoon series, the Joes must stop Cobra Commander and his forces from terrorizing the world after terrorizing various cities with their latest weapon.

Depending on the cabinet, up to two or four players can select Duke, Snake Eyes, Scarlett or Roadblock to attack and defeat Cobra forces with a gun with unlimited ammo and two screen clearing flash bombs. Power-ups can be found hidden within the various barrels littered across the stages. The game has three missions containing seven stages and six bosses including a final confrontation with Cobra Commander himself.


Yo Joe!:

  • Actually a Doombot: The first battle with Cobra Commander is revealed to be against a robot duplicate, afterwards the fight with the real Cobra Commander begins.
  • Adaptation Distillation: The playable Joes (Duke, Roadblock, Snake-Eyes and Scarlett) and most of the bosses (Tomax and Xamot, the Baroness, Major Bludd, Destro and Cobra Commander) come from the original cartoon produced by Sunbow. Metal-Head, the Cobra Mooks, the Chemical Plant theme and Joes' costumes all come from the DiC cartoon.
  • Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The final stage is set on Cobra's flying carrier, with the Joes performing a Battleship Raid taking out various Cobra minions aboard.
  • Airborne Mook: Several enemies fly by wearing jetpacks.
  • Background Boss: All of the bosses fight from the background.
  • Bottomless Magazines: The Joes never run out of ammunition.
  • The Cameo:
    • The Joes are giving their marching orders by Red Star in the first mission cutscene, which is particularly bizarre given Red Star is a member of the Oktober Guard, the In-Universe Russian equivalent to G.I. Joe.
    • The second mission cutscene shows Scoop helping to locate Cobra's missile base.
  • Color-Coded Multiplayer: All the playable Joes have a different color for their avatar icons. Duke is goldenrod, Snake-Eyes is blue, Scarlett is red (fittingly enough) and Roadblock is green.
  • Crate Expectations: A lot of power-ups can be found by shooting at crates.
  • Death Cry Echo: The Joes scream whenever they die.
  • Death by Adaptation: The members of Cobra are apparently killed after their boss fights.
  • Die, Chair, Die!: Pretty much everything except the background itself (and even that in at least one stage) is destroyable. Considering that you can sometimes get powerups from them, and the fact that you're always running through a COBRA base, you're pretty much encouraged to.
  • Disney Villain Death: The Baroness and Cobra Commander plummet to their doom after their boss fights are beaten.
  • Dual Boss: Unsurprisingly, the Crimson Twins Tomax and Xamot are fought both at once during their boss fight.
  • Final Boss: As one might expect, the last boss fought is Cobra Commander.
  • Flunky Boss: Metal-Head, the Baroness and Major Bludd are all accompanied by regular enemies during their boss fights.
  • Moveset Clone: All four playable characters look differently but play exactly the same.
  • Power-Up: There are some goodies the Joes can shoot at to get an advantage in gameplay.
    • Heal Thyself: Med Kits restore health.
    • Gatling Good: The ability to hold the button down to fire instead of pressing the button repeatedly.
    • Smart Bomb: To refill or add flash bombs.
  • Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: The Joes and the bosses each say something before they begin to fight.
  • Rail Shooter: The characters are all running forward on a set path with occasional stops for elevator rides and boss fights, with the player's movement limited to the left and the right of the screen to avoid projectiles.
  • Spider Tank: Baronness sends a swarm of mechanical spiders as her backup during her boss fight, with entire dozens of crawling arachnid machines all over the place.
  • Stock Footage: Most of the animation in the Attract Mode are scenes from G.I. Joe: The Movie redrawn to replace the Joes' outfits with their then-current designs (save Scarlett, who is wearing her outfit from the movie in the game). A few other scenes are from the opening to the DiC series.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Quite a few explosions occur from shooting at stuff in this game.
  • Suddenly Speaking: The usually-mute Snake Eyes actually talks in this game, believe it or not. This may have been to avoid players unfamiliar with the source material being confused by Snake-Eyes not saying anything when joining the game.

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