Rambo vs Just about every other Japanese run-'n-gun from the late 1980s Rambo was so incredibly popular in the island nation that its theme and imagery got copied in dozens of games. Among them, Ashura is one of the most interesting, cause it was similar enough to be actually made an official tie-in for its Western release. The right guy on the box is obviously John Rambo with his bow in First Blood Part II. The same pose - though without the bow - also appears on the box of the Japanese computer adventure game Mephist. It seems likely the other guy on the Ashura cover is also from Rambo, as the title screen continues the trend with two more obvious clones from movie stills. By this point Contra would almost disappoint if it didn't have some poses as well, and it starts right there on the flyer for the first arcade game. The exact same pose was also used for the aforementioned Bloody Wolf (the top-down view run-'n-gun is very obviously inspired Rambo altogether) and Thunder Zone, and even made it into an in-between-levels slide in Contra 3: The Alien Wars, alongside others. Super Contra didn't miss its turn, either, so the flyer just downright takes the poster from First Blood Part II as reference. The other guy with the gargantuan gun kinda seems to be taken either from the same movie or from the rocketlauncher scene in Schwarzenegger's Commando. Although no matching still could be found, the exact same image is also copied in the title screen of Daisenryaku 88. Garuka or Devastators is another Konami game with Rambo-lookalikes as main characters, this time building the entire game on the over-the-shoulder sequences from the original Contra. On the title screen the two heroes make their best Stallone impressions. Their versions on the flyer may also have counterparts in the movie, but if that's the case they couldn't be found yet. Here are two more examples from Japanese home computer games. One of the very first games the famous Wolf Team ever created, Final Zone reproduces the rocket launcher shot from above, and the soldier on the top could be inspired by the still to the right (or an alternative shot of the same scene), judging by the bent of the arm and the fingers. NCS' Maidum - oddly not an action game, but an RPG with a North African setting - brings back the bow stance seen in Ashura. The central characters on both covers seem to be taken from other movies, though. Of course SNK's original Rambo adaption, Ikari Warriors, also delivers, right next to it the cover on SEGA's Cabal clone Double Hawk, which funnily uses the exact same two stills. The left shot was also used as reference for the title screen of another Cabal-inspired title, Riot by NMK. This exemplifies the difficulty in distinguishing it from the very similar Commando pose above, but Sly's angry face over Schwarzenegger's more laid-back look, the angle of the munition-feeding arm and the nozzle fire give this one away, regardless of the more Arnie-like hair. Once again all the reference comes from the second movie, Rambo III came out too late for most of these games. As the years went on, plagiarizing Western movies grew rarer in Japan (with anime influences on the rise), but one shot from the movie still made it into several games: Rambo getting ready and putting on his bandana has been the subject of countless imitations and parodies, and video games sure as hell were among them. To the left is Bare Knuckle 3, whose intro got excised from the American release Streets of Rage 3, to the right is the TurboGrafx-16 CD title Last Alert, another top-down run-'n-gun similar to Capcom's Commando. But not only Japanese artists borrowed from Sly. The Covers for the C64/ZX Spectrum title Rapid Fire and the European computer versions of Guerilla War share the same angled shooting pose, while GI Hero imitates the side view shot.