An excellent arcade port for the NES, but may prove to be too difficult to most players
Graphically, P.O.W. looks great for an NES game. The levels are well illustrated and the characters are drawn well. The music is also very good, most notably the first level’s. I would just play through the first level just so I could listen to the music. It is amazing what could make a 10 year old happy back then. One thing I do remember that irked me was that P.O.W. was difficult. Not just difficult, but pull your hair out difficult. You weren’t given many lives and the enemies could make sort work of you if you weren’t careful. Some hazards on certain levels could also sap you life away. I struggled to get passed the second stage and the third stage, well I mean fuggit ‘bout it. If it weren’t for a cheat that gave me more lives at the start, I think it would have taken me much longer to complete P.O.W. Now I can go through the game with the allotted lives, but if it weren’t for the cheat code, it would have been an uphill battle. The reason the difficulty bothered me was because I wanted to play through the game. Only being limited to the first few levels was frustrating. I am the type who only resorts to cheat codes as a last resort. I go by the philosophy always resorting to using cheat codes takes away from the fun of the game. I see such codes as enhancements if used only to get past a certain parts or help unlock some cool content. That’s just how I roll.
P.O.W. is an old-school beat-‘em up that can be very difficult. Once I managed to get past the difficulty, I found that P.O.W. was a fun game and a good addition to anyone’s NES library.