P.O.W.: Prisoners of War, released in Japan as , is a side-scrolling beat 'em up game produced by SNK and originally released as an arcade game in 1988. A home version was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System on June 30, 1989, in Japan and in September in North America. The game takes place during the Cold War where player control a duo of military prisoners who break free from their cell to relentlessly fight their way into the main base of their adversaries in order to eliminate their leader and escape for their lives. Gameplay As a lone wolf, or as partners, the mission objective is to escape from the enemy's base by fighting through four stages filled with numerous types of enemy soldiers trying to impede the player's escape. The stages consist of a POW camp, a warehouse, a jungle, and the enemy's base. Occasionally the enemy will attack the player with vehicles such as an assault chopper, an armored truck or motorcycles. At the end of the final stage, the player confronts an enemy general before being picked up by the extraction chopper proceeding to the final escape sequence. The game can be played by up to two players simultaneously: Player 1 controls a P.O.W. dressed in a navy blue guerilla-warfare uniform named Snake (スネーク, Sunēku). Player 2 controls a palette swap of the same character dressed in a blood red guerilla-warfare uniform who is named Bart (バート, Bāto). The controls consists of an eight-way joystick for moving the character and three action buttons for punching, kicking, and jumping. There are also three special attacks performed by pressing two buttons simultaneously: a jump kick (jump, and then kick), a back punch (jump and punch simultaneously), and a headbutt (punch and kick simultaneously). The player can also pick up one of two weapons dropped by defeated enemies: a throwing knife and a machine gun. The controls changes while wielding a weapon. The knife is thrown by pressing the punch button, but can be preserved by the player until needed by using kicks. When wielding the machine gun, the player can fire it by pressing the kick button or conserve its ammo by pressing the punch button to gun whip enemies. NES version Unlike the arcade version, the NES version is single-player only, meaning that the player takes control of Bart. The premise of the game remains the same,