It was also a major breakthrough US release for SNK, ranking among America's top five highest-grossing dedicated arcade games for two years in a row, in 1986 and 1987.

The player takes the role of commandos named Colonel Ralf Jones (red) and Second Lieutenant Clark Still (blue), who must try to reach the village of Ikari.

No shot is fired from directly in front of the player; the warrior uses the machine gun in his right hand, and throws grenades with his left.

in Japan and Europe, a vertical tank shooter inspired by Taito's Front Line (1982) that used rotary joystick controls.

The same year, Capcom's vertical run-and-gun shooter Commando (1985), known as Senjō no Ōkami ("Wolf of the Battlefield") in Japan, had become a major global arcade hit.

Obada had originally intended the game to be an official licensed adaptation of Rambo, but SNK were initially unable to acquire the rights to the film.

Ikari Warriors was initially ported to the Apple II, Commodore 64 and IBM PC by Quicksilver Software and published by Data East USA in the US in 1986.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Ikari on their March 15, 1986 issue as being the most-successful table arcade cabinet of the month.

[29][30] In the United Kingdom, it was one of the top three highest-grossing arcade games of 1986 in London, appearing at number-three on the annual 1986 Electrocoin chart.

[31] In North America, Ikari Warriors was the second top-grossing arcade game on the monthly Play Meter charts in July 1986.

They said that players "won't see better ... probably for quite a while" because "the Amstrad graphics are as close as dammit to the arcade machine and the playability goes off the C+VG scale".

Sylvester Stallone, whose role as John Rambo had an influence on the game, owned an Ikari Warriors arcade cabinet in the 1980s.

The future mixed martial arts (MMA) champion Kazushi Sakuraba (later famous for defeating the Gracie family of Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighters) was also a fan of Ikari in his high school years.