M.I.A. Missing In Action

Up to two special forces soldiers must penetrate four areas controlled by the enemy to reach the POW compound, then infiltrate the compound, rescue the POWs and then escort them to a helicopter.

The gameplay has a tactile "hide and attack" style much like Green Beret or Rolling Thunder.

The game play is broken down into six stages. The first 4 stages (a war-torn field, a jungle, an airstrip, and a rail yard) will occur in random order and may be reversed (even the stages go right to left). In each of these stages, you must traverse your way to the end of the stage, where you face off with a powerful enemy force. In the field, you must clear out the enemy's quarters, where a swarm of enemies will attack. In the other three, you must take out enemies firing from gun batteries high on towers. Once each enemy area is cleared, you will blow up the place and head on to your next objective.
The fifth stage is the POW compound. Infiltrate the compound and defeat the heavily-armed guards there to free the POWs.
In the sixth stage, you must escort the freed POWs to the helicopter while keeping the enemies from killing them. You must get at least one POW safely aboard to complete you mission and start a new set of stages.

You start each life with just your knife however, all enemies can be killed with the knife. Killing a red soldier makes him drop a weapon you can use (assault rifle, grenades, flame-thrower, or bazooka). You can have more than one and cycle through them as needed, but each has a limited supply.

The graphics, animations and even the sound are reminescent of Green Beret (also known as Rush'n Attack). There is a good chance that M.I.A.: Missing In Action was planned to be a sequel of these titles.

The Japanese version of this game uses the Konami Twin16 design while the US version uses simpler hardware that is closer to that used in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.