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One of the biggest hits in the arcades during 1985 was Commando and following the recent trend, Elite snapped up the license to convert it to the Spectrum. It was released at the height of the license-buying frenzy by Imagine and Elite, who were purchasing the rights to games by Konami and Capcom respectively. The actual gameplay differs very little from the standard shoot 'em up format. You are the soldier of the title and must rampage through enemy territory blasting anything that crosses your path. Unlike other shooters of the time, it uses a nearly-top-down perspective which works very effectively. It is rightly revered as a classic.

PREVIEW
Commando


IF YOU are into khaki and fancy being a soldier, join the commandos.

Capcom, Japanese coin-op manufacturer released the arcade game Commando in the UK early this year. It has not taken Elite long to sniff it out, buy the rights an produce a computer counterpart.

Your brief - to storm into enemy territory and kill, kill, kill until you reach the opposition army's fortress. With machine gun swinging at hip level the game starts. However, the macho image is rather lost as you seem to be wearing a pink pyjama suit - perhaps that's what commandos wear while out on patrol.



The game is surprisingly difficult, one man against an army - and they have a whole arsenal at their disposal. You do have a supply of bombs to lob into bunkers and over sand bags, but while you're lobbing you are likely to be splattered by a bazooka, or mown down by machine gun fire.


As you continue your headlong charge the hazards increase, bunkers, trenches, cannons, narrow bridges to negotiate, and lorries and motor cyclists to avoid. Stores of ammunition can be picked up en route by running over them, although they are tricky to collect as they tend to be situated near gun emplacements and so on.

We saw a pre-production copy of Commando and Elite assures us that minor bugs such as colour clash will be corrected before the game is sent out for distribution.

The graphics are basic and it is not always clear what they are meant to depict. For instance, giant green and white mushroom-like objects seem to have sprouted at random - some type of building, - I suppose.

The action is chaotic and the animation smooth. Commando is very similar to the original, but in terms of the Spectrum's graphics, colour and sound, it can't compete.

Clare Edgeley

YOU MAY not see yourself as the heroic type, capable of winning a war single-handed, but Elite's conversion of the popular arcade game Commando is likely to bring out the Rambo you didn't know you had inside you.

The game panders to your worst instincts, allowing you to zap away for all you're worth, amassing points the more people and things you blow up. You can disapprove as much as you like, but the game is great fun and you will probably find it hard to resist.

The storyline couldn't be simpler. You are the crack combat soldier Super Joe, sent in alone to defeat the advance rebel forces equipped only with your M60 machine gun and six hand grenades. Pushing relentlessly forwards, you must penetrate deep into hostile territory with the eventual aim of capturing the heart of the enemy fortress.

Luckily, your machine gun is perpetually self-loading, and there are plenty of hand grenades abandoned by enemy soldiers for you to be able to replenish your stock. In all other respects, however, the odds are heavily stacked against you.

Right from the start, the pace is hectic. Advancing steadily along the scrolling landscape, you are assailed on all sides by soldiers who come at you from behind sandbags, boulders and palm trees or leap down on you from the top of tufted hillocks. The bullets fly, the hand grenades and the dynamite rain down, and with all the explosions it is a bit like firework night. Any stray bullet or hand grenade can make you lose one of your five lives, and you must keep dodging and firing every inch of the way.

Having disposed of a first wave of attackers, you will come to a bridge with a narrow archway. Run through this, avoiding the hail of bombs coming over the wall. If you are still in business you'll arrive at a set of red gates, and here your troubles really begin. The gates slowly part to unleash a flood of enemy soldiers.

Sheltering behind the wall, firing continuously and lobbing a few grenades, you may just about be able to eliminate this horde down to the last man. A tickertape message then appears despatching you to area two, although by now you'd probably rather have a nice quiet tea break.

Area two features lorries, bunkers, huts and mobile typewriters - probably meant to be jeeps. All of these conceal more enemy soldiers and snipers, and if you get rid of them, you will eventually arrive at another set of gates releasing a second wave of attackers. If you manage to survive this onslaught without being overwhelmed, Rambo would surely be proud of you.

Daunting though the game is, Commando is also powerfully addictive. It has fast and furious action, plenty of excitement, and just the right blend of suspense in seeing how far you can get without losing all your lives, and of satisfaction in zapping moving targets. It also has smooth movement and lively, imaginative graphics.

As the screen scrolls from top to bottom, the scene is viewed in 3D from a height - but not directly overhead - so that men and machines are foreshortened. Our hero Super Joe scuttles about in a mean and menacing fashion, and although at first it is difficult to distinguish him from the enemy - he is black, the rest are mostly blue - you soon get the hang of identifying with the right chap.

The hillocks on the first level look a little odd, but palm trees, trucks and sand bags are realistically done, as is the bridge with its motor bike patrol on top. The enemy soldiers daringly fling themselves from the hilltops, arms outstretched in true commando style, and there are no distasteful death throes, either. The enemy shimmer and disintegrate when hit, while Super Joe just sinks straight into the ground.

One particularly nice touch is the high score table, which consists of military style letters, as seen stencilled on the sides of army vehicles. To spell out your name, you line up each letter in your sights and shoot it - a good enough idea in itself but these letters spin when they are hit like fairground targets. You can even set the whole lot spinning if you so fancy.

There are minor flaws in the graphics, such as ghosts which appear in front of the gates instead of behind them, or figures which glide backwards until they melt into a wail. A worse fault is the fact that the scoring is not explained, either on the inlay or on screen, and with everything happening so fast, there is no time to work out where the points are coming from. An element of strategic planning might have added interest to the game.

All in all, though, Commando is exciting, challenging and guaranteed to keep you playing until keyboard or joystick fatigue get you shipped out on home leave.

Publisher Elite
Programmers Keith Burkhill, Nigel Alderton
Price £7.95 Memory 48K
*****

Nicole Segre

If you've started to miss those mindless shoot'em ups that marked the start of Speccy game playing - you'll be dying to have a crack at Commando. Super Joe is the ultimate killing machine, his sole mission to wipe the enemy forces from the face of the earth. And he's armed only with his sub-machine gun and six hand grenades.
The game is an almost exact copy of Commando, the arcade hit. I say almost, as the programmers were forced to leave out some of the little touches from the original - like the chopper that drops our hero off at the start. The only thing you may miss is the sound - the taktaktaktak of the machine guns and the kerpow of the grenades.
Once on terra firma, the game's the same - it's kill, kill, kill all the way to the end. Then it's straight back to the beginning where the slaughter starts all over again.
There are no real rules - just get in there and blast away, slaying the stormtroopers, gunning the grenadiers and blowing up the enemy battalions. Your machine gun's got unlimited fire power so spray those bullets about like a man with no arms - and after an hour or so's keyboard bashing your arms'll ache so much, you'll wish you didn't have any either!
The graphics are really neat but you'll hardly have time to admire the scenery - hang around too long in one place and the enemy sends in the heavy mob.
Commando won't stretch your mind and if you've got a downer on mercenary militarism then give it a miss. But if you like your shoot'em ups simple, they don't come much simpler than this. Play it and blast away a few brain cells - yours and the enemies!!