Unfortunately the BBC Micro version of Elite‘s conversion of Commando is an absolute travesty, with terrible graphics and horrible gameplay and the only thing it has in common with the arcade original is the name of the game and the basic scenario.
Tag Archives: Bullet Hell
Commando, MSX
The 1987 MSX version of Commando was a Japan-only release through ASCII Corporation, and – the truth be told – it’s a pretty awful conversion.
If you’re searching for the game you need to look for the title “Senjō no Ōkami” [“Wolf of the Battlefield“], which is the game’s Japanese title, as you’ll not find it under the name “Commando“.
Commando, NES/Famicom
The 1986 NES version of Commando is a flickery mess to be honest, although that didn’t stop the game becoming a smash hit – selling over one million cartridges worldwide.
Commando, Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC version of Commando – published by Elite Systems in 1986 – is easy to write off, due to its chunky graphics and mostly featureless backgrounds, but it’s actually one of the better 8-bit conversions.
Commando, Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 version of Commando was programmed by Mike Reidel and first published by Activision in 1985. Considering the console’s limitations this is a surprisingly good conversion of the vertically-scrolling shooter.
Last Resort, Neo Geo
Last Resort is a scrolling ‘bullet hell‘ shooter developed by SNK and first released as an arcade game, on Neo Geo MVS hardware, in 1992. From what I can ascertain it doesn’t seem to have been released on cartridge for Neo Geo AES home systems, but it was later released on the Neo Geo CD.
Cabal, Arcade
Cabal is a third-person, war-based shooter developed by TAD Corporation and distributed into arcades by Taito in Japan, by Fabtek in North America and by Capcom in Europe, in 1988.
Commando, Atari ST
The Atari ST and Amiga conversions of Commando are more or less identical and play pretty much the same, because they were both developed by the same group of people, for publisher Elite Systems, and released in 1989.
Commando, Amiga
The 1989 Amiga version of Capcom‘s classic Commando was ported and published by Elite Systems, and it’s not too bad, although it’s definitely not perfect.
Zaxxon, ColecoVision
Alongside Donkey Kong, Sega‘s Zaxxon was another ColecoVision arcade conversion that wowed gamers back in 1982 when they first saw it. And it was so close to the original that it drove sales of the console itself, because gamers wanted the arcade experience in their own homes.