Commando

[Title Screen] [Getting Started] [Enemies] [Status Screen] [Hostage] [Bazooka Joe] [The Overpass]
"The Intellivision Man goes commando! At least that's what I think when I see the graphics. The people could have been double-height sprites and looked a little less like Night Stalkers, but it's understandable that only one color was used to draw them. All eight sprites need to be put to good use for all that gunfire and all those enemies. The background is pretty good-looking for the Intellivision. One obvious thing that was left out was the helicopter animation at the beginning of the game, but that can be overlooked. The large, slightly animated pictures of the main character at the title screen and between levels is a nice touch.
"The BGM is faithfully reproduced from the arcade game and all three sound channels are put to use here. The sound effects are also pretty good. Although no readout is displayed during the game, but only between lives, that can also be easily overlooked. The levels are also faithfully reproduced from the arcade game, although a couple features, such as the vehicles, are completely left out. The shells fired from the bunkers at the end of the second level look more like watermelons than shells to me (They're way too big.) but that can also be overlooked.
"My biggest complaint is that the main character moves too slow. When an enemy fires a grenade, I simply keep running and hope I don't get hit. The explosions always come very close, and even though I can trace the arc of the grenade's flight in time, I can't run very far from its path before it hits the ground. Only two shots can be fired by the main character at one time. Here sprite multiplexing with multiple shots would have been okay in my opinion. Two shots is not enough when surrounded by enemies at the end of each level, but then again, when I find myself surrounded I wish for Robotron-style controls, which of course were not a feature of the original arcade game. Autofire would definitely help though; this game is a thumb-killer. The main character also seems a little sluggish to turn, but then again, this is one of those games where the disc is a bit of a hinderance.
"With all the minor issues aside, the game is quite enjoyable. The graphics, sound, and BGM are about as good as it can get on an Intellivision. This port was definitely a worthwhile attempt unlike Activision's attempt on the Atari 2600 -- that port looks and feels more like Riddle of the Sphinx! This game is definitely worth finding."Rating: 4/5 -- Mike Hayes
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