Commando

aka: Senjō no Ōkami, Space Invasion, Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando
Moby ID: 1618
ZX Spectrum Specs
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Description official descriptions

Several levels await your super-tough Commando in this vertical scrolling game. Armed with only a standard rifle and a few grenades you must take on hordes of Nazis. Some are wandering around in the open, while others have picked out hiding places, which you must approach from certain angles. Trees, rivers and bridges create a varied combat-like terrain and must be incorporated into your thinking. Extra grenades can be collected, and will definitely be required, as they allow you to kill from distance and thus avoid some enemy shots.

Spellings

  • 戦場の狼 - Japanese spelling

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (ZX Spectrum version)

4 People

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 70% (based on 40 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.4 out of 5 (based on 222 ratings with 4 reviews)

C64 version music rocks! And only will!

The Good
The music! I think half the time playing this game me and my friends would just dance around the room to the music! Only the Commodore 64 version can do this! The gameplay is cool too but that song.

The Bad
Uh. that guy with the grenade launcher by the bridge. I hated him and still do!

The Bottom Line
Shake your butt and shoot the bad guys! This game gets you pumped for combat and makes you feel like your cool and in the A-team!

Commodore 64 · by skl (1063) · 2004

I remember the arcade version being much better than this one.

The Good
I loved playing Commando in my local arcade. It was a military-themed shooter that let me live out many of my G. I. Joe fantasies. Looking back on it, it was a pretty simple game, but it still seemed light years ahead of games like Pac-Man or Galaga in terms of realism.

Commando is still fun to play—for a while, anyway—because it pretty much just turns you loose to massacre the entire armed forces of a small Third World country. Despite the extreme violence, there is a kind of zen quality to the game; you can just mash the firing button repeatedly and revel in the cartoonish carnage. There is some strategy involved, but not too much. You have to ration your grenades, and sometimes you will be faced with a tough decision regarding which approaching soldier you need to shoot first. Beyond that, Commando is completely mindless fun.

Having said that, it's unfortunate that everything seems to just repeat over and over after the first few levels. I really haven't been motivated to play this game for too long in one sitting. It's fun for about 10 minutes, but after that you've pretty much seen, and shot, it all. It's all pretty much the same once you've played through the first few stages, but the trigger-happy gameplay may have you returning to Commando every once in a while just for the sheer stupidity of the action.

The Bad
I recently played a copy of the NES cart, and I must say I was pretty disappointed. Maybe nostalgia has clouded my judgment, but I didn't have nearly as much fun with this version of Commando as I did so many years ago in that arcade.

This is admittedly a very early NES game, but the graphics are still pretty bad. Everything is basically green or brown. While there are a lot of characters on screen at the same time, there is also a lot of flicker and a little bit of slowdown. In fact, some enemies flicker and then just disappear. No, I don't mean they run off the edge of the screen—I mean they simply vanish into thin air! Also, note that nobody has any facial features in this game. All the better when your mission is to mow everyone down in cold blood, I suppose…

The annoyingly catchy music has an appropriately martial theme, but it is too repetitive. Sound effects for gunfire and explosions are pretty weak. The playback quality is very poor, giving the music and SFX a tinny and distant feel, even by early NES standards.

As for challenge, Commando isn't very hard once you get used to some of its "quirks." Spin around and fire your gun all the time, learn to gauge the fixed range of your grenade tosses, and you are well on your way to clearing level after level of faceless enemy soldiers.

There are a few really stupid things about Commando for the NES. You do have the ability to rotate around 360 degrees and move in any of eight directions. However, this is not a luxury—this is a virtual necessity since enemies swarm onto the screen from all directions. They often continue to come from the same location, "spawning" a lineup of soldiers who mindlessly jump, one after the other, right into your line of fire! There is a tendency for your man to get hung up on the few terrain features (hills, trees, etc.) in the game even though he appeared to have cleared them easily. This results in some extremely cheap deaths. You can fire your gun in all directions, but you can only toss grenades forward (towards the top of the screen). The problem with enemies just disappearing also aggravates me.

I remembered the arcade game having a greater variety of enemies. I could be wrong, but what I CAN say for sure is that the enemies are pretty boring and homogenous, and that the designers relied too much on sheer numbers of soldiers when they should have introduced some more interesting opponents instead.



The Bottom Line
Commando is a fun game, but the NES port disappointed me. Maybe the arcade version wasn't really much better, but that's how I remember it. It's still worth a look if you enjoy this kind of old school shooter, but I wouldn't call it a classic.

NES · by PCGamer77 (3159) · 2007

A conversion well done

The Good
When it was released in 1984, Capcom's Commando was a huge hit in the arcades and the game came out on every possible platform there was at the time. In the game, you play the commando who is asked to destroy two enemy bases. You are dropped off into enemy territory, and your task is to get through eight areas while shooting enemies before they have the chance to either shoot at you first or bomb you with grenades. You have a machine gun and several grenades to use against them.

The game contains every element that the coin-op version had. This includes the animation in which you lose a life, the throwing of grenades by your character, and most of all, the character walking from one spot to another. You can move freely around the screen to a spot where you cannot easily get shot.

The graphics are in line as well. The structures on the ground, including enemy trenches, small shacks, deserted roads, and watch towers, make you feel as if you are walking through war zones as enemies will emerge from these structures.

Although the music hasn't got that energetic feel that the Commodore 64 version had, there is Commando-style music that really suits the gameplay. This type of music is also present in the coin-op version. The sound effects are good, and goes well with the event that has just taken place.

The Bad
The game could have been improved when your character gets near the end of each area, where there are no bosses to defeat. You just have to kill a bunch of enemies who make their way past the huge gate that opens. This got a bit boring after a while.

The Bottom Line
The Amiga version is faithful to the coin-op version, regardless of whether it is missing the C64's energetic soundtrack, which was composed by no other than Rob Hubbard. The gameplay is quite a simple run-and-shoot game. I still think that Commando should have had bosses at the end of each area, like in Ghosts 'n Goblins.

Rating: ***

Amiga · by Katakis | カタキス (43102) · 2005

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Commando(arcade) released for Windows(via Steam) on Capcom Arcade Stadium Andrew Fisher (696) Aug 25th, 2022

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The Arcade version of Commando appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Atari 8-bit prototype

A prototype cartridge from 1989 exists for the Atari 8-bit. It is ported by Sculptured Software and is quite similar to the Atari 7800 version. Although a prototype, it seems to be pretty much complete and playable. Presumably it was cancelled because of the inner competition at Atari between the 7800 console and the revived 8-bit computer line (the XE Gaming System).

Board game

Bandai has adapted this video game into a board game, part of its Party Joy series.

Commodore 16, Plus/4 versions

The official release by Elite for the Commodore 16 is rather simplistic with 4 directional controls, no scrolling, and contains only 5 singlescreen levels. C16 coder Richard Ikin later explained that it was his first programming job, he was required to do everything himself, with no senior staff supporting, and no development tools beyond graph paper for the graphics, and notes that the game does not scroll as he had no idea how to make a C16 screen scroll, having basically blagged the job with minimal 6502 knowledge (and nobody checked). There is also a 48KB Commodore Plus/4 specific (presumably homebrew) version, which is much closer to the Commodore 64 version in terms of gameplay, graphics and sound.

German index

On June 30, 1988, Commando was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

German version

The German Version was called Space Invasion and had all soldiers replaced with white androids., the player with a blue android and different vehicle sprite graphics. The background graphics are the same. This gives this version of Commando a strange look with all these androids in contrast to the World War II scenario background graphics.

Music

The Commodore 64 soundtrack for Commando was written by Rob Hubbard overnight at the offices of Elite Software.

Sales

According to publisher Capcom, Commando has sold 1.14 million copies worldwide since its initial release (as of June 30, 2016).

Awards

  • Commodore Force
    • December 1993 (Issue 13) – #81 “Readers' Top 100”

Information also contributed by nudgegoonies, Pseudo_Intellectual and Xoleras

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Old man gamer.

FM-7 added by Trypticon. Apple II, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Commodore 64, NES added by PCGamer77. Arcade added by 666gonzo666. Amiga added by John Scott. Atari 7800 added by RKL. PlayStation 3, iPad, iPhone, Android, Xbox 360, BBC Micro added by Sciere. Commodore 16, Plus/4, DoJa, Electron added by Kabushi. ZX Spectrum, Atari ST added by Martin Smith. Wii added by Manuel Rotschkar. MSX added by koffiepad. Amstrad CPC added by Katakis | カタキス. PC-88 added by j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】.

Additional contributors: shifter, Manuel Rotschkar, Quapil, chirinea, Kohler 86, Martin Smith, CalaisianMindthief, Patrick Bregger, 1xWertzui, FatherJack, Eldex Vierzig.

Game added June 15th, 2000. Last modified January 21st, 2024.