The 8-Bit Wars: Commando

[TL]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61NQAR2Erh8

[Rogue Trooper]

And old fav.Speccy version plays the best by far, but personally never been keen on it's look or sounds.

C64 version? visually was a mess, sprite flicker etc galore, but despite being way too easy, played ok, but it'll ALWAYS win for me, for the stunning Rob Hubbard soundtrack, recal him saying how he left it running at the developers offices over night and watched the look on staff faces as they arrived to work next day.

There's a GOOD reason C64 version does'nt look too good:

Programmer for C64 was Chris Butler, who previousily on C64 had done Hypercircuit (copy of an earlier BBC game he'd done), followed by Z (A Time Pilot type affair) but for Commando, he was given a real 'rush job' to do-It was his 1st big name game, he had all of 8 weeks to write it in which included him learning new programming tricks (Splitting Sprites), originally game had 4 levels, but Rob Hubbard said his music needed 6K, so Steve Wicox just said to Chris, take out Level 3.

Game was bugged to hell, but again, only 8 weeks to code, learning as you go.He joined Elite in Oct '85 and Elite wanted game out for that Xmas.Chris also disliked multiload games, so that's why Commando has so few levels compared to coin-op (only so much he could fit into a single load), same applied to his Ghosts 'n' Goblins conversion on C64.

[TL]

Just to add some more to this video, here are some other 8-bit computer versions.

First up the BBC Micro version, I remember playing this loads on the school computers. It's not a bad effort, considering the hardware, but the sound is horrendous!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4HUWcFREKY

Then next up here is the Atari XL/XE version. This was unreleased by Atari back in the day despite being 100% finished but was found by a collector several years ago now. In my opinion this is easily the best 8-bit home computer version, it was done by Sculptured Software. They were the same team who did the 7800 version and is incredibly similar graphics wise, just lacking some of the colour, and has the exact same sound. Probably one of the best coin-op conversions on the A8.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3pB_5TsCGk

[Havantgottaclue]

The C64 version has decent graphics, excellent music and plays well, and on that basis might be considered a worthy winner amongst the 3 main candidates as the narrator on the comparison video says. I wonder though, whether any of the other versions feature only 3 levels of the arcade's original 8? That was the biggest sticking point with C64 owners at the time, and really a very important consideration as to how much lastability the game had - the quality that's obviously the most overlooked in these comparison videos.

The A8 version does look nice, although the sound could've been spruced up. It's a pity that Rob Hubbard wasn't called in to modify his C64 work for the POKEY, as with Warhawk etc.

I wouldn't say the BBC hardware was limited as such. Admittedly I have a lot of nostalgia for the Beeb as I spent pretty much all my lunchtimes at school on them. It is perfectly capable of a decent conversion, as it's ultimately like a 6502-powered version of the Amstrad CPC, minus a few colours. The problem here I think is the memory constraints of the most popular BBC Micro, the Model B - just 32K to play with. So, if you want a full 8-colour screen at double pixel width, you have to use Mode 2 which eats up 20K for the memory map. To squeeze in the game code, the programmer decided to scale down to the 10K Mode 5, which only gives 4 colours to work with. Target the B+ (64K) or Master (128K or more) and you have enough memory to use Mode 2 with impunity.

Mind you though, the push scrolling - what's that all about? Is that just poor coding? Firetrack shows that smooth vertical scrolling on the Beeb was no problem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxdd2_qrpg

[DreamcastRIP]

One of my most enjoyed 8-bit computer games ever. I owned the sublime Speccy conversion and couldn't get enough of it. I found it played best using keyboard controls as it easier 'spraying' bullets forward and in both upward diagonals that way relative to using a joystick. Plus one's hands were already closer to the space bar anyway in order to throw hand grenades. Grpahics were so-so, sound was drab (48l Speccy +) but the gameplay was spot-on.

A schoolfirend had the game on his C64 but apart from the game's music I thought it second best to the Speccy version.

I've played the acrade coin-op too and even prefer the Speccy conversion's playability to that!

[Rogue Trooper]

Push scrolling and god awful sound aside, did'nt think the BBC version fared too badly considering hardware limits (and nice to see Firetrack get a mention, only ever played the C64 version, but loved it, the choice of colours used, really helped create that feel of flying over alien terrian).

A8 version, superb, sound aside (workman like)-When i see games like this that were finished, but never saw light of day, it does grip me.Back then we A8 owners were begging for games like this.

[TL]

A8 version, superb, sound aside (workman like)-When i see games like this that were finished, but never saw light of day, it does grip me.Back then we A8 owners were begging for games like this.

I personally think the music and sound is superb, it's incredibly close to the original arcade game

[Havantgottaclue]

With just 2-voices and bland square waves the A8 music sounds about as barebones as it could get. No distortion (not for the voices used on the main theme, anyway), no filtering, no multiplexing - it's not even using all available voices. Obviously one voice is taken up by the sound effects, but there is a 4th voice, is there not?

The POKEY is capable of much more than that, and ironically, considering the 7800's music capabilities have copped a fair amount of criticism, it's actually the 7800 that shows the A8 a thing or two. That's mainly because there's a POKEY in the cartridge itself, plus it can use the two TIA channels for a total of 6 voices (I don't know whether or not it actually does use all those voices, though). I initially though it was the fact that it was a 7800 port that was the reason for the spartan nature of the A8 music, but that would appear not to be the case.

The 7800 version actually ends up being considerably better (though it's still boring old plain square waves, of course ...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3rOkRdnBLU

Still, the A8 version was not published. Who knows, perhaps a bit of spit and polish would have been added to it had the release happened as planned.

[Rogue Trooper]

A8 version, superb, sound aside (workman like)-When i see games like this that were finished, but never saw light of day, it does grip me.Back then we A8 owners were begging for games like this.

I personally think the music and sound is superb, it's incredibly close to the original arcade game

I spent so long playing C64 Commando JUST for the Hubbard music, case here, much like Tim Follin's C64 Bionic Commando tunes where i much prefer their versions to arcade originals.

[TL]

There is also a Russian hack of the Spectrum version of Commando that makes use of the AY chip to add music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH5GBUfD1c4