Commando

In the summer of 1985, 30 pence in a British arcade bought a helicopter ride into enemy territory. Computer and Video Games described the start of Capcom’s Commando: the trees sway under the downdraught, the chopper leaves, and the player, as Super Joe, is alone with a machine gun and a few grenades against an army. There is no story to speak of and no way off the screen but up. By Christmas the game was on British home computers, and in Elite’s hands it became the best-selling game of the season.

Fast facts

• Developer: Capcom; directed by Tokuro Fujiwara.
• Arcade release: May 1985, four months before Capcom’s Ghosts ’n Goblins. Known in Japan as Senjō no Ōkami (“Wolf of the Battlefield”).
• Hero: Super Joe.
• Home versions in Britain: Elite Systems, for the Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC (1985–86), the BBC Micro, Electron and Commodore 16, and later the Amiga and Atari ST. Capcom made its own Famicom and NES version (1986).
• CRASH: 94% for the Spectrum version. ZZAP!64: 77% for the Commodore 64 version, with 91% for Rob Hubbard’s music.
• Sequel: Mercs, in arcades by 1990.

The arcade game

Commando is a shoot-’em-up that scrolls upwards. Super Joe runs up the screen through desert, rivers, bridges, bunkers and an airfield, firing forwards with a gun that never runs out. His grenades do run out, and they are the only way to reach soldiers dug into foxholes or behind sandbags; more lie around the battlefield to be picked up. Soldiers pour down hillsides and out of lorries, jeeps carry machine gunners, and bazooka teams fire shells that burst in wide clouds. Each area ends at a fortress whose gates open to release a last wave of troops, and only when every one is dead does Joe run through. Killing the two guards who hold a prisoner earns a bonus.

Tokuro Fujiwara, who had moved to Capcom from Konami, directed it, and worked on Ghosts ’n Goblins at the same time. Wireframe later called Commando the game that “sparked a wave of imitators”, SNK’s Ikari Warriors first among them, “released less than one year later”.

Elite and the home rights

Elite Systems, a small publisher from near Walsall, won the British home computer rights in August 1985. Steve Wilcox told Retro Gamer in 2005 how it happened: Capcom’s president Kenzo Tsujimoto invited the bidders to his London hotel suite, and Wilcox’s father Brian offered £25,000. Sure of six-figure sales, Steve raised it on the spot to £65,000, based on 100,000 copies at a royalty of 65p each. “My old man, to his credit, didn’t even flinch.”

Elite guarded the licence closely. Alligata had a similar game, Who Dares Wins, ready first. ZZAP!64 reported in December 1985 that Elite objected to it, and in January that Alligata’s original game had been withdrawn and redesigned “so as not to infringe Elite’s copyright”, so that readers got “a sequel without a prequel”, Who Dares Wins II. In Wilcox’s account, Elite obtained a High Court order and Alligata’s stock was seized over a weekend.

Computer and Video Games ran a competition to guess Commando’s highest position in the Gallup Top 30. The prize was a real Capcom Commando arcade machine. Anyone who guessed number one was right: Sinclair User printed the Gallup chart for the month to 14 December 1985 with Commando at the top, and Computer and Video Games later called it “the number one game at Christmas”. Wilcox put its sales at 200,000, ahead of Ocean’s Rambo, which Sinclair User said “closely resembles Commando”.

The Spectrum version

Keith Burkhill and Nigel Alderton wrote the Spectrum Commando, which sold for £7.95. CRASH gave it 94% in its 1985 Christmas issue. One reviewer called it “about the best arcade conversion your Spectrum is likely to see”: the arcade’s photographic graphics and stereo sound were lost, but “all eight areas have been copied with meticulous attention”, down to the points where the soldiers attack and the spinning letters of the high-score table. Another called it “Horribly violent, and not much of an intellectual challenge — but great fun.” The magazine’s criticisms were a “rather bland” use of colour, and sound with “great spot effects, but no tune”.

Sinclair User gave it five stars. Nicole Segre warned that the scoring was explained nowhere, on screen or on the inlay, but found the game “powerfully addictive”. She liked the high-score table best: players spelt out their names by shooting stencilled letters, which spun like fairground targets.

The Commodore 64 version and Rob Hubbard

Chris Butler wrote the Commodore 64 version in about eight weeks. He told ZZAP!64 in 1986 that he started in October and had to finish in November: “It was a real rush job”. The game was “completely finished” when Rob Hubbard arrived to write the music. Hubbard said he needed about 6K for it, and there was no room. In Butler’s words, Elite’s Steve Wilcox said, “Right — hack out level three.” Butler admitted there were “a lot of bugs”, but, as he put it, “It made Christmas number one, and it made me a small fortune.”

Hubbard’s own account of the music, given to Commodore Horizons early in 1986, was of one long night. He was taken down to Birmingham, and he finished the music for Commando “at about 8 o’clock the following morning”. He called it “about the fastest, start to finish” he had worked. In the same interview he described how he stretched the SID chip’s three voices: as long as something kept going, a bass line or percussion, he could “steal” the other voices for a sound effect or a flourish without the music stopping.

ZZAP!64 gave the game 77% overall. Its reviewers found it repetitive, docked it for having “only three out of eight levels of the arcade”, and noted “awful glitches” in the graphics. The music was another matter: the sound scored 91%, for “Rob Hubbard’s superb remixes of the arcade tunes”.

Other versions

Elite’s Amstrad CPC version followed in 1986, and in April 1987 the readers of Amtix placed its music joint third in their awards for the year. The BBC Micro and Electron versions did well too: Acorn User’s chart for September 1986 had Commando at number one on the BBC Micro and number two on the Electron. The Commodore 16 version scored 59% in C16 Plus 4 Handbook, which called it “very disappointing”. Elite returned to the game with 16-bit versions; Amiga Format reviewed the Amiga Commando, at £19.99, in February 1990, calling it “a little old, but still heaps of fun”.

Capcom’s own Famicom and NES version came out in 1986. Later versions for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, MSX and Apple II are listed in public sources, but no period review of them has been traced.

Super Joe and the sequels

Super Joe went on to Bionic Commando (1987). In the NES version the player is sent to rescue him: Nintendo Power told its readers that “Super Joe has been captured by the Imperial Army, and you are his only hope of rescue.” Capcom’s arcade Mercs, a three-player vertically scrolling shoot-’em-up that Computer and Video Games reviewed in June 1990, was sold in Japan as Senjō no Ōkami II, the sequel to Commando.

Sources

• Capcom, “Corporate History” (web, secondary): the arcade Commando (May 1985) and the NES version (1986). https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/company/history.html
• Computer and Video Games issue 46, August 1985, p. 108: arcade review (30 pence, Super Joe, the helicopter).
• Wireframe issue 7, February 2019, pp. 49–51: developer profile of Tokuro Fujiwara (directed Commando; Ghosts ’n Goblins at the same time; Ikari Warriors “released less than one year later”).
• “Commando (video game)”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the Japanese titles Senjō no Ōkami and Senjō no Ōkami II, and the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, MSX and Apple II versions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_(video_game)
• Retro Gamer issue 13, 2005, Elite Systems feature and interview with Steve Wilcox: the bid in Tsujimoto’s suite, £25,000 raised to £65,000, “didn’t even flinch”, the August 1985 deal, 200,000 copies and Rambo in second place, the Anton Piller order against Alligata.
• ZZAP!64 issue 8, December 1985, news: Elite’s objection to Who Dares Wins. Issue 9, January 1986: Who Dares Wins II as “a sequel without a prequel”.
• Computer and Video Games issue 50, December 1985: the Commando chart competition and its Capcom arcade machine prize. Issue 53, March 1986, p. 14: “the number one game at Christmas”.
• Sinclair User issue 46, January 1986, p. 20: preview (the arcade game’s UK release). Issue 47, February 1986, p. 33: Gallup Top 30 for the month ending 14 December; news on Rambo; p. 56: Nicole Segre’s review (Keith Burkhill and Nigel Alderton, £7.95, five stars).
• CRASH issue 24, Christmas Special 1985, p. 130: Spectrum review, 94%, and its description of the areas, fortresses, vehicles and weapons.
• ZZAP!64 issue 10, February 1986, pp. 25–26: Commodore 64 review, 77% overall, sound 91%, and the prisoner bonus.
• ZZAP!64 issue 17, September 1986, p. 104: Gary Penn’s interview with Chris Butler.
• Commodore Horizons, February 1986, pp. 31–33: Tony Reed’s profile of Rob Hubbard.
• Amtix issue 18, April 1987, p. 42: readers’ awards for 1986, best music (Commando joint third).
• Amstrad Action issue 9, June 1986: CPC version review.
• Acorn User issue 50, September 1986: BBC Micro and Electron charts.
• C16 Plus 4 Handbook issue 7, December 1986: Commodore 16 version, 59%.
• Amiga Format issue 7, February 1990, p. 50: Amiga review by Andy Smith (Elite, £19.99).
• Nintendo Power issue 1, July/August 1988: Bionic Commando preview.
• Computer and Video Games issue 103, June 1990: Mercs arcade review.

See also

• Capcom
• Tokuro Fujiwara
• Elite Systems
• Steve Wilcox
• Rob Hubbard
• Ghosts ’n Goblins
• Bionic Commando
• 1942
• SID chip
• Commodore 64
• ZX Spectrum