A lone soldier, endless hordes of enemies, and a finger glued to the trigger. Commando is the pure adrenaline of running forward, where you fight your way through a vertically scrolling battlefield and every step means a new wave of opponents. On the Atari 7800, this arcade smash got a home form.
Commando comes from the Japanese studio Capcom, where it was designed in 1985 by Tokuro Fujiwara, and in arcades it quickly became one of the defining titles of the run and gun genre. The player controls a soldier pushing his way from top to bottom through scrolling terrain, shoots at charging enemies, and additionally has a limited supply of grenades for cornered groups and fortifications. The conversion for the Atari 7800 transferred this relentless rush to home screens.
The strength of the gameplay lies in separating the direction of movement and the direction of shooting, thanks to which the player can run one way and fire another. This freedom of aiming made Commando an extraordinarily dynamic affair and was behind its great popularity in arcades. The grenades then added a tactical layer for moments when the odds were too great.
The Atari 7800 profiled itself as a console for faithful arcade conversions, and the run and gun genre suited it thanks to the emphasis on real-time action. Commando fit here into the lineup of titles meant to bring the arcade experience home to players.
Commando's cultural footprint is considerable: the game inspired a whole wave of later running shooters and became a benchmark of the genre, followed up by further titles from Capcom and its competitors. For many players it remains a synonym for uncompromising arcade action of the 1980s.
Why play: For pure, unfiltered run and gun action, where only fast reflexes and a well-timed grenade keep you alive.
Game 10 of 37 for Atari 7800
The same title elsewhere (3)
The arcade original benefited from the power of dedicated coin-op hardware — smooth vertical scrolling, plenty of enemies on screen at once, and crisp colours. The home 8-bit ports had to cut corners: on the Commodore 64 the SID chip at least gave decent music and sound, though the number of enemies and scrolling smoothness still fell short of the arcade. The Atari 800 offered a similar compromise with somewhat simpler graphics. The later Atari 7800 port could draw on the Maria graphics chip, which handled more moving sprites without flicker, making the action feel denser and closer to the arcade experience than the earlier 8-bit versions.
