Talking NES and History: Capcom Commando 1986 — A war lost becomes one America can win

We’re embarking on a new project this summer looking at video games that specifically feature historical themes. While we firmly believe that all video games are historical and can be read as historical sources, in this series we focus specifically on the narratives of history based games and where those narratives fit within the culture that created them. We’re starting this series looking at games developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and we’re working through the games in chronological order over the next few weeks. If there is a game you think we missed, please comment and let us know. The video below is our first attempt, what we’re calling a draft project. It is admittedly a bit rough and we have some technical aspects to work out, but we’re happy with the conversation and are looking forward to improving our process. Below the video is a companion blog post to go along with the conversation in the video.

Commando Capcom
Released in 1985 to the Arcades as stand up coin-operated game.
Ported in Nov. 1986 to the NES – The version we’re playing via emulator (as many of consoles are locked in our office / archive at University).

Commando was an early North American title for the NES and was ported soon after the consoles release in the U.S. The NES was launched in a test marketed successfully in New York City on October 18, 1985. The market was extended to Los Angeles as a second test market in February 1986 and later that year to Chicago and San Francisco. By September 1986 it was launched Nationwide.  

Game Play:
Commando is a top down run and gun vertical scroller for 1 - 2 player/s.  The player assumes the role of a single Commando, Super Joe, (the etymology of Commando is loaded with colonial meaning and an interesting history that is worthy of its own essay), who is tasked to save POWs and kill or avoid as many enemy troops as possible all the while racking up a high score. As the box art reveals, your job is to “Destroy the Enemy Army!!” Two exclamation points, so we know it's important.  The game features four levels each with four segments to run n’ gun through. After completion of the first four segments 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, and 1-4 the map and format repeats, but hidden bunkers and the location of special items are altered for nuance.

Considering the length of gameplay and for the limitations of the NES this is a pretty faithful port and the graphics and music hold up.   

Like a lot of scrollers from this era, especially arcade ports of games designed to eat quarters and make the arcade manager as much money as possible; the game is not easy and becoming accustomed to the particulars of movement and tricks take time. One hit death (the norm for early scrollers?) and no save points means constant repetition of levels until you can decisively plough through them. Playing on continuous negates the pressure of one hit deaths and removes possible high scores, but does mitigate the frustrating nature of having to start from scratch. At least at this point in my life the quarters are not as much of an issue.

Modern players with a penchant for 100%ing games may struggle with the game as there are many hidden items and few moments of repreive. There are opportunities to explore underground bunkers but uncovering their location and getting into them puts the player at risk of getting stuck and struck with enemy bullets.  There is also (unless using cheat codes or available online map layouts) the difficulty of finding the numerous bunkers, many of which serve no other purpose but to delay advancement. The player is rewarded for that risk, as the bunkers (when they aren’t traps) reward players with additional points, power ups and protective vests that make game play a bit easier until of course you die, which you inevitably will. According to “How to Win at Nintendo,” a strategy guide from the era, the player’s best chances come from a “spin and spray” technique and constantly moving forward. Aside from the special items and bonus points there is no real advantage to seeking out the underground bunkers. Well, unless you want points for additional lives, and since you die so much, that may be important.

The game was generally well received by both critics and players alike. There are few reviews as the game pre-dates Nintendo’s Fun Club Newsletter, later Nintendo power, and many of the early game magazines. Computer Gaming World reviewed it positively in 1988 saying “From the moment the helicopter deposits Super Joe in the heart of enemy territory, Capcom’s greatest creation delivers relentless fire and movement action.” They go on to say, “Few cartridges can equal its non-stop action. This is one coin op hit which should certainly prove popular among home videogamers, as well.”

Game Footage
You are dropped into a fairly non-descript location that bounces between a tropical environment and military bases. Are we in the South Pacific? World War II seems the obvious setting but given when the game came out it could be making reference to Vietnam. Especially given the rescuing of POW, which was a feature of many late 80s war films. The inclusion of a variety of underground bunkers below thatched structures also serves to further this reference. Famously, the rescuing of POWs within Vietnam is seen in Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo II (1985) and Rambo III (1988) — Rambo (1982), lest we forget, was purely a domestic affair. The list continues with Chuck Norris’ MIA (1984), Delta Force (1986), Invasion USA (1985), Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985). The primary plot point of these films was to send a secret commando (Rambo or Braddock or a host of other imitators) to rescue those left behind by an uncaring bureaucracy who abandoned our mission in the War. In Commando, players take a similar lone wolf approach, single handedly rescuing the boys left behind and putting themselves at substantial risk to right the wrongs of the government that left them behind. In each of the cut scenes between levels we see our character become increasingly bedraggled as they fight through more and more enemy soldiers to rescue their comrades. At the end of each set of levels the player is greeted with a congratulations, the helicopter that dropped the player off at the beginning of the stage picks them up and they start all over again. A reference to the futility of war?

War and Video Games in the 80s.
The Vietnam War was a source of controversy and a cultural watershed moment in the U.S. and became a point of interest for film makers even as the war still raged. American film makers and the movie going public used these films to come to grips with the War and America’s role in it. In many ways these films reflected Americas growing unease with the war 1968s John Wayne vehicle the Green Berets went throug several revisions as the popularity of the war waned. In the 1970s the tenor of Vietnam films shifted to the home coming experiences and other traumas of fighting in the war (Coming Home, Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now) and they eventually reflected a cultural change of heart (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Casualties of War, Purple Hearts, and Full Metal Jacket). Ultimately a jingoistic celebration of America’s position in the Cold War in the 80s emerged and came to dominate the way Americans remythologized the war (Rambo films, Chuck Norris Films, Good Morning Vietnam, The Expendables, Air America, For the Boys, and even Forrest Gump).

Commando and many of the war games on the NES and other gaming systems in the 80s reflect this changing set of attitudes. The story lines from the box art and instruction manuals fit the narrative of the more jingoistic and celebratory films of the 80s, with games aligning themselves with Reagan era cold war patriotism and rugged militaristic individualism. In these games the focus of rescuing the captives puts the attention of the war on “what they did to us,” rather than having players confront the realities of what we did in the war. Victory comes not from winning the war but from rescuing the POWs. A war we lost becomes one American can win. 

This is a war that Americans can not only win but can participate in the exceptional righteousness of their cause. This is exemplified through the games like Commando that rely on terms made prolific during the Cold War politics of the 1980s, especially with America’s increasing role in sending ‘military advisors’ to support regimes in Central America. Central American foreign policy themes become more evident in games released in the late 1980s such as Code Name: Viper and Rush’n Attack. Games we’ll visit later in the series but ones where the focus, environment, and narrative is less ambivalent than Capcom’s Commando. Later games would give us the sleeveless- bare chested true American commandos, but here that masculinity is left to our imaginations. 

In Commando we are left to guess at the war and our commando is characterized in a more WWII British Commando style. Developed in 1983 for the arcade by a Japanese company the Commando port to the NES plays on vague stereotypes around the idea of the “commando,” but America and American players were in a different social and cultural space. Alongside America’s new mythologizing of the Vietnam war, Conservatives in America were steadfastly fighting the Cold War, the supposed threat of a Soviet invasion and a Communist takeover of South America. Teenagers in the 80s lived with a popular culture that suggested nuclear holocaust and world war III were just moments away. These themes dominated our political and cultural landscape and video games offered those who played them a means to control/win conflicts that made us uneasy. Despite its references to WWII, to play Commando in 1986 it would not have been difficult for players to imagine Commando set in the jungles of Central or South America or in the rice paddies of Vietnam. In our living rooms, dorm rooms or play areas we could enter into a conflict and win one for the Gipper.