1989 Zigurat Software (Spain)
by Jose Palacios, Cesar Diez & Fernando Blazquez
A shoot 'em up, platform game divided in 4 parts, played alternatively between 4 characters, i.e. the four Commandos. Probably the DC Comics "Creature Commandos" played a part in inspiring the authors.
Simplifying the story to a minimum, the Commando Four united efforts in order to defeat a common enemy, in order to do so they have to gather around a Cross in all four worlds. There is a Jungle, a Military Base, a Mine-Shaft and the Spirits World. Each of the 4 characters as to travel thru his own world, both vertically and horizontally, and come together in the arranged spot, the Cross.
Between each go you have a timer, once the timer reaches the end you move unto the next character and around you go. Each team member has 6 lives. So you have a total of 24 lives. A Speccy record!
This makes the game varied, but also a bit confusing, and ruins the gameplay fluidity.
The weirder part is that you can swap between team members by pressing keys 1-4, so you end up with the Gorilla in the Military Base or the Miner in the Jungle, for instance. This allows the features of one team member to be better suitable to an obstacle in a parallel world and obviously adds to the confusion.
Graphically it's very colorful and with some detailed sprites, specially the Spirits World part which reminds me of the Ghost and Goblins games.
It's a fun game, but after Joffa's shoot 'em ups, which play so smooth it's hard to enjoy this titles as much.
Review by manu on 25 Oct 2020 (Rating: 4)
Curious that so far this game has not been reviewed because without being a work of art, it has its details. It is certainly not a BASIC type in game, so it was time to appear here.
I remember seeing it advertised. But I didn't play it.
Good graphics. Very good, yes.
