Iron Commando is a 2D Beat ‘Em Up originally released in 1994 exclusively for the Super Famicom and has recently been rereleased in the West. It has us take on the role of one of the two playable characters on a quest to keep a recently dropped asteroid out of the hands of a terrorist organization. Pick whichever one of the two is the most visually appealing to you as there is no difference between and off you go to slam your fists into anything that gets in your way. You slide your way down an ArcadeZone chute from the side of a building and are tossed straight into the mean streets of a grimy, noir version of what I assume to be New York City. And wow, does this game look nice. If you’ve had told me this was an Arcade game, I would have readily believed you as this city is very detailed and is capable of having a decent number of enemy sprites at any one time.
Another thing that you may notice upon booting up the game is the distorted audio with an absurdly annoying popping sound and a two-second delay it takes to actually play them after you complete an action. It is really bad and was a persistent issue across all four of my PC’s that I’ve tested this on. I’ve rarely come across a title that I would mute while playing and this is the exception as the poorly emulated audio only serves to confuse if kept on. There are save states and a smoothing option available that are accessible if you press Alt+Enter to force it into windowed mode but this can easily be overlooked if you don’t bother checking Steam’s discussion board for every game you play. One must also bind their own controller buttons before being able to play. This is a pretty bad port all around, unfortunately.
With that nasty business out of the way, let’s get back to the game itself, shall we. We have access to a single button used to attack, one to jump, another to grab and finally one to press while mid-air to activate your special grenade attack. Nothing too crazy, what really sets this game apart is the fact that everyone is armed with either a gun, knife or other deadly weapons, all too intent on killing you. Luckily for us, each time we defeat an enemy they usually drop a weapon for you to use and even the odds, be they a sub-machine gun, shotgun, knife, bats and all other types of goodies to keep your fists nice and clean from their blood. Okay, there isn’t really any blood in this game as it is an SNES title which typically didn’t have many violent games aside from Mortal Kombat 2 but man does using a weapon in this feel impactful.
A gunshot wound hurts nearly the same as being punched in this title, so it is mostly used to extend your combos or keep enemies at bay instead of a fatal weapon. Being knocked down will send whatever you have equipped spiraling out of your hands meaning that going solely on the offense just because you have an automatic weapon can end badly and leave you unarmed. One can’t simply spit out bullets freely either, all guns have limited ammo and making each round count is important since enemies don’t always drop more ammunition to reload with. Melee weapons have a preset number of times they can be used as well, strategizing just how close your weapon is to being rendered useless and where the next one you can pick up is, lends this game a feeling that it is more than just a button masher.
The first level is really fun, but in the second they introduce dogs which really messes up the flow of combat as they are much smaller and your regular attacks don’t register on them. One has to either get a bat to use its downward swing, time it at the pixel perfect moment when it jumps to punch that mutt in the face or attempt to grab the bloodthirsty dogs which usually ends up exactly how you would expect it to. Later on, they add an even more annoying enemy that is merely a snake that wants to kill you for whatever reason. These snakes are the single most challenging enemy in the game since you can’t bloody hit them unless you get lucky with a dropkick as they wail on you. I typically save my grenades for whenever one of those two foes show up so I can save myself the headache.
Grenades are a lot less useful than you’d expect from a special attack with limited uses. They cause very little damage and can’t even kill a snake with one use, have terrible range, and it doesn’t even pause time, so the weapons on the floor don’t disappear while that long animation plays out, leaving you in an even tougher position. It is no doubt a tough game but usually for the wrong reasons. The first being the foreground objects that are constantly blocking your view from what is going on or are placed in such a way that you can’t see when a weapon falls to the floor. And the second being that it is frankly very cheap at times, ultimately leading to most of your deaths feeling more like a punishment or a way to get you to fork over more quarters even if it isn’t an arcade game.
There are unlimited continues though you must start from the beginning of the level and are given three lives & three grenades as well as your score being reset back to zero. In that, it is pretty fair as one can eventually beat the title with enough persistence and there is even a level select screen in the main menu. You can also memorize the button combo to activate a save state or load one up without having to window the game which is nice. As impressive as the game looks for the hardware it was made for, it is equally remarkable that there are as many stages as there are and each looks significantly different from one another. You’ll be fighting Incas in a cave, Fidel Castro on a beach and commandeering a multitude of vehicles be they a simple minecart or a motorcycle.
Occasionally there is a bit of text that fills us in on the events of the story, but with so much crazy stuff happening, it is easy to overlook the plot entirely. Your major roadblocks aside from those accursed snakes will be the bosses. These guys do not mess around and have a ton of health that makes it feel like this title is actually meant to be played in its two-player mode, with a mate by your side. They are by no means insurmountable, it’s just that the amount of health makes these fights drag out for a bit too long. Considering you have a ten-minute timer ticking down that will instantly kill you, that may be an issue. All in all, while cheap at times, Iron Commando is a decent amount of fun and is always throwing new things for you to enjoy. It makes it all the more unfortunate that the port turned out as bad as it did since it does bring the whole thing down a fair bit having to play it muted or suffer through scrambled & out of sync audio. Buy it at your own discretion.
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