Commandos (Mega Drive)

Commandos
Commandos cover art
Publisher	New Game (Company)
Developer	Dragon Co.
Console	Mega Drive
Engine	Commandos engine
Sound engine	PCM

Commandos (рус. Коммандос, Kommandos) is a SEGA Mega Drive port and, most likely, the only console port of Commandos: Behind The Enemy Lines for the PC, originally developed by Pyro Studios. The Mega Drive version was developed by Dragon Co., yet there's a possibility that only a few of the original staff took part in the creation of this game (with the only old member directly mentioned in credits being Li Meng, who composed music for Dragon Co. during their Famicom era).

Gameplay

For no apparent reason, this game's text (help menus and mission briefings) surpassed a machine translation to Russian from the very beginning. That may mean that this game was created exclusively for the Russian market.

The port remains very accurate to the PC version, although:

• Has only five missions available, with several of them lacking shortcuts;
• Has new HUD technically similar to the one seen in C&C games;
• Has no zoom feature;
• Lacks the Driver class;
• Some abilities of the original characters lost, for exmaple: Green Beret can't hide in the snow;
• All the original voice samples were replaced with 'Okay!' quote.

Most of the documented features as 'Save/Load' and 'Pause' seem to be obsolete. While 'Save Game' doesn't do anything, 'Load Game' serves as a mission select screen.

Reception

Old Krank's Reviews noted that 'the strategy game is not what I could expect from these guys [Dragon Co.]' and praised the accuracy of the port, despite a lot of obvious flaws and sacrifices. The review also mentioned that this may be a really rare chance to play Commandos on the big screen or on a screen of handheld:

Still, it's Commandos on the big screen which has some interesting stuff to mess up with though. It may be Commandos on a handheld too, if you waste some money and buy a Megadrive Portable with this cartridge or just load the ROM of it into PicoDrive, no matter if you have a PDA or PSP.

The Great Dragon has an article on this game, the author of which signed as C.J.C. He said that, perhaps, the only unrecoverable and feelable loss is the lack of enemy's range-of-sight visualization but in the rest, the game keeps close to the PC original, with most of the features saved like interactive landscape and footsteps which may be left on the snow and may be noticed by the enemy patrols:

But the loss of one of the heroes is not such a big one. Since MD can't outmaster the PC by its' power, we have only five missions to play, compared to the original nineteen. However, even that is enough to spend at least a week in front of your TV set. And, to be honest, five missions is much better than no missions at all.
But in anything else, the game keeps itself close to the original. And you also play the game with cursor (D-Pad will replace a computer mouse in that case). Add the gameplay that will keep you on your toes where you have to be as quiet as a weapon stock mouse. An interactive world where anything may be destroyed. The availabilty of the footsteps on the snow which may be noticed by guards as a welcome feature also.

Trivia

• This game uses an engine, similar to Command & Conquer (Beta), due to the fact it was programmed on the same SDK.