Data East Commando Games

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/dataeastcommando/dataeastcommando.htm

This is a hard article to title, because that sounds really awkward, but what it comes down to is four games, all made by Data East, which were heavily inspired by both 80s action movies and other arcade games inspired by 80s action movies. They're all pretty good, on varying levels. They are Heavy Barrel, Midnight Resistance, Bloody Wolf and Thunder Zone.

[aganar]

So while we're on Data East, when are we getting a Double Dragon article?

[Discoalucard]

Never, because Technos made Double Dragon not Data East.

In a less snarky response...someday? It was the site's old policy to stay away from games already covered on Classicgaming.com, but those days are over (though the Double Dragon Dojo is still quite an excellent place.) So it might be doable in the future.

[cj iwakura]

Oh, sweet Engrish.

[Ryu the Grappler]

This is a hard article to title, because that sounds really awkward

Why didn't you went with "Data East's Run and Gun Games"? "Run and Gun" is a common colloquialism for this sub-genre of action games after all.

As for those games, I'm only familiar with Heavy Barrel (particularly the NES version, which I rented once as a child) and Midnight Resistance (played it on MAME and it was okay, nothing too memorable). I'm surprised you left out the two RoboCop games though. They're technically Run-and-Gun games after all.

[Discoalucard]

Well, they all have the same 80s action movie theme so I didn't feel run and guns was appropriate. They all share some similarities, while there's no real common ground between them and the Robocop games, other than being part of the same (kinda) genre.

[Shellshock]

"Data East's Obscure Army"

"Data East Goes To War: Heavy Barrel, Bloody Wolf, etc. "

[theallseeingmole]

"Data East going Commando",perhaps?

Anyway I think that Heavy Barrel,despite its lack of originality,is one of the most underrated coin-ops ever as it's fun and a bit more forgiving than most of its contemporaries.As for Midnight Resistance,I loved the C64 port despite its faults (it should be noted that it was made by Special FX,one of the few home computer based software houses able to properly handle conversions;their work on Cabal is also quite remarkable).

[cj iwakura]

I loooved Heavy Barrel in arcades.

You can imagine how disappointed I was when I played the NES version.

Why yes, I did expect arcade perfection from an 8-bit console. Naive much?

[Discoalucard]

Heavy Barrel is the only one of these I played in an arcade - at a pizza place, specifically, which is now part of a Home Depot. I enjoyed the hell out of it and really wanted to get the NES conversion, but never got around to it.

I probably would've been disappointed at the time, but all things told it's a pretty decent port compared to some of the other similar games.

[Deleted]

Good article. I love me some Data East games.

I'd love to hear about your thoughts/impressions on some of the other top-down gunners by DE, although I'm not sure how you'd group them. Off the top of my head were The Real Ghostbusters (which IIRC was something totally unrelated that they slapped the license on) and Gondomania (which was pretty sweet).

[kal]

It's update time! Thunderfox Japanese version is supported in MAME now, not sure when they added support but there seems to be a few different changes in there (level lengths are a bit different, the game seems a little easier too).

[spirasen]

and the music is pretty catch

*and the music is pretty catchy

levels are slightly adjust to compensate

*levels are slightly adjusted to compensate