Now what's this? A slide scroller where your a helicopter? Now this I got to play. It seems like the sort of thing Konami would do, apart from it's completely different to that Top-Gun game (yeah, Konami made that). Alas, it was not created by Konami, but I'll give it a shot. Looks decent enough. This game used to be an arcade game, but later that year, a NES port was released. So lets have a look at Cobra Command.

The story, as far as I'm concerned, had nothing to do with the G.I. Joe series, despite the title name. Instead, you are....this guy following orders from.....that guy to save, rescue and protect....those guys. All I know is that you need to rescue hostages from the enemy. What the enemy plan to do with them, and what their plan are, is just not told in game. Just get in, rescue, get out.

As I start the game, I am introduced to some pretty awesome music. I didn't expect this at all. So I'm getting to grips with the controls. You can steer the helicopter with the D-Pad, and press B for your normal machine gun, or A for your slower, yet more powerful missiles. But just like in Top-Gun, the missiles seem to do the same damage as the machine gun, only they are slower, and the machine gun can pretty much 1-hit kill anything, but you seem to have an unlimited amount of missiles, which is nice. I also found out that to shoot down, you must shoot while moving forward, but to shoot up, you have to shoot while moving backwards. This is awkward, but with a little practice, you should be able to get into the swing of it.

The controls are a little fiddly to begin with, but maybe that's because I have never played this kind of game before. Once you get used to it, aiming should be a breeze, but watch out. Merely touching the walls or a building or crashing into another helicopter or any type of enemy will kill you. But if you get hit by enemy fire, you take a bit of damage. Take four hits, and your dead. A nice touch is that with every hit, your helicopter gets a bigger and bigger fire. When you take three hits, it's pretty big, and you'll be dragged to the ground slowly, but you can still fly. But take one more hit, and the fire gets bigger, and you'll be dragged to the ground with a much greater force, in which you can fly for a little longer, but almost instant you will hit the ground and explode, which should result in your death.

As your flying around, you should notice a green man on the floor every once in a while. You can hover over him with a rope and help him up. Congrats, you saved a hostage. There are 20 in the first level. So I'm flying forward, thinking the hostages are very sparse, and I though it would be a very long level. When I rescued three hostages, I seemed to have reached the end of the level. I'm flying around, when I got hit by an enemy turret. This annoyed by, as the missiles that 1-hit kill you that are in your way of the end of the level are almost impossible to hit. i normally die at this part due to one fatal flaw: The screen scrolling. Yeah, the screen scrolling. I'm not mad.

The problem is when you get to half way passed the screen, the pace is slowed down by half as the screen prepares itself for you, then it scrolls normally. But if you stop, then you have to go through that rendering slowness again. As when I'm at those missiles, I just think "ok, I'll just go now...", then the screen slows down, and I get hit. So what I do is slowly nudge to the edge of the screen so I am right in front of the missiles, and then get in between the gap when I can, then slowly nudge to the edge, rinse, lather, repeat until I'm passed. If only they didn't have so you can out run the screen and have the screen slow down so they can get the pace of the screen scrolling right.

So I get to the end, and I'm looking for hostages, but I'm just dodging enemy fire. I try and destroy the enemy turrets, but nothing. Now I'm at a lose here on what to do, so I commit suicide and start again. I found you can touch the ground (and just the ground, not the roof of buildings or anything like that), and shoot from there. I can then press down and right to make my helicopter do some weird jumping jig, but that's what you do when you have no idea what do do next. I also found out that the hostages are desperate. They will join your plane, even though it's on fire. Would you join a helicopter that wanted to save you, while it's on fire? It's like "Hey! Join our nearly destroyed helicopter! You'll be perfectly save!" Which reminds me, when your helicopter gets destroyed, you keep the hostages even after you die. Wouldn't the hostages be dead as well? Or maybe they are wearing "crash-proof underwear" or something like that.

So I'm firing at complete random and find as I hit a certain part of a building half way through the level, the ground shakes. Not quite sure how the helicopter would  notice the ground shaking when it's in the air, but a good indication that the building can be destroyed. This is when i find out missiles really do deal more damage than your machine gun. So the building is destroyed, and a hole appears in the ground. As I descended, I thought this was a secret. I came across a wall, but I couldn't turn around to shoot it down. I never thought how to turn my helicopter around. I didn't think I'll have to. What do you think it is? Pressing left on the D-Pad only makes you go back, not turn around. Well, it turns out you need to press Select to turn your helicopter around. That's an odd button to have your helicopter turn around. Why "Select"? Well, it's cryptic, by at least it's convenient.

As I am fighting my way through this cavern, I find myself at the end of the road, with some green tank and some turrets. I kill them, and....hostages!?! You can collect nine hostages in this secret cavern. That means you had to happen to know that this building could be destroyed. How could you figure that out? Well, as it turns out, you can talk to the hostages by pressing start. These give you clues on where to find more hostages. But I wasn't told that hostages might have information. In fact, I wasn't aware of the menu screen at all. It looks like you can upgrade your shields, your machine gun, your missiles etc. But I don't know how to. I hear you have to land on certain places to get power-ups, but when just grazing the edge of a wall kill you (yes, even landing squarely on a flat surface on a building will kill you), I didn't think that they might give you power-ups. Maybe if they just gave you some damage, I might feel more confident with exploring what I can and can't land on. What poor conveyance.

Overall, I give it a 7.9/10      It is a really fun game to play, with great music to match the environment, and pretty fun controls with a challenge, but I never made it passed the first level. It's nice they give secrets and power-ups, but when you don't know about these, and are kept secret, then that makes the experience a little duller, giving you the "Where the hell do I go?" feel, which is always an annoying and unpleasant feel. Maybe passed the first level is something different and more self explanatory, but for the most part, it's worth a play if you like side scrolling.