2019/5/18: NES: Barker Bill's Trick Shooting, Desert Commander

[VideoGameCritic]

Posted a new set of NES reviews for you to comment on! What say you?

[goldenband]

Awesome -- I love seeing reviews for strategy/war games like Desert Commander. I've never really played it myself but have always been intrigued by it ever since seeing it in Nintendo Power.

It's also got an interesting backstory since, from what I understand, the original Japanese version makes it clear that it's a re-enactment of the North African front during WWII. The Famicom box art has the Hakenkreuz (aka swastika) displayed front and center, which obviously wouldn't have been acceptable to Nintendo of America, though computer war games of the period used Nazi imagery pretty freely. I think the symbol is used during gameplay as well when the Axis side is to move.

All said and done, this is one of those cases where NOA's restrictive policy on content makes the game a lot more palatable to present-day players, I think.

(Now try Third World War on the Sega CD! That one looks super-interesting. Or, if you want to go really deep, there's Iron Storm on the Saturn.)

[djc]

Hey Dave,

Have you ever considered adding the genre of the game to the review under the publisher and also having it as a searchable field?

For example, I could see it looking something like this:

Desert Commander
Publisher: Kemco (1989)
Genre: Turn-based Strategy
Reviewed: 2019/05/19

Having it searchable would be of value if you wanted to find all 'x' kind of games.

Just a thought.

-DJ

[VideoGameCritic]

Goldenband - I added Third World War and Iron Storm to my wanted list.

djc - I never took the time to assign categories to games, probably because there many that don't fall neatly in one. However, if you click the "strategy" icon next to the Desert Commander review, you'll see other games assigned that icon, which is probably the functionality you're looking for.

[velcrozombie]

I rented Desert Commander about 25 years ago and I got a lot of enjoyment out of it initially, but I lost interest in the game when I realized I could cheese the enemy forces by making my entire force field cannons and using them to wrap my base in a protective cocoon of artillery that could hit almost any target multiple times before it could get close enough to do any real damage . I'd like to try it again just to see if that strategy worked as well I remember.

[pacman000]

Was Barker Bill's Trick Shooting a licensed game? I ask because a very similar character was created by Terrytoons to introduce their cartoons on TV. http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/te ... er-bill-2/ He even has the same name.


(And I hope Jerry Beck doesn't mind hotlinking...)

[mbd36]

Was Barker Bill's Trick Shooting a licensed game? I ask because a very similar character was created by Terrytoons to introduce their cartoons on TV. http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/te ... er-bill-2/ He even has the same name.


(And I hope Jerry Beck doesn't mind hotlinking...)

It ranks high on this list of licensed NES games that make no sense. https://screenrant.com/licensed-nintend ... sense-wtf/

[pacman000]

I've got to wonder if the character wasn't really in the public domain; that copyright notice is missing the date, & most of the info I've read says you needed to include the date back in the 50's. Still weird. Weird, weird , weird.

[Sonicx9]

A little late, but worth mentioning their was Advance Wars back then like Military Madness on TurboGrafx-16, and BTW the Advance Wars existed in Japan as Famicom Wars for the Famicom aka Japanese NES. And had instalments for the Game Boy and Super Famicom aka Japanese SNES. Well before Advance Wars was a thing.