Cobra Command & Anticipation retrospective: White flight | NES Works
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- This week we have a pair of perfectly tolerable games that seemingly no one remembers. Yes, by late 1988, the NES library had grown sufficiently large that it could contain games beyond "brilliant" and "execrable"-works of competent mediocrity doomed by their lukewarm nature to be relegated to the dustbin of obscurity.
Cobra Command takes a mundane auto-scrolling shooter and turns it into a Choplifter-inspired adventure with a touch of exploration and puzzle-solving. A fine start! But utterly relentless in its difficulty level and saddled with some very strange, almost "sticky" controls. It's fine, almost good, but it just misses the mark.
Meanwhile, Anticipation offers inclusive thrills (if you are a preppy, 30-something Caucasian) and demands you deduce the nature of premade connect-the-dots puzzles before your competition does. It's fine. It exists, and it rounded out the NES library with more family-friendly board games. But does anyone want to play it today? I can't imagine.
Production note: NES footage captured from @analogueinc Nt Mini. Video upscaled to 720 with XRGB Mini Framemeister.
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The watchamacallit round seems to be heavily inspired by the tv game show Catchphrase, which was super pipular in britain at the time.
Maybe Rare just wanted a stab at UK game shows, rather than ones not that well known here.
"Tumescent Wildlife" is the best Jeremy Parish lexiphanicism I've heard in a while 😁
Tumescent Wildlife is my band's name
Nothing says "It's Friday night and everything else is rented out, do you really feel like playing Super Mario again?" like Anticipation.
Unless it’s Mario 3 in 1990. I knew a kid who had it out from the video store for a solid month until he got his own copy. His mom kept paying the late fees.
I tend to agree that if Cobra Command had anything like a reasonable difficulty curve, it would have been something truly special.
34 years later, and I still remember the solutions to the Anticipation puzzles you showed here.
I had Anticipation as a kid and hearing the music again is a huge nostalgia wave.
Oh wow!!! We actually owned Anticipation in my house as a kid and it's been stuck vaguely in my memories for decades with no real clear picture. But yeah that's totally the game I remember!
At 13:36, I think it's "First in line". That's the only one of the weird ones I could even come close to getting.
Another great one. I had this game (Anticipation) and it's good for a laugh with some buddies.
I think the number one thing I remember about Anticipation was that it was perpetually $0.99 at Funcoland Games for years.
Reasonably solid though, and that soundtrack, while a bit repetitive, is pretty good.
One nice thing about Anticipation is that it doesn't particularly waste your time. You don't have to put in an entire wrong word before it dings you, just starting with a wrong letter is enough. Also, when the computer gives a wrong answer and inputs garbage, it's actually giving you a hint with the couple letters that come through.
I got Cobra Command as a holiday gift. I believe I still have the cartridge as well as the Bionic Commando cartridge and my original NES. Thank you for posting this game!
I stared at that Anticipation spread in Nintendo Power so much, each time feeling like surely I should be excited for this game since the magazine really wants me to be excited.
Manufacturered consent.
The 80's analog TV way you record yourself is so great, and the channel number changing as the editing moves to game footage... very nostalgic and charming.
I find it tragic we don't have an NES game named Stiffen Wolf, it's impossible not to instantly think of furries and start laughing just hearing it.... think of all the laughter we have lost.
"think Karnov but even moreso" is a great quote
Anticipation, one of the first carts I ever owned!
As bad as it was I loved Anticipation as a kid, mostly because I couldn't remember many of the clues due to ADHD and the fervor of family competitive time.
Another great video. One of the best, most consistent content makers.
I will say that my cousin had Anticipation when I was a kid and and we all (aged around 8-15) definitely played it a good few times during family visits. In a world before Mario Kart and multitaps, it was a good party game that didn't end up with the youngest of us (me) feeling like I was COMPLETELY intellectually outmatched as in Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, in addition to allowing for an extra player. I didn't know what state Abraham Lincoln was the governor of, but I could recognize a line drawing of a plane and spell it.
And my family might be white but that sure isn't a prerequisite for appreciating a David Wise ost lol
I HAD Cobra Commander as a kid!! It was one of those I played a ton but never got far. Once I got to the first underground part, I always died. Very cool to learn more about it.
Cobra Command always seemed like a cross between Choplifter and Synapse Software's Fort Apocalypse to me. All very difficult games that require significant practice to complete. 🚁
It did remind me of Air Rescue on the master system.
My good friend had Cobra Command as a kid and I loved playing it. It was a huge revelation when we figured out how to get upgrades. Its pretty difficult but I beat it as a kid and I still like to play it fairly often. Once you get the hang of it, its actually quite a bit easier than choplifter. Thanks for mentioning all the features - very few people get into all the cool features. You can even talk to the hostages once you rescue them, they put an impressive amount of details in the game. I like it so much I even made a video on it, probably one of the few people who actually likes it haha
I wish the camera and controls didn’t feel so sticky, for lack of a better word. If CC controlled more smoothly, it would be an all-timer.
Who the heck pulls out a bottle of wine from a DESK drawer full of ice?
Yuppies in 1986, man
@@JeremyParish I wanted that!
God…those opening sound effects bring back memories, lol. I got Cobra Command, the NES Advantage and a couple other games for Christmas one year. I played the hell out of that game, and I liked it. Perhaps most importantly, it reminds me of my Mom for buying it all for me.
I really appreciate the effort you put in to making the video have that classic VHS look, even where the tracking appears to drift. Even the channel 4 indicator is great (although I always used channel 3 for my RF adapters).
@15:50 your sports games reviews are always so good, seriously. No sighing allowed
I had Anticipation with my childhood NES and it helped me learn some english
Kokomoing people out of nowhere first thing on a Wednesday morning is a war crime, sir.
Yes, I’m waging war against stress and anxiety, man. This is where you want to go to get away from it all.
@@JeremyParish True!
Come for the analysis of late 80s arcade hardware, stay for the tumescent wildlife.
I'm really impressed by how much effort Rare put into these board games. All the animations in Anticipation are so crisp and fun, like the dice bouncing or the pseudo 3D effect of the squares moving around to indicate the next puzzle.
It's sad it's spent on such a mediocre product (outside of David Wise's compositions, of course).
Also, Kokomo is a much newer song than I realized. Wow.
I never made it past the first stage of Cobra Command back when it was current. It does look interesting though, so perhaps I'll have to give it another honest try.
Use a Game Genie code for infinite lives and it’s pretty doable! Until the ocean stage, I don’t even understand how anyone beat that on five lives.
I remember playing the NES Cobra Command years ago, and until now I didn't knew it was going to be released under a different name that has no relation with either the arcade Cobra Command games.
My man giving off some strong Max Headroom vibes.
I WISH I were that cool
@@JeremyParish No one is. But you're in the ball park. Great content, by the way. Keep up the good work.
Anticipation, now that's a blast of nostalgia
When I was a kid, I thought Cobra Command had something to do with Cobra Commander and was really pissed when I ended up renting a hard as balls helicopter shooter and not a GI Joe game.
Anticipation was actually fun as a teenage stoner in the mid 90s tho
never have i seen a more pointed use of kokomo.
The 80s really was the decade of the Cobra, huh? Cobra (Stallone film), Cobra from G.I. Joe, Cobra Kai, Cobra (band), and this NES game. Okay so maybe just those 5 things, but really that's a lot of distinct cobras for one decade.
There's also Space Adventure Cobra, a great TV anime in which the hero Cobra winds up triumphing over a revitalized Hitler.
There was also the video games Twin Cobra and Cobra Triangle.
And then you had Hulk Hogan’s 24” pythons, just to be contrarian.
As a teenager in the early 2000s, buying every NES game I could out of Goodwill, I was blown away by Cobra Command. But never enough to gain the patience to last further than a few scenes in.
I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this amazing artistic content. The history is fun brain candy and the visual cut scenes are spectacular. I heard about you from Dr. Sparkle and his suggestion has helped lead to one of the best summers I have ever had. Thanks again and have a beautiful day.
I tried Cobra Command after watching this, and it seems that a majority of the challenge comes from poor programming in the way the screen scrolls. Manipulating this correctly to make enemies not spawn in some sections, and flying backwards in most overworld areas to avoid the variable speed changes that come with the screen pushing you back in a sense as it scrolls, makes the challenge much more manageable. It's also key in underground sections so that you don't get slowed down as the screen inexplicably scrolls over to show mostly walls/ground at times when fighting the bases. Some odd choices, but once you learn to handle the scrolling it becomes easier. It's almost entirely a memorization game because of this.
A Mike Love Beach Boys song does fit the theme for the episode: just not quite there. Cobra Command does sound interesting. I regularly played Anticipation as a kid, those tunes are good, the issues with the gameplay are definitely accurate to what I experienced as a kid.
You KNOW those people on the cover of Anticipation are listening to "Kokomo" while attempting to get drunk enough on wine coolers to finally work up the courage to get this key party rolling.
@@JeremyParish I bet they were! Reminded of an oldies station I knew that often played Kokomo a lot in the 90's as if it was a certified oldies despite coming out in 1988. It was enough to let slide through their 1970 cut-off date.
@@JeremyParish Because "Hot Hot Hot" was a bit too much for them.
0:09 - John Stamos in the pink
Also the concept of navigating subterranean military bases in a helicopter is enough to make me want to try Cobra Command.
Cobra Command actually looks really interesting. I would like to see that concept in a more refined game. It also reminds me of Battle Chopper in many ways. As for Anticipation, it’s the one game I really get tired of seeing when looking for cheap NES games because it seems like there are 400 billion copies floating around.
Hi Jeremy!!! I loved Cobra Command(er). A friend got it for his Bday back in the day and we played it like crazy. It was HARD! IIRC, we never made it farther than the 3rd or 4th stage. Great video, as always. THANKS!
I had no idea that cobra command looks as good as it does.
This is the year I got my NES so all this recent content has been extremely nostalgic for me.
You at the end: “Ugh sports games”
Me after looking at what might be next “Hell yeah!”
Funny story with the intro segue: A cousin of mine swore up and down that in the song "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits, the line talking about "banging on them bongos like a chimpanzee" is Mark Knopfler making fun of John Stamos in the Kokomo video.
Pretty sure Money for Nothing predates Kokomo, tho.
@@EvanCWaters That's my point exactly. My cousin didn't know what he was talking about haha
love seein games cobra commamd on here, intresting obscure games i've never heard of are great.
Anticipation is a great game for finding Kirk Van Houten's dignity.
I really enjoyed Cobra Command, and usually got to Stage 4 without cheat codes.
I played so much Cobra Command as a kid. The underground segments stood out as so fascinating. Anticipation soundtrack is a Snake Rattle N' Roll B-side.
Love the screen flash at 7:50.
I love this channel.
Anticipation. Good times. and yeah the puns were incomprehensible at first but once you saw the answer it became obvious.
Honestly, quizshow games were probably good quiz money during the gameshow peak of the 80s. I remember we owned Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune that my dad would actually play with my older sisters (I was like 4-7 during this era, so I had no interest/incapable of playing them.)
When the NES was the central point of my otherwise limited entertainment choices DATA EAST stood front and center as my go to publisher. Cobra Command, for a time, was my most rented title. Bad Dudes, Burgertime, Side Pocket and Cobra Command were all picked solely based on the Data East logo. Karnov kicked off a loyalty to Data East and I always expected a hard game I’d get an entire weekend out of. I am completely out of my element now though and can’t even get through the first level.
Bionic Commando references!
7:22 You almost had a little poem going there.
I really liked TMNT 2's approach to arcade conversion. It's still noticeably the same game (albeit with heavily compromised graphics and multiplayer) but with a tighter feel* and a few bonus levels.
*The arcade TMNT feels very clumsy when I play it now, but that may just be due to thirty-year-old joysticks lacking the action they once had.
Nah the collision detection in Konami's licensed Arcade brawlers is truly bizarre.
@@HowManyRobot the trick with all these konami beat em ups is to avoid being on the same plane as the enemy for too long.
That and always press jump and attack together.
I had Cobra Command back in the day. Great game with a few minor flaws.
STIFFEN WOLF
I mean, ***STIFFEN WOLF***.
Discoveries like this bring me joy, not for the least reason for which being I'm constantly looking for blog fodder.
Yep, my brother and I had the bad idea to buy games untested and Cobra Command was one of them. We OWNED the game and were, dare i say, pretty damn good 8 bits players`(I've seen my brother finish contra without dying once in those days), but i think the furthest my brother ever got`(we pooled our money together to buy games but it was one of his picks so i think he felt more committed to the game) is like level 3 maybe.
I think at some point when we borrowed a game genie for a friend he finished it. Anyway we didn't give the game much love because it was so hard. But yet when we talk about the NES games we owned`, we never put in the "regrets" pile (where Predator belongs...yep... we bought that). We just shake our head and agree that... good game, but way too hard.
There's many a potentially great game of the time that was ruined by a ridiculously high difficulty level. It's almost like these devs didn't test their games. Or maybe `that's the issue, THEY tested it, but didn't have the general public who didnt know the game inside and out test it. A lot of the issue is that devs back then still had an arcade mentality, IT'S GOTTA BE HARD! Why? i already put my money in the game and i won't be putting any more. THAT being said, we also owned Strider and finished it in like an hour once we took it home. Still though, between too hard and too easy, i'll always take the latter. I replayed Strider many times while Cobra Command sat gathering dust for the rest of the 8 bits era after like a month or two.
Whether you're covering licensed games or board games or sports games, I'll be there at the TH-cam subscriptions box waiting eagerly for more.
I was so confused when Cobra Command came out for NES, lol. I thought it was referencing the LD arcade but then, right around the time of the NES release, I saw the Cobra Command arcade that the NES was stylized as. Then the LD Cobra Command was named Thunder Storm on Mega CD. I gave up.
Great ep, though.
Hey! I was an unfathomably white person in 1988! maybe if I was older I would have really enjoyed Anticipation, but if the cover art of an NES game didn't have some kind of fantasy or sci-fi tableau, i didn't give it a second thought at the rental store.
Now that I own a copy of NES Pictionary, I hold Anticipation in *significantly* higher regard. Pictionary has the better soundtrack but that game is digital purgatory compared to what Rare made.
Anticipation if nothing else has some Rare whimsy in the animations and graphics
Probably the closest predecessor to Cobra Command (NES) would be "Fort Apocalypse" by Synapse Software for the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 systems. There's also a similar game in the form of Choplifter III by Beam Software for the SNES.
I’ve always wanted to check out Choplifter III. Seems interesting
Cobra Command looks cool for me to play. 😀👍🎮
Riunite? The people on that cover are a Bartle & Jaymes crowd if I've ever seen one.
Wow, rude. This is a classy crowd here, thank you.
@@JeremyParish Let's split the difference with Paul Masson, then. It's good enough for Orson Welles. Even if '88 isn't quite the time for that particular wine.
I'm pretty sure Stiffenwolf is a product from the Alex Jones online store
Anticipation is an excellent video board games for me to play. 😀👍🎮
anticipation is fun but on easy difficulties it can be really slow to make progress
As a kid i beat cobra command without cheating
anticipation rules actually
I forgot about Anticipation. I hated Anticipation. One of my cousins loved playing, and I loved the music, but I hated Anticipation.
First in line and wide awake
Three to go on the 100th episode. 😀👍🎮
I will give Anticipation this: It's a pretty fun chaotic time over the internet, but the player with the actual controller should give themselves a minor pause before ringing in to account for latency; I wonder if any attempts have been made at hacking the puzzles into new ones?
It's also funny how the cover of Anticipation is a whiter than a whiter shade of pale, but the Nintendo Power spread is trying so hard to push it as a game for a diverse audience.
The only person I know of who has finished every NES game, The Mexican Runner has a complete (blind as far as I can tell) Cobra Command run in just about 2h30m, just watch out for salty language
TRG introduced me to Anticipation and it looks pretty fun. But everyone playing need to be pretty good at English to properly enjoy it probably...
moops
Moors. There's no moops.
@@reyvgm the game says moops, you lose.
@@anactualmotherbear Moors!
I cant even figure out how you would write "StiffenWolf" in katakana... shi-te-fu-iin?
Su-chi-ffuen?
Su-tei-ffu-iin U-Ru-fu?
Cobra command is better.
@@goatbone hard wolf is pretty rad
Antici........
.
.
.
Pation!
As a kid I had no interest in any videogame resembling a board game or a game show and I knew no kids that did. To me those games reeked of grown-up executives that did not get it. And of course there is the simple fact that board games were usually much much cheaper to buy than videogames. I also found as a kid that my parents' generation tended to look at videogames very suspiciously. It was something new that kids loved so it must be bad for them in some way, right? But that generation did not feel that way about boardgames. So if you put boardgames on your Christmas list it was no problem, but videogames required you to make an argument on both the cost and the moral nature of videogames themselves. That hassle was completely illogical to waste on a boardgame-esque videogame. Pick your battle for a real videogame because you were probably getting some actual boardgames for Christmas anyway.
4:02 ok, I didn't expect that caption. Well played.
Kinda disagree with you at the end there, I don't think that the Anticipation spread looked horrible, I think there is some appeal there (not to say I love it either) - though art is subjective.
Maybe I just have bad taste?
No, it just means you were Nintendo Power's target audience with that one.
Anticapate the game ending
I was thinking the same thing just as you said it: I've never heard anyone talk about Cobra Command. I didn't even know it existed until now! Anticipation is whatever, but it is weird thinking about Trivial Pursuit's popularity in the 80s. I remember my father buying it because he thought it would make all of us smarter. Then we played it, nobody could answer anything, and we never touched it again.
(. . .Also, I only just now realized the pun in "Trivial Pursuit." Damn it.)
Have a lot of fond memories of Cobra Command and my dad... beating the game, as hard as it was. The underground music theme in this video filled me with so many memories
Holy cow. Jeremy you've devoted A TON of time to Cobra Comand. A game I've found massively interesting/intriguing since release... I've never been able to get good. Thank you.
Love it!
COBRAAAAAAA!
Ohhh this one looks decent. Never played it.
Absolutely love both games. Didn't know about Cobra Command's other (more bizarre) name. It was a very difficult game but I did manage to beat it ages ago. Now I have to give it a try once again. Your Anticipation hint about never wanting to solve on a 4, oddly, never occurred to me. I was always more concerned with not giving my opponent a possible chance to solve!