Super Cobra

"This is the stuff Atari 2600 games are made of. The graphics are ugly, poorly drawn, with bad color schemes. Nearly everything that moves flickers. It's all an eyesore.
"The graphics are only the tip of the iceberg here. The sound effects hardly resemble those from the arcade game. Play control responsiveness is very poor. Once too often my helicopter drifts into the floor or ceiling, and I hardly ever bother to use the fire button. The helicopter can only fire two shots at a time, and of course the two shots are multiplexed using the same sprite. Bombs don't even fall at an arc! They just fall in a straight line, and the sound made when dropping bombs resembles the sound made when the Night Stalker fires a shot rather than the falling sound made in the arcade game. The explosion sounds and graphics are also laughable.
"Besides the reduced collision detection that results from all the sprite multiplexing, perhaps the worst problem this game has is with the readout. Parker Brothers never did figure out the trick to keep a stationary readout over a scrolling background. Across the top of the screen, the score, number of lives, and fuel gauge scrolls by with the rest of the scenery. Speaking of fuel gauge, this game does not even display the fuel remaining with a bar, but rather with an 8-bit number!
"The one redeeming quality this game has is that it's Super Cobra. Fans of the arcade game like myself can enjoy some of the same fast shooting and bombing action that makes the arcade game worthwhile. Too bad Parker Brothers had to really mess this one up. With all of its shortcomings, I can never play this game for more than five or ten minutes at one sitting. An investment in this game is definitely not money well-spent." Rating: 1/5 -- Mike Hayes

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