Green Beret for the Commodore 64 was based on the arcade game of the same name
(or "Rush 'n Attack" in Asia), where you play a member of the US Army's
elite force in order to rescue your comrades from a P.O.W. camp. Armed only with
a knife, you have to run through four horizontally-scrolling levels of soldiers
armed with guns, grenades, grenade launchers and rocket launchers. Sounds a little
unfair? Yep! But you are in the Green Beret, after all!
To help you through the game, there are special sergeants who, when killed, will
give you a limited special weapon of either a flame-thrower, rocket launcher or
grenades. Once you have finished the fourth level, you rescue your brothers-in-arms
and the game begins again, albeit harder.
The Commodore 64 port was impressive in that it just about squeezed all the graphics
for the four levels into memory, to the point that some of the niceties had to
be left out. For instance, when you die, there's no spectular dying scene — just
a piece of music. But it can be forgiven for keeping the eye-candy and smooth
gameplay intact.
If you never played the arcade game, then you're going to find this game difficult.
If you did play the arcade game, you're going to find the C64 port annoyingly
frustrating! One main reason for this is the enemy soldiers that are armed with
guns. On the arcade game, they crouch slightly and take a second to aim at you,
giving you plenty of time to kill them first or jump out of the way. In the C64
port, they crouch but almost immediately shoot. In levels 3 and 4, this makes
the game nigh-on impossible to complete without some sort of cheat! (Poke 5429,173
in case you were wondering.)
Another change is the last level — in the arcade game you're faced with three
consecutive flame-thrower soldiers, which you just have to duck and jump to get
to. In the C64 port (I assume because of memory limits), you face a barrage of
the same soldiers you've just spent four levels killing off! You'll end up cursing
those green-coated Kung-Fu men that jump on you while you're ducking guns and
rockets.
To fire your special weapon, you have to press the space bar. This can be a little
difficult when you have a joystick in your hand, and is a side-effect of the one-button
limit of a C64 joystick; but once you're used to positioning your hand over the
space bar while playing, you can mash the bar when necessary.
Having pointed out the game's foibles, however, the gameplay and graphics make
Green Beret one of those games that you howl in frustration and throw your joystick
to the floor, and then a few moments later you want "just one more go."
Add to this the sound provided by Martin Galway, who remains faithful to the arcade
game's in-game sound but has used his magic on the loading and title music, and
you've got yourself a winner. Classic addictive arcade-style gaming.
