Games That Weren't^®

1990 Titus Software

Platform: Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and PC

Commando War was to be a very ambitious title from Titus Software back in 1990, a sort of cross between Populous and Cannon Fodder. But what was particularly ambitious was that the game was introduction of a concept called Action Concept. More on that in a bit.

This particular game would allow you to play a squad leader in control of up to 10 commandos, or you and a friend could control 5 each on the same side. There would be a series of missions that you could take part in across different maps, in a flip-screen style mode (at least that is what the Zero article suggests – no scrolling).

Like with Cannon Fodder which would appear much later, you could click onto the map to direct your men, and they would intelligently react with the environment around them. You could also get into vehicles and ride around too. There was an element of strategy to each mission, but predominantly the game was to be arcade action-based.

There was also to be a series of data disks separately released to give different missions, scenery + enemies overall to give the game a long lease of life.

Back to the Action Concept idea – this was being hailed by the French press as an exciting arcade-based Populous system. After the release of Commando War, the plan was to release other news games set in Vietnam, with the Romans/Vikings and many other settings as budget costing extension disks. You would just have to ensure that you owned Commando War first and then you had this entry point into cheap expansions of the concept.

Unfortunately it was never to be, and Commando War just disappeared off the face of the earth. The game was apparently delayed into 1991, but nothing would surface on any of the 3 planned platforms. From the screenshots, it looks pretty advanced so it is hoped that something of the game (and even the different Action Concept expansions) could be recovered some day.

Credits: Thanks to Karl Kuras for the heads up about this title, Chump for the heads up about the Generation 4 scans, Abandonware magazines and Archive.org for the scans, and Darren Gurney for the addition of another shot showing the caveman and dinosaur concept of the engine.

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