Iron Commando - Koutetsu no Senshi

This game has been improved, since the last time I played it. It's a quirky, and decent, but not a great beat 'em up, similar to Capcom's Punisher Arcade game. If you're expecting Streets of Rage 1, 2, or 3 you will be disappointed, but not many console beat 'em ups were as good at the time, in fact I can't remember any, and I've played many console beat 'em ups including the Final Fight, and the Rival Turf trilogies on the SNES, still the Streets of Rage trilogy was better than them too.

This release is basically the ROM and, if my eyes don't deceive me, SNES9x. It's a fun, somewhat chaotic beat 'em up that I think most retro fans will enjoy. The combat is a bit clunky, but you get used to it. There's also a weird Virtua Fighter-esque jump that sends you way too high and feels extremely floaty, but again, you get used to it quickly. There's tons of weapons in this game, including pistols, shotguns, machine guns and staples like bats, knives, etc. Wouldn't pay more than a couple bucks for this one, but definitely worth the small investment for fans of jab n' jogs.

is a pretty decent beat then up hard as heck like very hard enemies are very agressive and not very "friendly" as other beat then up so if you are hardcore beat then up fan you sure will love it also watch out easy is hard and hard is easy they "switch" the difficulty for some reason

Has anyone tried to play 2 player co-op? It's weird. One controller controls both players and the other controller does nothing? It wont register both controllers...its broken. Anyone know how to fix this?

SNES style graphics with varied character designs and classic animations. The usable items add to the replay value. The game is missing a progress saving continue option. The "game over" is actually "start over". The early 1990's side-scrolling action is worth a look and so much fun.

terlalu sulit dimainkan

Well, this is probably the worst beat-em-up I have ever played, and I've played the C64 version of Double Dragon, so I know bad when I see it. As a big fan of the genre I wanted to gave this game the benefit of the doubt. Big mistake.

The story is the usual generic mid-90s nonsense but I can deal with that. What I cannot turn a blind eye to are the slow and sluggish controls, the bland, ugly stage design, the unusually narrow aspect ratio, and punishing difficulty. I set this game to the easiest difficulty and I could not get past stage 2, which looked no different from stage 1. The only way you'll get to see the "best" of what Iron Commando has to offer is to watch the attract mode, and even then the "ghost" player is still getting his ass handed to him.

There are only a handful of enemy models and they get boring very quickly. They charge right at you, making most of your weapons useless, especially the shotgun (or "riffle" as the game calls it), is not easy or rewarding, to the point where you're better off not using them. Your "special move" doesn't even kill the bad guys on screen, just wounds them a little.

For a 1995 game, this is very primitive and bland. Developer Arcade Zone was dissolved in 1997 and, by the looks of it, did not have much success in the industry. Their game designers clearly did not have much talent or vision and Iron Commando plays like it came out 1985, and it would have been poor by that era's standards too.

There are trading cards included, but the badges are not imaginative. Do not purchase this game. It will bring you no joy. Listen to me!

Tiger men charge fast.
Tom has a fast firing gun.
Inca spikes are hard.

Tags: Sidescroll Brawler
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library
Note: Steam-Refund

TLDR: Bad quality port. Custom keybinds on Xbox360pad do not stick. Not fun with keyboard. Cramped screens. Vertical layout. Not enough horizontal distance. Very hard to use ranged weapons. Foe swarm of clone enemies. Recycles assets a lot.

Might as well play Streets of Rage on the Sega Genesis & Mega Drive Steam Emulator for very similar gameplay that works smooth out of box and working options menu.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/211206/Streets_of_Rage_3/

Its a shame in a sense because the flavor, animation work, and sound design is all pretty catchy. Feels like the kind of game you would see in an arcade cabinet. Makes sense with the 4 button and directional arrows. Would explain why everything is so cramped and why you get hit all the time. Continue screen to insert coins and situational buttons that only work at certain times when performing certain actions meaning a lot of trial and error and memory muscle to git gud, means a lot of coins.

It does not translate well into a standalone PC title however. Along with the fact that the fullscreening just adds ugly lazy metal crate art sidebars it comes across as pretty low effort. Pixel smoothing just blurs everything. At least you can play windowed and scale it 4x without it breaking the options menu in the window of the game like other titles of this dev.

Conclusion: Would had made an awesome entry if it was reworked a bit to make up for some of the flaws, retweaked difficulty and working out of box control scheme. But without these it is not worth anything. Maybe Joy2Key would allow to use an Xbox360 pad but it does not make up for the design issues. With rebinded controls you end up being able to attack with remote but not move no matter if you use D-pad or stick. Pretty broken controller support.

Disclaimer: My playtime is not accuratly represented (Steam does not track playtime in offline mode.)

If you want to learn how to play, I explain a lot about this game in my video:
https://youtu.be/UQxUUhGT4-M

Pros:
+ Good variety of weapon types with their own strengths and weaknesses (club/bat works great against snakes)
+ You have everything you need to deal with the mob type enemies (if you're constantly using the jump kick, you're playing wrong. Moving up or down the screen to dodge and grab enemies so that you can then throw them at their friends is where it's at)
+ Seperate button which is dedicated to picking up items (in almost every beat em up, punch is how you pick up items and it gets you killed. If you get hit while picking up an item in this game, it's completly your fault and I like that about it)
+ Co-op (if one player dies they steal one of your lives, this may sound bad but it makes it so you both get to keep playing together. If you don't like it you can turn it off in the options)
+ From a machanics standpoint, this game is very unique (feels a lot like Legend, made by the same company)

Cons:
+ Unless I turn everything else off, this game does not run smoothly (might not run smooth for you no matter what you do)
+ Popping audio noise that happens often (I couldn't figure out how to get rid of it)
+ This game couldn't destinguise one Xbox360 controller from another (I had to play with a keyboard so my brother could use the controller)
+ If you have a weapon and you're close to an enemy you'll punch instead of use the weapon. This isn't a problem, but sometimes you'll punch even though no enemy is close. (It really messed me up a few times since I was trying to shoot across the screen but punched and got shot instead)
+ There are 3 autoscroll levels (maybe you like these, but I hate them)
+ On 2nd to last level, where the ceiling begins to fall and you have to break the giant door, my game got stuck at that part and would not allow me to move out of that section (this happend to me twice, I don't know if it was due to the ceiling hitting me or because I threw grenades. You have to break that door before the celing gets you or it's game over)

Conclusion:
I put this game in my wishlist and bought it on sale, because I'm cheap. Much like the other beat em up made by this company (Legend) I didn't like Iron Commando when I first played it. You do have to get used to this game to start appreciating it. It rewards you for being good at it and punishes you when you're trying to get away with lame tactics (just my opinion). So long as your system runs this game smoothly, I think you'll grow to love this game.

I've heard that some people complained about the poor emulation. Despite these quirks, I had a decent time with this game. It reminds me of games like Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, etc. You don't see games like these nowadays.

By the way, if you want to change the controls in this game, you have to press Alt+Enter, and from there you have to navigate through the settings. It's similar to what you might find on the Snes9x Emulator.

For fans of quirky, off-brand beat-em-ups... with one major caveat.

First, the good. This is a more ambitious and visually polished game than Arcade Zone's Legend and one of the few console brawlers I know of that tried to emulate Capcom's Punisher - emphasizing the use of guns and other weaponry. It's no Final Fight 3, sure; but it's still playable and fun, it looks and sounds pretty good for the SNES and is also just a bit off kilter for this style of game, which I personally enjoy.

The odd - your character's jump is ridiculously high, making jump attacks awkward. If this functioned like the TMNT arcades which gave you different attacks depending on how far/high you were into the jump, that would be fine; but this gives you only one. Also unusual is that you have a shmup-style bomb attack in place of the traditional health-draining double-team special move. For variety, there are a few vehicle shooting sections in which your character rides a funny little cartoon motorbike that could've come straight off of a 60's acid rock album cover... it always makes me chuckle.

The bad - Stages can drag on too long. Enemies can be overly aggressive, constantly knocking weapons out of your hand right as you pick them up. There's not much variety in moves, even with 2 different characters to choose from.

The worst - Unfortunately, this ancient game may not even run well on your PC. Piko prioritized emulation accuracy above performance here, meaning low spec machines that would otherwise be totally fine emulating 90's era console games might get nasty stuttering and unplayably low framerates. Between this and Sega's good-looking but shockingly low-performance 'upgrade' to their Genesis Classics frontend, it's become harder to wholeheatedly vouch for this style of retro re-release.

I really hate to say that, too, as I want to see more odd old games like this to come back.

Didn't work right out of the box. Didn't recognize the controller, and there is no apparent menu to get it to work.

I love this kind of beat 'em up games, like Street of Rage and Cadillacs and Dinossaurs.