Super Cobra

Name:	Super Cobra
Company:	Parker Brothers
Model #:	1140
Programmer:	Ed Schneider (Roklan)
Year:	1983
Released?	Yes
Notes:	Sequel to Scramble

Sequel to the 1981 arcade game Scramble (which only appeared officially on the Vectrex, Tomy Tutor, and some Japanese computers), Super Cobra is a side scrolling helicopter game in which you must fly over a (and I quote) “A 10,000 mile obstacle course through ever-changing terrain”.  Of course each area is just filled with deadly missiles, guns, and mines to grab a big bag of booty (yes they actually call it booty).  I don’t know what kind of drugs the good folks at Parker Brothers were on, but 10,000 miles is almost half the distance around the world.  That’s one heck of a long obstacle course.  Also, who just keeps a giant bag of booty laying around for any ol’ helicopter to swoop down and grab?  Super Cobra is a game that asks more questions than it answers.

Because it was ported to just about every system on God's green earth (even the Odyssey^2!), you'd think that Parker Brothers would have gotten it right at least once.  Sadly however, Super Cobra sucks on just about every system it was ported to, and the 400/800 was no exception.  This is sad because the arcade game was actually very good, and could have made a nice addition to just about any systems library.  Too bad the lousy home versions soiled the games reputation.

While the graphics and sounds are adequate and get the job done, one feels that they could have been better.  Many of the graphics are very blocky and the color scheme is questionable.  Although the controls have been improved greatly from the horrid 5200 version (which was mainly due to the 5200 joysticks), they still don't feel quite right.  It appears that minimal effort was put into porting this game.

If you're able to tolerate all its shortcomings, Super Cobra can be a fun game (in the same way that Russian Roulette can be a fun game).  It's a shame that Parker Brothers never took advantage of the Atari 8-bits power, as it was fully capable of a near arcade perfect version of the game.  Shoddy third-party efforts like this are just one of the many reasons for the great crash.

Return to 8-Bit Software