As an avid Scramble fan, I was looking forward to plugging Super Cobra from Parker Brothers into my Atari VCS. But be warned - this chopper is definitely not Blue Thunder!
Super Cobra follows the standard Scramble format. You fly your helicopter over an ever-changing landscape, through caverns and over skyscrapet cities, meanwhile rockets blast off from the ground to shoot you out of the skies, guns on the ground fire at you and, on some screens, flying fireballs and deadly airborne mines add to the hazards.
The Parker version of this now famous game includes eleven screens and in the eleventh you have to swoop down on the target of your flight - the treasure!
At the top of the screen you'll see a level/mileage indicator which tells you how far you are in the Cobra system. As in Scramble, you blast fuel dumps to keep your craft in the air.
Points are scored by hitting various targets along the way and you get 900 points for every stage - or 1,000 miles - that you manage to complete. You get a 5,000 point bonus if you pick up the treasure.
The game can be played in three modes, slow, medium and fast and you can start a new game where you finished a preceding one by quickly pressing your joystick fire button after you've lost your last chopper. You can also freeze the action by pressing the TV type switch to the B/W setting.
Unfortunately, the graphics are really not that great and the sound effects not that exciting.
Having said that, you do need to have pretty quick reactions - even on the first fairly easy stage - to keep your Super Cobra away from the jagged cavern walls, and perhaps with the "continued" feature, which means you don't have to go back to level one when you've lost your last chopper on level 10, you might not get too bored too quickly. However, you'll probably find a better game for the asking price of £29.95.
1st April 1984