A really short entry for a game that eventually surfaced as Duet on the Elite Hit-Pak collection. We believe that this was swiftly renamed as Elite couldn’t get agreement to use the Commando name on the title.
The game of course was a nice Gauntlet clone, which I personally loved playing back in the day (but I know many others would feel was terrible!). It could be the quality of the game which also caused Elite not to release individually, and straight onto a HitPak compilation.
Contributor Alfonso makes a good point that the article in our Commando 88 page suggests the licence for the sequel had gone to US Gold, who did nothing with it.
The question is whether Commando 86 was ever actually released. It certainly leaked out there with the logo, but we haven’t been able to find any commercial release of it – therefore this version of the game may have not been properly released in the shops.
Gaz Spence flagged up that issue 13 of Your Sinclair previewed the game, which was then called Commando ’87 when the game got delayed, with the same team behind the CPC version too. It seems after that point it was renamed to Duet – and currently there is no evidence that it ever snuck out commercially as a Commando game.
It seems adverts snuck out though showcasing what the cover would have looked like – see our gallery. If anyone else finds other images, please let us know. How did the game with the Commando logo sneak out?
If anyone knows anything more – please do get in touch!
Contributions: Alfonso, Gaz Spence, Archive.org
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Game_Commando86 (zip)
Gallery
Update history
- 02/06/25 – Gaz Spence highlight of Commando 87 and scan added
- 26/05/25 – Alfonso credit added + details
Issue 13 of Your Sinclair previewed the game, which was then called Commando ’87. See https://archive.org/details/Your_Sinclair_013/page/n11/mode/1up?view=theater.
The team behind the Spectrum version were also behind the CPC one.
Therefore the game started out as being Commando ’86, then Commando ’87, before finally resting on Duet.
There is no evidence to suggest that this game appeared commercially in any form or format other than through the 6-Pak compilation.
Thanks Gaz, thats a great find! I’ll update the page when I get back from leave with all the details. :)
Ah, nice to see an entry for Commando 86 at last – thanks!! I had asked for this in a comment to Commando 88, but maybe someone else did, too.
A couple of comments:
The article featured in your Commando 88 page suggests that the license for a sequel went to US Gold – they never did anything with it, did they?!?
I actually owned that compilation which featured Duet. That thing was just as awful as things get: No music at all, no notable animation of the clumsy sprites, hardly any variation in the levels, primitive block graphics – it is really hard to find anything good to say about it! Oh, and the ending was, of course, just awful, too (“Congratulations” or something similar – that was about it). It was at the level of an amateur game. Compare that to the original Commando and try to tell me that this is a mediocre(!) sequel with a straight face!!
So while I wouldn’t dispute your assessment that it wasn’t released as Commando 86 due to licensing issues (you got the proof in that article), my immediate reaction would have been that (a) Elite didn’t feel it was any good (the fact that it was released via that compilation only speaks for itself!), or at least (b) not good enough to fork over any money for the license.
Unless one of the creators speaks up, I would still suspect that Elite was too embarrassed to release this as a legitimate sequel to Commando, though I’m not able to prove it.
Ah Alfonso! It was your comment that prompted it – i’ll add in the credit now, as I lost track of who submitted the suggestion :)
Thanks for the comments, i’ll update the page quickly too. Yeah, the game isn’t great – I personally loved it, but it was more for nostalgic reason I think (and certainly rose tinted glasses).