Today we return to another Ocean Software movie tie-in – the last one being RoboCop back at No. #94 – but while this movie tie-in has Sylvester Stallone on the cover of the box, this image – quite frankly – is the strongest link you’ll be seeing to the actually Cobra movie.
Yes it has Ingrid in it (during the mayhem), a recognisable gun and the locations are perhaps share a passing resemblance too…in name alone. Other than that, this 1986 game is a bizarre little number that has a very dark sense of humour running through it. For example instead of a “Fire” key it’s called “Murder”; along with this the time limit indicator for your weaponry is a decaying rubber duck and also prams make our protagonist tremble at the knees!
Essentially Cobra is a rejigged version of Green Beret and this is backed up more so when you see the first name involved in bringing the game to the ZX Spectrum, which was Jonathan. M. Smith, who also brought Green Beret to the good old Spectrum; also on the Cobra team was Steve Cain, on the music side was Martin Galaway [listen to the theme here].
Cobra is on occasion is enjoyable though it has it issues, for example the controls can be sticky and unresponsive, which can make it difficult with the randomly generated attack patterns of the enemies. This, along with no real direction on how to actually complete the levels (keep killing with Ingrid in tow until it ends), makes Cobra truthfully not the best game in the world…
Still we do have a Murder key at our disposal!
SEE ALSO: Follow the rest of the Your Sinclair Top 100 ZX Spectrum Games
Originally published May 31, 2016. Updated October 25, 2022.
