Robocod was one of my favourite Mega Drive games in the 90s. I loved the silliness and the stupid things you could collect, the themed levels, and the penguins. Sadly, over the years when Playstation, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS remakes were released, they ruined the memory of a once great game.

Going back to the original (well, the Mega Drive version of the original anyway) I was hoping to show how awful the more recent versions have been, but unfortunately it hasn’t held up too well itself. Of course, it’s still far better than the others, but it isn’t quite as good as I recall. Too many instant unforeseen deaths (things dropping out of nowhere on your head, for example), dodgy collision detection, and even falling through floors – all things I’d either not cared about back then or have forgotten in the meantime.

Robocod is still wonderfully nonsensical though, with creative baddies (busses that spit out grannies being my favourite) and some decent bosses, but it perhaps isn’t the best Mega Drive platformer that isn’t Sonic any more.

It didn’t take very long to complete either, so even though I died a lot clearly there was an abundance of extra lives (not to mention the ten minutes semi-invincibility you get at the start for collecting items in the right order). I got stuck on a level in the “transport” world trying to find a missing penguin, but eventually located it. Most of the rest of the levels were pretty straightforward. Fun but dated.

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