Hi,

I have recently bought an AVS and oddly enough, one of the first games, if not THE first one, game me strange errors. Like e.g. soldiers suddenly disappering, when picking up bombs there like 1-2 frames of the bomb graphics appearing in the middle of the screen, etc. But worst of it all: The game froze occasionally. Sometimes already during stage 1, sometimes in 2 or 3, it's really random.
I opened my cart, cleaned it, tried again, rinse and repeat, nothing helped.
So, thinking that the AVS couldn't be the issue, I ordered another cart. Funnily enough, it has a different board revision. BUT, what can I say? Same behavior, same glitches during gameplay and it still freezes at random.  
Other games I tried in the meantime seem to work just fine.

I searched this forum and the web if I was able to find reports of others complaining that Commando doesn't work, but there's only one report from 2016 who claims that it freezes when auto fire is enabled.
I have auto fire disabled, extra sprites off. And I'm on FW 1.30 Final.
When the game freezes, I can't go back to the AVS main menu.

High scores have been submitted by others, so it seems to work for others, but why do I have the same issues with 2 different carts and 2 different board revisions?  

Note that I don't have an original NES anymore, so I can't verify the game on real hardware.
Some of the glitches might be "OK", as I read multiple times that the game is know to be buggy, but since I can't compare it to original hardware, I can't tell.

Below is a video recording of me trying to play the game until it freezes.
I start with showing the AVS settings to rule out that there is any issue.





Noteworthy observations:
- 0:04 -> Input Options
- 0:09 -> Video Options
- 0:39 -> Soldier appears on top of screen briefly and then disappears (there are many other soldiers disappearing just like that throughout the video, I will only list big incidents from here on out)
- 1:05 -> When I pick up bombs, you can briefly see the bomb gfx appear elsewhere on screen
- 1:24 -> See some soldiers disappear when they touch the 3 palms
- 2:45 -> When I walk past the 2 soldiers hiding behind the rocks they start walking up and then *poof* they're gone
- 3:00 -> Top left and top right, the graphics of the soldiers hiding behind the rocks seems displaced
- 4:13 -> When the truck leaves the screen on the left side, it reappears on the right side
- 5:16 -> I have 41 bombs. I throw 1 bomb. The bomb counter goes down to 40. But then the 41 appears in the middle of the screen?
- 5:23 -> Rockets go right through me?!
- 5:29 -> The guy sitting in the water. Once I go past him, he walks up and disappears.
- 6:01 -> Green guy appears on top with gfx glitches
- 6:18 -> Game freezes

Thanks for looking!  

The enemy disappearing thing is not unique to the AVS. Commando was a very early NES game, and sort of badly programmed, so that happens on a regular NES. Most of your glitches are probably related to that as well.

The freezing thing is not good, though. Does it happen consistently around the six minute mark?

I heard that Commando is badly coded and buggy, but how did THIS game pass any quality assurance if most of what I've listed is standard.  
It was one of my favorite games of my childhood (on other systems though, e.g. C64). I feel it's unfortunate that the NES version is THAT bad.

As for the freezing and if it consistently happens around the 6 minute mark:
I have done some more testing today and stopped the duration of my runs.
I completely shut down the AVS after each run, started the stop watch and directly jumped into the action.
- 1st try: 6:18 at the end of the 2nd area (this was my run yesterday, see video above)
- 2nd try: 4:53 in the middle of the 2nd area
- 3rd try: 7:45 at the end of the 3rd area
- 4th try: 1:25 before the bridge
- 5th try: 9:02 before the end of the 3rd area

So it's safe to say that it's not about a certain duration of gameplay...  

Is it the PAL region Commando? I'd run the freezing issue by [email protected] and see if they can look into it.

A lot of the early Capcom NES games were buggy, especially the ones with the laser background on the box/label art. Graphic and drawing glitches, sprite weirdness. Commando, 1942, and Ghosts N Goblins usually had some weird glitch going on at some point. Not coincidentally, those were Capcom's first three NES ports. They were probably that way because it was early in the NES era, the early games were popular arcade games (and so just having it to play at home was considered amazing), programmers were still getting used to the system, and no one really gave a shit.

No, it's the NTSC US version of Commando (NES-CM-USA).
OK, I will contact [email protected]

Thanks!  

Unfortunately, I didn't get a reply in over a month...  

PRGE was a couple weeks back and they go big at that event. I don't know if you saw, but PRGE celebrated the NES this year with JH's entire CIB collection displayed along with some huge M Series items that were provided by RetroUSB. I think he just got the ROB display put back up this past week.

Did you try emailing from another email address?  Just in case Retrousb's email provider flagged you as spam?

 

I replied to an earlier mail. We had exchanged some emails before I bought the AVS.

Is anyone here maybe able to confirm that Commando dorsn't crash for him?

Thx.

Works just fine for me. Using 1.30final firmware.

Are you playing on NTSC or PAL mode?

Tried 2 different NTSC carts in NTSC mode on 1.30 final.
Please refer to the video in my first post to see where I play one of the carts.
The other cart is giving me the same results.

If you're dedicated enough to take that many videos of the game freezing, across multiple carts, why not reflash your AVS starting with the earliest available update and see if you get the same results and then try a couple of additional intermediary firmware updates? If it's truly the AVS, you'll most likely get a change in behavior somewhere down the line. However, if both carts keep randomly doing the same things they've been doing, I would think it's most likely just issues with how sloppily the game was apparently programmed.

Just played it again further, got through all of the first area in to 2-1. No crashes, just the normal crappy bugginess  

How are you powering the console? Are you plugging the console directly into a USB power adapter and then wall outlet, or are you using a converter? Have you tried playing with it powered through your computer or TV's USB port?

What controller are you using?

I have it connected to a PC USB Port and using an original NES Controller.

Is the AVS running your NTSC version in PAL mode?

NTSC game, so I'm running the AVS in NTSC mode.

Weird. Post pics of your board? Maybe you have two versions none of us have.

Do other games work for you?

When I was trying to beat the Famicom version of Commando this year, it froze on me. That was on console (AV Famicom).

Hi,

here are pics of my 2 different boards.
Both crash randomly.

Got a reply the from retroUSB today - promising!  
"Thanks for the pictures. Looks like you got two uncommon board types for that game, UNROM 01 and UNROM 07.
We will take a look into this and hopefully have a fix with a future firmware update! Please let us know if you run into any other issues."

A friend of mine has yet another version which he might send me to test.

I get the same bugs whether I'm using the AVS, regular NES, or emulator. It's just Commando.

Do you even encounter the freezes same as me?
Other commenters here on the thread don't seem to struggle with game freezes like I do.
Even retroUSB seemed surprised...

I found out that there are at least 4 or 5 different board versions.
Next week I'll get a 3rd version and I know a friend with a 4th one.
I will test them all. I want a working Commando on my AVS. 😎

EDIT: Could you take a picture of your board?

Sorry, I kind of forgot about this thread. Do you still want a picture of my board?

It would be highly appreciated.  
I have received a 3rd version in the meantime and tested it: Also doesn't work for me...

If I can find a working board revision I might write a blog post about it, otherwise, it doesn't make much sense.

Sorry for the delay. I wanted to re-check the game and update my AVS firmware and check again. It's still the same in both cases. The graphics are glitchy, but the game still plays fine. I didn't have any freezing.