Combat School – “Don’t be a chicken!”

Konami did very well from Hyper Olympic (also known in some places as Track and Field), the 1983 multi-sports game which became one of the arcade successes of the following year. It helped kick off a whole genre, not least the obviously derivative Daley Thompson’s Decathlon by Ocean Software for home computers. Konami released a timely sequel, Hyper Olympic ‘84, which was known as Hyper Sports elsewhere, and Ocean (and new sub-label Imagine) converted that one on a more official basis.

The issue Konami faced with doing further sequels to Hyper Olympic was that there was a natural time gap built in. Their next release in the series would be Hyper Sports Special/Konami ‘88/’88 Games in 1988, coinciding with the next Olympic games, and they would have been on to a loser releasing it any sooner than that. To make use of the concept in the meantime, they had to be a bit more inventive. What if they took the multi-sports game and combined it with another popular theme of the time, a military one? The result was Combat School.

The Combat School arcade machine initially used the same trackball controls as later editions of Hyper Olympic, and to much the same ends of controlling intense physical activity. The courses you run through in Combat School have more in the way of water and monkey bars in the way, but you’re still trying to run from one place to another quick enough. Likewise, Hyper Sports had shooting as one of its events, and Combat School expands that into several variations, like one which resembles a vertical shoot-’em-up and one where you have to avoid hitting certain targets. The tough military atmosphere is conveyed through the graphics of the camp (Konami called the game Boot Camp in the US) and of you and your rival recruit, and there is some speech telling you to “go home to your mother” when you lose.

The big advance in Combat School is in the means of progression. At heart you still just have to match a target score to progress linearly through events, but Konami added some very smart additions to that. If you just miss the target, you can progress by doing chin-ups instead, once per playthrough. And if you exceed your target, you get bonus extra time for the next stage, allocated according to how much you beat it by. The result is something much more fluid and interesting than just having one to build up one specific level of expertise.

Combat School was a reasonable success in Japanese arcades, hitting #4 in Game Machine’s arcade chart. UK arcade charts are less available, but there is an interesting reference by Mike Pattenden in Commodore User to Combat School having “proved a surprise flop after the way it was so well received critically”. Your Sinclair provided one of one of those positive critical reviews, with their reviewer writing that “Combat School reminded me of Hypersports in the way that you have to wibble the control ball as fast as possible to get anywhere […] what really made it a winner were the animated graphics and the Sergeant shouting commands”.

Ocean Software’s long term deal with Konami — the one that had given them half a compilation’s worth of arcade sports games on their Imagine label — had finished by the time of Combat School. They agreed a separate new deal with Konami to make home computer versions of it, with the game this time to be released on the main Ocean label. Ocean then assembled a team to work on the conversions. They drew mostly on their recently enlargened stable of in-house developers, including some of the same ones to have worked on Renegade.

The Games Machine’s preview reflected on the recent changes at Ocean. “This time last year there were doubts over Ocean’s credibility as a quality software house. This Christmas, after a year of successes, the situation is totally reversed”. The modular nature of Combat School lent itself to being worked on in pieces by a lot of different people, in a similar fashion to Epyx with World Games and its predecessors, which would allow some swapping around of developers as needed.

A Your Sinclair preview gave army names to those working on the Spectrum version: Andrew ‘Death-Dealer’ Deakin and Mike ‘Mad Dog’ Lamb on programming, Ivan ‘Hellfire’ Horn on graphics and Roger ‘Fearsome’ Fenton on music. The latter appears to have been replaced with Jas C. Brooke. The Commodore 64 version had programming by Allan Shortt, Dave Collier and Collier’s protégé Paul Hughes, graphics by Simon Butler and Shaun Ridings, and music by Martin Galway. Collier was a veteran of both Daley Thompson’s Decathlon and Hyper Sports.

The Amstrad version started out as led by James Higgins, still freelancing but working from Ocean’s offices for the first time, with graphics by Ronnie Fowles (coming from Renegade) and music by David Whittaker. With Higgins struggling to adapt to working as part of a team and to get everything done in time, Mike Lamb came across from the Spectrum version to help out. Higgins later recalled spending extensive time “locked in a room” with Lamb and Fowles and called Lamb’s intervention “a timely lesson in how much I still had to learn”. Higgins was worried he had ruined his big chance, but he was soon made an Ocean employee.

Each of the different versions of Combat School took about three months to develop. Once done, Ocean held a big press launch event in Manchester, with journalists competing at the game to win a £50 Virgin voucher. As Your Sinclair reported, “the winner, by a useful margin, was none other than our glorious leader”, editor Teresa Maughan. They added that “her noble and entirely deserved victory (her words) was apparently due to her being “completely skillo”.”

Being completely skillo was a requirement for players to progress far in Combat School. Crash wrote that it was “a faithful conversion of the arcade original as it’s almost impossible to complete […] some of the stages are so gruelling it would be easier to do the tests in real life than the computer version!” before adding that “Combat School is the ideal Christmas present for weaklings and strong men alike”. It’s hard for me to tell how the difficulty compared because the emulation experience is so different. I found it more than almost impossible to complete the first level on Spectrum or Amstrad, unable to generate the quick joystick rotation required. With the arcade game, playing the later non-trackball version, I got most of the way through with relative ease.

Andy Smith in ACE wrote that the comparison to the arcade version was one of “exchanging bruised hands (from slapping the ball) for aching wrists”. He went on to write that “though it’s basically just an athletic game of the Decathlon variety, the scenario is different and the simultaneous split screen two player option adds another dimension, making this one of the more worthy arcade conversions”. Others across all three versions were generally positive. 

Sinclair User’s Jim Douglas described Combat School as “Daley Thompson with an Uzi” and declared it “great” with “enough variety in the events to save it from being a terminally dull left-right waggle-yourself-to-death affair”. Mike Pattenden in Commodore User called it “a classy job”. Julian Rignall in Zzap! 64 found it “one of the best arcade conversions around”. Eugene Lacey in Computer & Video Games, meanwhile, provided both a positive review and one of my favourite opening sentences. “When I played Combat School against Marillion’s keyboard player at the Family Leisure Centre in Old Compton Street […we] had a great old time”.

Combat School was a success, reaching the top of the UK combined formats charts for at least two and probably three weeks. This was not just down to its quality, positive reviews, or even the implied endorsements of prog rock musicians. Doing better than the arcade machine was partly a matter of helpful timing. Mike Pattenden’s review explained the context: “If 1987 is remembered for anything, it will be for ‘Namism. It was the year film producers rediscovered Vietnam war movies, right down to the soundtrack from one, Full Metal Jacket, becoming a hit record. Ocean, with typical guile, have ripped the tune off and stuck it on the front of this conversion”. 

It was during Ocean’s development of Combat School that Full Metal Jacket, complete with boot camp section, came out in the UK and topped the box office listings for two weeks. The hit record, “Full Metal Jacket (I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor)”, reached #2 on the UK chart just after that. Dan Gilbert in Zzap! 64 also picked up on that one, mentioning “a short but brilliant Martin Galway tune on the title screen – and as you might expect, he wants to be your drill instructor!”

It couldn’t have worked out much better for Ocean, but they still had to spot and take the opportunity. They may have changed personnel and approach compared to a few years earlier, but they were very much still the same company that had worked out a way to simultaneously capitalise on Daley Thompson’s athletic success and on ripping off Hyper Olympic. And their methods were still working.

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Sources:

• Ocean: The History, Chris Wilkins & Roger M. Keen, Retro Fusion Books, 2013
• Welcome to Combat School, Darran Jones, Retro Gamer No. 137, January 2015
• A tribute to Ocean Software, Graeme Mason, Retro Gamer No. 246, May 2023
• Combat School (Konami, 1987), Finnish Retro Game Comparison Blog, 2023
• Best Hit Games 25, Game Machine No. 311, July 1987, accessed via Onitama.tv
• Slots of Fun – Combat School, Teresa Maughan, Your Sinclair No. 21, September 1987, accessed via the Internet Archive
• Several drops of imagination in the Ocean, The Games Machine No. 2, December 1987, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• Combat School, Rachael J. Smith, Your Sinclair No. 24, December 1987, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• James Higgins, Neil Reive, Arnold 2: Amstrad CPC – The Developers Q&As Uncut, 2021
• An Interview with Paul Hughes, Neil Carr, Remix 64, 2020
• Ocean Software’s Central Street HQ, Jack Yarwood, Time Extension, 2023
• T’zers, Your Sinclair No. 25, January 1988, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• Screen Test – Combat School, Andy Smith, ACE No. 5, February 1988, accessed via the Internet Archive
• Combat School, Crash No. 48, January 1988, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• Arcade review – Combat School, Jim Douglas, Sinclair User No. 70, January 1988, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• Screen Scene – Combat School, Mike Pattenden, Commodore User No. 51, December 1987, accessed via Amiga Magazine Rack
• C+VG Reviews – Combat School, Eugene Lacey, Computer & Video Games No. 76, February 1988, accessed via the Internet Archive
• Zzap! Test – Combat School, Zzap! 64 No. 33, January 1988, accessed via Def Guide to… Zzap! 64
• Full Metal Jacket (I Want to Be Your Drill Instructor), chart history at Official Charts

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