Custer's Last Command

I found this game completely by chance in one of those old collections on disks — I had no idea who created it. Custer's Last Command looks like a nineties shooter, but plays more like chaos.

It's a simple action game where you play some kind of soldier in a western setting. You shoot at enemies, if I may excuse a sentence with that word, move across the screen and try hard to survive. There's no great story, just shooting at things that move.

Controls are pretty stiff. Movement is cumbersome, shooting isn't responsive, enemies behave sometimes yes, sometimes no. You're never quite sure if you hit or got hit. Graphics are primitive in its purest form — sprites without subtlety, boring background. Sound equivalent of a starter sound on an old motorcycle. Playing it then feels more like a chore than entertainment.

Today this type of game is just a curiosity. Custer's Last Command isn't bad because it's old — it's bad because it was old already when it was made. It was a time when everyone thought they could make their own game in a garage, and results ranged from brilliant to desperate. Here it was more on the worse end.

Playing it is worth it only for historical reasons — you want to realize how far we've come in thirty years. Even retro games aren't entertainment when they're bad simply because they're bad, not because they're old.