There's more to them than meets the eye!
Robot Commando is the 22nd book in the Fighting Fantasy series of interactive gamebooks. It was written by the American game designer Steve Jackson, and has a feel somewhat similar to his earlier Scorpion Swamp.
The player lives on a far-off planet where they make a living as a dinosaur rancher. This is made safer via the ranchers piloting Humongous Mecha dubbed "cowboys", and giant robots are used for numerous other heavy-duty tasks as well.
The story begins one morning when the player finds all their fellow workers mysteriously dropping into a sleep from which they can't be roused. A little inspection of the media quickly makes one thing clear: the people's ancient enemies, the Karosseans, have used a biological weapon to make everyone in the nation fall asleep so they can easily invade. Through some quirk of fate only the player remains awake to launch a stealth mission in hopes of finding a way to stop them from conquering the nation with their robot army while the player's countrymen sleep helplessly.
Largely the book feels like an attempt to adapt the Fighting Fantasy rules to a BattleTech-like setting. Unlike most books in the Fighting Fantasy range, Robot Commando is a Wide-Open Sandbox letting the player go where they choose any time they choose, with multiple different ways to thwart the invasion.
Robot Commando provides examples of:
- Action Survivor: Unlike books such as Space Assassin or The Rings of Kether, your character is just a rancher who's doing his best to deal with an enemy invasion.
- Adventure Towns: The different cities you can visit to look for advantages in your mission.
- Animal Mecha: There's a robot Tyrannosaurus rex built by your people's scientists that apparently will rampage when activated. There are also mechs the player can pilot based on a snake, a hedgehog, a crab and a dragonfly "complete with buzzing wings".
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: For some reason, everyone fights non-mech combat with swords.
- BFG: The tank mech has one that does crippling damage, but only holds three shots.
- Bling of War: The Karosseans' king wears a uniform with lots of gold ornamentation.
- Combat by Champion: If you manage to convince the invaders that you represent your entire people, you can demand single combat with the enemy leader according to their own Proud Warrior Race traditions, and if you win you can command them to leave the country.
- Cool Sword: The Sword of State, the country's symbol of power, turns out to have actually been made for use in combat and gives the player a bonus in non-mech fights if they can steal it from the invaders. It also allows you to automatically win the argument that you stand as a representative of your people and demand Combat by Champion with the enemy leader.
- Death by Materialism: At one point you can take a gold-hauling robot if you need a new one, and you're given the option to take some of the national treasury while you're at it. Doing so gets you caught by the invaders and unceremoniously thrown in prison. You kind of deserve it for stealing from your own helpless people.
- Descriptiveville: Every city in Thalos is named after its central feature. City of Knowledge, City of Industry, City of Pleasure, City of the Jungle...
- Deus ex Machina: There's no explanation for why you're the only person in the country unaffected by the sleep weapon, other than because then there'd be no adventure.
- Final Boss: Two of them! You can either challenge the enemy leader to Combat by Champion with swords, or assault their base in a mech, resulting in the enemy leader taking on your mech in his Super Tank.
- Find the Cure!: Other than defeating the enemy leader, this is the other major way to win. If you can create a cure to the sleeping agent and find a way to distribute it to the whole country, your people wake up and chase off the invaders without much issue.
- Fragile Flyer: The Mosquito Fighter is very lightly armored, but its speed grants a huge SKILL boost to its user.
- Good Luck Charm: There's a scientifically-verified one in a museum. It sounds so useful the player's character takes it and has to fight a security robot for it with no input from the player. That's beyond even the usual level of Kleptomaniac Hero expected in these books.
- Homing Projectile: You can find a homing missile to attach to your robot that does automatic damage when you decide to use it.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Doing well at a video game will make you a better pilot of real mecha.
- The Immune: Your character is immune to the sleeping sickness that took down your entire nation.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The mechs you can find are usually pretty awesome, but the only way to get ones meant for actual combat is to find out how to get to the secret military base.
- Invisibility Cloak: You find out one exists by playing an arcade game, of all things.
- Keystone Army: Surprisingly averted. There's one ending where the player sneaks in and assassinates the Karossean king before his soldiers bring the player down, but it's not acknowledged as a victory. Instead the player needs to find a way to kill him that the enemy officers will recognize as a defeat. Probably the only Fighting Fantasy book where the big threat is an invading army, that doesn't say killing the leader will make his evil legions turn on each other and do the player's job for them.
- Man-Eating Plant: The Man Trap Plant in the jungle, big enough to be a threat to your mech.
- A Mech by Any Other Name: In the interests of making it clear they count as your mech, any vehicle you can ride in is a "robot"-whatever. Including cars, construction vehicles and jets. This leads to the book going out of its way a few times to explain that human-sized, autonomous robots (because all the human security guards who might get in your way are asleep) you fight don't use the mech-combat rules, despite also being called "robots".
- Mech vs. Beast: Any of the scuffles between a mech you're piloting and a dinosaur.
- Mini-Mecha: One group of defenders of the enemy encampment is a bunch of soldiers in "mini robots" who attack you as a swarm.
- More Dakka: King Minos' robot has so many guns firing at you, yours will still take a little damage every round you fight him—even if you win the round.
- Multiple Endings: Unusual for the series in having more than one way to win. Although the usual "hunt down and kill the Big Bad" option's still there.
- No OSHA Compliance: For some reason an extremely dangerous Tyrannosaurus rex mech is an exhibit at a public museum. The invaders inspect it a little too closely and next thing you know, the damn thing wakes up and immediately attacks everything in sight.
- Oddball in the Series: For numerous reasons. The free-flow exploration, the multiple successful paths to victory, and, of course, piloting giant mecha.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: The ruler of the Karosseans is, unsurprisingly, an extremely formidable fighter himself, and drives a mech so nasty yours still takes damage every round even if you're the one who wins that exchange.
- Sonic Stunner: Well... in this case, it's a limited charge sonic blaster and it's mounted on the tank robot you can find. This weapon gives you a huge advantage against any mech or dinosaur you fire it at.
- Tank Goodness: The most powerful mech the player can get is basically a tank with a human torso sticking out of the top. Then again, the same's true of the villain's personal mech too.
- Transforming Mecha: Some military mechs can change from robots into fighter jets. This book was written early enough, Land-Air-Mechs were a thing BattleTech was still trying.
