Cobra Triangle
A weapon-equipped speedboat races through 25 varied levels.
Cobra Triangle is a 1989 racing video game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The player controls a weapon-equipped speedboat through 25 levels, with objectives including winning races, saving swimmers, and defusing bombs. It is displayed from a 3D isometric perspective with automatic scrolling that follows the player's movement.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Rare
- Publisher
- Nintendo
- Programmer
- Mark Betteridge
- Artist
- Tim Stamper, Kevin Bayliss
- Designer
- Mark Betteridge
- Tim Stamper
- Chris Stamper
- Composer
- David Wise
- Platforms
- Nintendo Entertainment System
- Released
- July 1989
Facts from the source article.
Gameplay
Cobra Triangle is a racing and vehicular combat video game. The player races a cannon-equipped speedboat against other watercraft across 25 stages of graduated difficulty. Objectives vary: winning races, saving swimmers, and defusing bombs, with some levels ending in boss fights. In races, the boat must avoid the riverbank and obstacles while outpacing a timer. It can attack competitors, fly via ramps, and collect power-ups. Upstream races require navigating logs and whirlpools. Bomb defusing involves moving four protected bombs to a detonation site. In another mode, the player destroys rogue boats before they drag swimmers to the lake's edge; any swimmer dragged halfway must be manually returned. The player loses a life if unsuccessful. The game uses a 3D isometric perspective with automatic scrolling.
Background and release
Cobra Triangle was developed by Rare, a company that began as Ultimate Play the Game. That studio was founded in 1982 by Tim and Chris Stamper, along with Tim’s wife Carol, operating from Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Ultimate was secretive about its operations and upcoming projects, and little was known about its development process aside from the use of separate teams for different tasks. The game was designed by Mark Betteridge and the Stamper brothers, with a soundtrack by David Wise. Nintendo released Cobra Triangle in July 1989. It later appeared in the August 2015 Xbox One compilation Rare Replay, which included thirty titles.
Reception
Jaz Rignall of Computer and Video Games gave high marks to Cobra Triangle for its believable visuals, fluid controls, and highly replayable nature, recommending it to readers. Mark Caswell of The Games Machine found the waterfall jumps particularly irritating. Skyler Miller of AllGame later praised the game's variety of level designs. Critics observed that the game looked similar to R.C. Pro-Am, especially in its camera perspective and style of play. Brett Alan Weiss of AllGame connected Cobra Triangle to the 1982 game River Raid, noting both involve driving a boat and dodging land, but Cobra Triangle uses an isometric viewpoint instead of a top-down one and leans more toward racing than combat. IGN and GamesRadar listed it among the best NES titles. GamesRadar held it in the highest regard of any Rare game, saying it has aged well and captures the NES era's charm through its isometric action, power-ups, and mix of mission types.
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