M*A*S*H

"It's a M*A*S*H game...sorta."

The lever is outrageous
It brings on many changes
Operate or fly 'round if you pleeeease....

That's sung to ''Suicide Is Painless'' from the ''M*A*S*H'' movie in case you couldn't figure that out.

Annnyway, this game finds you as Capt. Benjamin Franklin ''Hawkeye'' Pierce, and for some reason you seem to be competing with Major Frank ''Ferret Face'' Burns as to how many wounded you can rescue/paratroopers you can pick up/bullets you can remove. See, the game select lever is mentioned in my first iambic heptameter up there gives you the option of making your M*A*S*H experience one of several different choices.

One option is to fly around in a helicopter picking up wounded soldiers as a North Korean tank fires at you. You and Burns must every now and then return to different tents to unload. Every once in a while you may get hit by an enemy shell, therefore making your injured passengers even more wounded, but fortunately no one (apparently) dies in this game.

Every so often, you find yourself controlling a little set of clamps trying to remove the offending bullets from your fallen brethren. Your fallen brethren are a real trip, I'll tell you. They seem to all be pear-shaped, purple in color, awake and frowning during major surgery, and equipped with tunnels to facilitate foreign-object-removal.

If you really like the Milton-Bradley-like concept of ''Don't touch the sides with the bullet!'' there is an option to do only the surgery, allowing someone else to take over for you in the wounded-collecting department. Honestly, I don't ever remember Hawkeye flying around in a chopper to rescue soldiers all that much in the movie or the show, so if you want a more accurate emulation of your favorite show, you may just go for that. After all, it's the only part in which you get that sense of humor the for which franchise is most famous: you shout ''FERRET FACE!'' whenever you make a mistake and touch the side of the patient's ''tunnel'' with a bullet. (You shout an insult, at someone doing surgery, mind you, because you are a klutz. No wonder Burns hated Hawkeye if this is what really happened in the operating room.)

There is another option, which finds you dispatched by Colonel Sherman T. Potter to fly around below a bunch of paratroopers, apparently so they can be cut to pieces by your propellers. I don't know why these troopers would have to be picked up in mid-air, anyway, but it seems kind of dangerous for them to drop down onto the helicopter like that. Those rotating blades that keep the helicopter aloft might be somewhat dangerous to human flesh, but perhaps I'm being too analytical of the whole thing. But, besides debating the logistics of why these people, who just jumped out of an airplane, really need to be rescued by an alcoholic doctor before they touch the ground or are rescued by a tight-butted military-man of a doctor, the game is so shallow and like the first game that it's barely worth mentioning.

I'll be the first to concede that all of these games are shallow and repetitive, and most have little or nothing to do with the actual focus of the show, and that Korean War Veterans deserve more respect than this cheesy video game cartridge (and that cheesy TV series, for that matter), but the game is fun! Somehow, you'll find yourself getting into it, especially if you enlist one of your very best frinds to be your arch-nemesis. (What better arch-nemesis than a man that is trying to save lives along with you is there, after all?) I think it's all in the variety. Each game itself might be slightly underdeveloped, but on the whole the value is there. It's worth it because it gives you something else to look forward to when you get tired of doing the same crap over and over. There are many games out there that should have taken this lesson seriously.

What happens when you do rack up your 999 points, anyway? Did you win the war? I guess there's not much closure in the game. I guess you probably shouldn't expect much closure in this review, either.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/17/02, Updated 02/17/02