How to play M*A*S*H online
- Fly the helicopter, or move the surgical instrument in the operating room: arrow keys
- Second player (in two-player games): T, F, G and H
- Choose a game (1 to 8): F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Handicap for the first player: F4 (the left difficulty switch; A = start with 0 points, B = start with 99 points)
- Second player and computer opponent setting: F9 (the right difficulty switch)
Gameplay
The first player to reach 999 points wins. You steer your helicopter around the trees and touch wounded soldiers to pick them up. After five men you are full and must fly back to base to drop them off. Each trip makes the next soldiers worth 2 points more, up to 25 a man. Frank Burns has an unfair advantage: his helicopter flies straight through the trees.
A North Korean tank at the bottom of the screen follows whichever helicopter has the most points and fires shells at it. If you are hit, your helicopter comes down and Klinger fetches you in the ambulance. Between rounds comes surgery: you have 15 seconds to remove as much shrapnel as you can, with each piece worth 15 to 80 points depending on how hard it is to reach. If a piece touches the patient on the way out, the operation is over.
Game variations
Odd-numbered games are for one player against a computer-controlled Frank Burns; even-numbered games are for two players.
- Welcome to Korea (games 1 and 2): the standard game of rescues, with surgery between rounds.
- Colonel Potter (games 3 and 4): you catch medics parachuting down. The lower you are when you catch one, the more points you get: from 5 at the top of the screen to 20 at the bottom.
- Cease Fire (games 5 and 6): like Welcome to Korea, but the tank no longer fires, and the helicopters are smaller, which makes rescues easier.
- O.R. (games 7 and 8): surgery only.
Tips
- Fill up before you fly home. Each drop-off raises the value of the next soldiers, so full trips of five men pay off.
- Being in the lead makes you the target. The tank goes after the leader, so keep moving when you are ahead.
- Go for the safe pieces first in surgery. One careless move ends the operation, so take the easy shrapnel before you try for the pieces worth 80.
- Swoop low in Colonel Potter. A medic caught near the ground is worth four times as much as one caught at the top.
History
Jamie Farr, who played Klinger in the TV series, was the official spokesman for the game, and the cartridge was sold both with and without a M*A*S*H T-shirt. Fox also ran a contest with a $25,000 prize for the best idea for a sequel, but no M*A*S*H 2 was ever released. The game was converted to the Atari 8-bit computers, the VIC-20, the TI-99/4A, the Intellivision and the ColecoVision.
Reviews were mixed. One critic praised the gameplay but felt the game made light of the war, and another missed the humour and characters of the TV show.
Similar games to play next
- Chopper Command – Activision’s helicopter game, with trucks to protect instead of soldiers to rescue
- Fantastic Voyage – another Fox film licence, set inside the human body
- Flash Gordon – a space game from 20th Century Fox
- Alien – 20th Century Fox’s game based on its own science fiction film