An easily overlooked game that focuses on the fun in simplicity.
Think of it as one of those games at the Gaming Workshop in the mall, where you have a huge board and you alternate turns moving your pieces and attacking the enemy. You take your pieces and each piece as a certain amount of moves. The pieces include tanks, infantry, planes, and artillary. And each type of the army has different attributes. Like planes need to refuel at airbases from time to time. Also, the relationship the pieces have in battle include the rock/paper/scissors formula, where each unit has their own weakness exploited by a particular unit.
The goal of Desert Commander is simple: destroy the other man's headquarters. And as in Chess, you can move your "king". The graphics are simple- even for the NES. But for gameplay, who cares. The music is very memorable. I haven't played the game in years and I still can play it in my head. Both the graphics and sound set the game's theme very well and are both good enough to keep you focused and entertained.
Overall, if you are looking for a chess-like turn-based strategy, which is a simple game to learn and complete in a real short amount of time, then look no further. This game is strangely addictive and will give many hours of quality gameplay.