Posted by Devin de Gruyl on Sep 14th, 2007
Forget Street Fighter, forget Strider, forget even Mega Man… the game that really first put Capcom on the map in the US was 1985′s Commando, one of the most ported and cloned arcade shooters of all time. Unlike most shmups of the day, which generally had you flying spacecraft through wave after wave of alien fighters, Commando cast you as an infantryman, “Super Joe,†dropped behind enemy lines with a mission of rescuing POWs and generally blowing up anything and anyone that got in your way. The game struck just the right chord with an America still at the height of the Rambo craze, long before the “one man army†cliché came to have a certain political stigma attached to it, and as a result Commando went on to become a rare high point in that nebulous period between the Golden and Silver Ages.
Naturally, such a popular game demands a sequel, and Capcom delivered one in 1987 – Bionic Commando. Unfortunately, it was a flop in the arcades, perhaps due in large part to a completely changed gameplay mechanic; now, rather than a top-down shooter, it had become a side-scrolling platformer with an awkward “bionic arm†replacing the main character’s ability to jump. It couldn’t compete with a similar game put out by Konami – a little something I like to call Contra – in the realm of visceral “blood & guts†shooters, and very few people remember it today.
Undaunted, Capcom decided to take a stab at the game on the NES… for which an enitre generation of gamers is forever grateful, seeing as the result was a game that is, to this day, still considered one of the greatest home video games ever published.
Bionic Commando (NES, 1988): By the time Capcom was finished, just about the only elements remaining from the arcade Bionic Commando were the core mechanic of a soldier with an extensible bionic arm and the side-scrolling format. That’s all; everything else, from plot to maps to gameplay, was scrapped and replaced with more adventure-like elements. (This was SOP for many arcade-to-NES ports during this period, as publishers sought ways around Nintendo’s Byzantine licensing restrictions of the time, which stated, among other things, that no game published for the NES could appear on any other platform. For you younger gamers out there, this explains why NES versions of such arcade games as Double Dragon, Strider, and Gauntlet, all of which appeared elsewhere as straight ports, differed so greatly from their sources.)
In the revised Bionic Commando, you, as the eponymous hero, are tasked with infiltrating enemy territory and rescuing Super Joe (supposedly the same guy from the original Commando), so the two of you can put a stop to the machinations of the rather laughably-retitled “Badds†once and for all. (Thanks to Nintendo of America’s infanous censorship policies, we have to suffer through inane text that completely disguises their patently obvious goal of reviving Nazism; this despite the fact that their “Master D,†whom you meet during the endgame, is clearly a revived/cloned Adolf Hitler. This, along with some embarassing “Engrish†translations here and there, is one of the very few real negatives in Bionic Commando.)
You get to choose which of the game’s 19 areas you’ll attack, and in what order. (The one restriction is that you cannot cross over the long diagonal between Areas 6 and 8 until after you’ve found a certain item.) Once you’ve selected your infiltration point, you select your equipment and are parachuted in. Your goal in each stage is threefold (in addition to the obvious one of “just stay aliveâ€): You must find and use a radio room in each stage; you must make your way through any and all opposition to the generator room; and you must destroy that generator to acquire special items.
Since you cannot jump, you must use your bionic arm to climb and swing between different levels of platforms. Obviously, this will be awkward at first until you get used to it… but once you do, you will wonder how you ever played a platform game without this incredibly handy and versatile tool. With practice, you can do just about anything you want with the arm, up to and including saving yourself from a fatal plunge down a bottomless shaft. As you gain proficiency you can even pull off crowd-pleasing tricks such as a move I call the “Tarzan Maneuver,†where you just latch onto and swing from one platform to the next without ever touching ground. (There is one portion of Area 6 where this skill is all but necessary to advance, so it’s worth your while to keep practicing it whenever you can.) Eventually, you won’t even remember a time when you were confused by this weird accessory. (Hint: Don’t play a session of Bionic Commando and then immediately pop in your Super Mario Bros cart. That is, unless you like short-circuiting your brain a little bit!)
One of the most annoying things for newbie players is that it seems Bionic Commando suffers from One-Hit Kill Syndrome, where if you’re so much as grazed by enemy fire you become worm food. Indeed, this is a problem that plagues many NES games, including all-time classics like Contra and its sequels. Fortunately, unlike those games Bionic Commando actually does have HP for your proxy; it’s just not there at first. Rather, the game features a rudimentary “experience point†system, where defeated enemies drop bullets. Picking up a certain number of bullets will increase your HP by one point (represented by green boxes at the top of your screen). You can keep track of how many bullets you need to reach the next “level†on the Pause screen. While it would’ve been nice to start off with a single HP so you never have to worry about OHKS in the first place, you can’t argue that it’s better than not having such a system at all!
On the map screen, you may have noticed some Areas (13 through 19, to be specific) are marked in red. These are “Neutral Zones,†where members of both sides can meet and conduct business in peace. (For you history buffs, it’s much like the “open city†phenomenon of WWII, most famously represented on film in Casablanca.) You’ll be able to get valuable information and items here, and even meet with the enemy leader in a non-combat situation. There’s just one catch: If you fire a weapon in a Neutral Zone, for any reason (even if you just hit the fire button by accident), you’ll be relentlessly attacked until you exit the Area. Of course, some Neutral Zones feature barriers you’ll have to shoot down to get past…
You have three lives to complete your mission. After that, it’s Game Over. No passwords, and no Continues either – unless you earn them. Notice the trucks that move between Areas on the world map. If your helicopter flies over one on its own travels, you’ll be attacked and sent to a top-down shooter reminiscent of the original Commando. In addition to dodging a hail of bullets and grenades, you’ll be able to earn up to two Continues per encounter by defeating larger enemies (either a Jeep or a shield-toting, missile-firing super soldier). You can make as many encounters as you like, and can have up to nine Continues in reserve. And trust me, you’ll need all of them! Even so, a password system would have been nice, so you don’t have to complete the game in a single session.
The radio rooms are almost a puzzle unto their own. There are four different transmitters you’ll need to find during the game (you start with one, for a total of five), each color-coded. Part of the game involves using the correct transmitter in each area, but clues are few and far between. If you pick the wrong transmitter, you’ll still be able to advance (you need to at least try the radio rooms in order to open the doors to the generator rooms) but you’ll miss out on valuable information. Also, take care; the enemy might not appreciate the fact you’re tapping in on their conversations, and you could be ambushed when you’re done… It’s not Solid Snake by any means, but you’ll still feel like you’re in the middle of a real espionage mission.
And meanwhile, you’ll still have to contend with some of the trickiest “jumps†and most fiendish level design of any NES platformer. You can expect many frustrating (but fun!) retries of various levels and set pieces before finally getting the timing down right. The final “Boss” (actually a giant helicopter) bears special mention in this light: It’s a simple enough “fight,” just one shot to the window and it goes down. However, you have to make that shot while falling down a long (about 2-3 screens) shaft, with no way to stop or slow your fall. This only gives you time to get off one shot at the window, and if you miss, you’re dead; if you land, you’ll be annihilated by the chopper’s machine gun, which cannot be dodged. The strange thing is, unlike many (too many) other games where precision timing is necessary (Wizards & Warriors, anyone?), somehow with Bionic Commando it never really feels like a chore.
In terms of audiovisuals, this game is a perfect representation of the 1988 state-of-the-art in NES game design. All the trademarks of the 8-bit design aesthetic are present, right down to the “shiny†finish given to most objects and the “techno-natural†look and feel of the enemy HQ. The music, while not as memorable as other NES games, is still very atmospheric, particularly the heavy use of militaristic drumbeats underscoring the main melodies.
Bottom line, Bionic Commando remains an absolute highlight of the NES library, and should be required playing for anyone who bemoans 8-bit platformers as all being clones of one another. Play this game and experience the difference that changing just one element of the classic formula can really make! Frankly, I’m amazed this hasn’t appeared on the Wii Virtual Console yet; I’d gladly part with 500 points to play this game again. In the meantime, keep checking eBay or your local indy game store for old NES carts; emulation is all well and good, but few things can compare to playing classic games on the actual hardware…
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Related posts:
- Retro-Active: Phantasy Star II
- Retro-Active: NES Tetris Revisited
- Retro-Active: Alundra
- Retro-Active: Impossible Mission
- Retro-Active: E.T. – Entertainingly Terrible?
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This game holds a special place in my heart as being the very first NES game that I completed. I remember jumping for joy when I finally got that last shot at Hitler perfectly timed at the end.
Great write-up. I’d love to see this on XBLA, but I doubt it’ll ever happen.