we come upon CapCom himself, Captain Commando. Yeah, he’s the roided-out lightning wielding

dude with the mummy and ninja and weird baby-in-a-mech friends who appeared in the first two MVC

games, but before all that he was... the roided-out lightning wielding dude with the mummy and

ninja and weird baby-in-a-mech friends starring in his own side-scrolling beat-’em-up, patterned

very much after 1989’s Final Fight. Eerily similar, in fact. But it’s an effective

vehicle for a character who, until that point, had just been some weird comic-book hero without

an actual comic book, remaining trapped in the back pages of the manuals for Mega Man

and Section Z and other late-80’s NES titles.

Awright, so unless you go completely off-the-wall, most games in this genre - be they of the

Konami, Capcom, or Sega lineages - are pretty much identical. There’s some big evil thing

threatening a metropolitan area, you and some number of friends choose your heroes and beat

up anything and everything that dares stand in your way, and for whatever reason drum

cans and crates contain pre-cooked food capable of repairing knife wounds and fire damage.

(Though shortening tempura donburi to “TENDON” is funnier than it should be.) All that really

sets them apart from one another are the things you can do and the crap you can pick up. In

a moderate deviation from the norm, Captain Commando features a broad range of projectile

weapons, from guns to lasers to rocket launchers capable of splash damage and immolation. Also,

ride armor, predating Mega Man X by a good two years. Problem is, you interface with

said ride armor by jumping into it, and if there’s a good bit of enemy traffic about,

chances are you’re just going to get knocked out of the air and some other schmoe’s gonna

jump in and then you’re gonna have to jump-kick him out of it again... and by the time you

can get settled into the pilot’s chair, everything’s dead anyway and it’s almost

out of energy. I hate when that happens.

Aside from the moderately clunky armor, the rest of the mechanics are remarkably sound.

You don’t really get that Streets of Rage issue of hostiles backpedaling to stay just

out of reach, before coming in for the kill at speeds approaching Mach 3. Movement is

smooth and the challenge feels balanced, except for boss fights because “balanced” doesn’t

get you many quarters in the coin box, now does it? On a completely unrelated note, I

can’t help but think that the baby piloting the mech is some sort of precursor to Tron

Bonne. This arcade version can occasionally be found in the wild, or as part of Capcom

Classics Collection Vol. 2 for the PS2 or Remixed for the PSP. A Super NES port was

also released in the States in ‘95, after the big N decided to loosen up a bit and didn’t

have to throw Brenda into the kind of gender confusion Poison was subject to. It does largely

excise the blood and occasional bifurcation, though. Have to keep the consoles clean, after

all!