Games of the Abstract: Captain Commando (1991)

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

One to Four Players

Originally for: Arcade

 

Revisiting the beat-em-up genre, Captain Commando from Capcom, starring their literal namesake, is pretty well regarded. Even if it is because the company, whose name actually comes from "Capsule Computers", clearly they and the fans became fond of him to include the titular character in the likes of the Marvel vs. Capcom fighting games to the RPG crossover Namco × Capcom (2005). This is all despite him never getting a sequel game, a shame as this is a distinct entry into the beat-em-up genre.

Set in 2026, which is hilarious unless things are going to go downhill soon, we have the futuristic version of Metro City from the game Final Fight (1989) as our initial setting. An intergalactic villain named Scumocide (or Genocide in the original Japanese version) is head of all the scum and villainy of crime on Earth and the galaxy, with Captain Commando and his team are sick of this, wishing to stop them all. It is as simple a premise as the game mechanics themselves, where you have a basic strike and jump button, some moves depending on the directional commands and a special that drains energy for a huge attack.

We are yet to get to some of the more elaborate games of this genre, which varied the gameplay, like Konami's Bucky O'Hare tie-in, the 1992 arcade game, which is a shooter in a scrolling beat-em-up template, or two of the best of the genre which added move combos and more buttons to use, like Winkysoft's Denjin Makai II: Guardians (1995), or Capcom's own Battle Circuit (1997). However, we can proudly say that, in terms of a fever dream game logic, Captain Commando has personality in spades as so many of these games did. It begins with your closable heroes, where the least interesting of the lot is a ninja, usually the more entertaining choice for most gamers when given the options. Captain Commando himself is pretty memorable himself, including the digitized sound clip of his name, "toyrific" in form but with it clear how he would get constantly brought back into Capcom crossover games. I wish the two others, excluding the ninja who was, were brought back into Capcom crossover games, as Capcom throughout their history had a delirious nature to character designs, even Street Fighter with its iconic characters having a sense of style to them that was really distinct. You have Baby Head immediately standing out here a literal hyper-intelligent baby, with diaper and pacifier, piloting a robot suit that, yes, can pilot already in a robot suit much larger ones you knock enemies out of when they appear. Mack the Knife manages to stand out too, not just for his name explicitly referencing the Bertolt Brecht song, as a pink alien mummy with twin knives that, depending on how you defeat them, are blades which cause enemies to melt into skeletons. The later is one of a few moments of where a premise of a Saturday morning cartoon gets suddenly gruesome, like the fact some enemies, like a kabuki warrior boss of one stage, can disembowel you when you lose a life, torso off below everything from the hips downwards entirely, with some gore and a trace of guts to traumatise any kids playing this back in the arcade.

Between muscular pink haired women with electrified sais, little portly fire breathers, and men in xenomorph alien cosplay, cybernetic suits blatantly riffing as much as possible on the H.R. Giger designs without copyright infringement, make the villains just as diverse. There is something we could be in danger of losing if we are not careful with the type of games more commonly published decades later, which is unlike the triple-A games in the decades after which are carefully put together, this has an improvised dream logic which is compelling. Even for a game set in the future, it seemingly wanders off from a conventional sense of progression soon after the first level. We go from the streets of Metro City fighting knife welding hoodlums to a finale in a spaceship against Scumocide, somehow reaching there by way of an old Japanese temple full of more ninja to a circus that has a secret lab full of horrifying mutant experiments in the basement. This is matched by the gorgeous visual aesthetic, Capcom always at this point on their A-game in terms of their quality.  

Having played quite a few now, this does seem basic next to others I've written of, and an appeal to these games in general is the pleasure of just bashing the attack button at thugs over and over, taking advantage of sidestepping enemies vertically and that the throw is a godsend. There is one tangent chasing a mad scientist on hover boards in a river chase, which is as nineties as you can get, but this is, without this seemingly a cheap description, a "classic" example of this beat-em-up genre. By the later games, and those which were released directly for video game consoles or the resurgence of them in the 2000s and 2010s, we will be getting RPG options pioneered by the likes of Battle Circuit where you can power up your attacks, or multiple attack buttons with combos a greater emphasis. Captain Commando, alongside its cartoonish and vibrant tone, is a game from the old school titles before these examples, which are a pleasure enough in them especially when they have the personality this has.