Bionic Commando

"You mean all I have to do to get that thing is give up an arm? Heck, why not?"

There's a certain dilemma that comes when you release a game whose role model packs a gun, an afro, and a bionic arm. The first two characteristics were fairly prevalent(especially in South Central L.A. and anywhere in New York City) throughout America when this game was released, so any worries about kids role modeling them were redundant at best. The bionic arm, however, presented a bit of a problem. You'd have think that the rash of hand decapitations that occurred after The Empire Strikes Back erroneously taught us that cybernetics can substitute for lightsaber practice would have kept us kids away from this, but nooooo. We had to arrange the little ''accidents'' that would result in the loss of an arm, in the hope that we would wake up in a top-secret military lab with an extendo-arm and a mission to save Super Joe. But walking around a construction site with the attiude: ''Must hurt self'' generally just got us yelled at.

GRAPHICS: Three words: Hitler's exploding head. Was Nintendo's Fascist Censor asleep or something? Maybe the guy was a German Jew who just felt that he had to leave that exploding head part in, while at the same time altering an obscene German ethno/sexual epithet into ''Get the heck out of here, you nerd!'' ANYWAY, the character faces are quite well-detailed here; you almost feel like you're seeing the same fresh-faced young recruits that got turned into hamburger in Saving Private Ryan. Or the poor guy who got turned into a machine in Robocop. The mechanical and natural level locations all have passable detail, as does the ponderously slow bullets fired from your gun. But hey, for 1988 this wasn't all that shabby. And the fact that they put TWO graphical modes in (three if you count the map where the helicopter runs into green rectangles), one side-scrolling and one overhead-scrolling, made this one nice to look at. Animation was two-frame, mostly, befitting the day. But there were some REALLY bright spots(Albatross fight, baby!) and the fluid way in which your guy swung(swang?) around on his bionic arm was a sight to behold. If you timed it right, you could easily swing across the platforms to the beat of the...

MUSIC: Capcom kicks synthesizer. While Bionic Commando wasn't the musical wonder that was, say, Mega Man 3, I recall REALLY liking the music as a kid, and even though my style preference has changed somewhat over the years, it's among the best on the NES. Let's think a minute: Level 6, Level 8, Level 11, and level 12 were all really good. And since those levels are representative of pretty much ALL of the major music in the game, it means that only one or two tunes are par or subpar. And let's most definitely not forget the SOUND. The very, VERY crisp explosions never seemed to get all that old, and the makers found that they could emulate radio static with the poor tools of the NES pretty well. Oh, and if you normally don't jump at sudden sounds, try doing some illegal wiretapping on some of the later levels and see if YOU don't shake when the inevitable alarm jolts you awake. Bust out the screeching rocket launcher and blast for your life!

GAMEPLAY: Obviously, the highlight of the game was made by taking into account the very real physical limitations of lugging a gigantic all-purpose minigun around with you everywhere you go. While the Contra boys would just laugh this off and continue ninja-flipping their way to victory, they had much bigger muscles than the young ''Ladd'' you controlled. Hence, you got the bionic arm, which beat jumping any day. You could send it out in all directions (very important if you needed to grab a ledge while falling to your doom), shimmy up between platforms like nobody's business, and mercilessly beat up on the evil Nazis (excuse me, BADDs) that kept parachuting at you(even if you were in the middle of a cave or a building.) Innovation like this is just priceless. But to be nice, the designers nicely came up with a fairly wide array of guns(although I pretty much ONLY used the rocket launcher)and different communicators for different levels(although switching these was generally a pain in the neck.)And a bunch of miscellaneous event/power-up items. And just to make it interesting, you gained life bar levels by collecting little pellets the enemies left behind. I'm not going to ask exactly what's IN those pellets, but you need to get a bunch of them, because you start out with exactly NO life at all. (Laughs wondering how many people died on the first level because of this.) And every level has a gigantic boss core to destroy, and some enemies have bionic arms too, and...and...and...this game rocks! Nothing more to say, really, so just emulate it as fast as you can, or buy it if you're lucky like me and find it;)

Nintendo Logic:
We must land the helicopter and fight! The people in the trucks 500 feet below are waving small guns at us! No, no, don't fly around them! You idiot!

We are a peace loving people. Please do not fire a weapon in our area or we will send our entire heavily-armed militia after you. Seriously, who needs gun control with this?

I've built a huge laser cannon that doesn't fire lasers!

I'm sure those midgets like the fact that I blew up their bulldozers. Take THAT, pansies!

Did the allies have to fight Hitler's mutant spiders and butterflies? And the (CHOMP) Venus Flytraps?

''Your number's up, monster!''

That's what I'd say if I just launched a rocket into Hitler's cockpit window.

--ToastyFrog

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/02/01, Updated 02/02/01