Captain Commando

"Only if you really like Final Fight clones...."

In 1990, Capcom had a big hit on the SNES with a port of their arcade game Final Fight. This opened the doors for several companies to flood the market with side-scrolling brawlers. Some were good, while others were just there. Sadly, this game falls in the second category.

Ported from another Capcom arcade game, Captain Commando gives you four characters to travel through nine stages of fighting. Unfortunately, there really aren't many differences between the playable characters (as opposed to the average game in this genre, where you have the small, quick one; the big, strong one and the balanced one) and those stages (on average) are much shorter than the stages in most fighters.

Graphics: 4
On the positive side, I liked the background graphics, which generally looked good. On the negative side, the foreground graphics were a different story. All characters are far smaller and less attractive than in Final Fight, Sonic Blast Man and other brawlers. While this does make the game different from the norm, it is not a change that I personally like.

Music/Sound: 3
To be honest, even though I finished this game last night, I can't remember any of the music. It simply did not stand out as good or horrible. It was just .... there. As far as the sound goes, it was okay, but nothing exceptional. You have the grunts of fallen foes, the sounds of fists flying and all the other sounds of fighting games.

Gameplay: 6
The enemies are pretty much comparable to those in the average Final Fight game (Capcom designers must not have been in a creative mood when they made this game). You have your generic, low-class thugs, your knife-wielders, your agile leapers your fat guys, etc. Even the legendary big, tough guy (Andore) is here as Musachi, the big samurai who's not shy about using his sword. Maybe it's not original, but it's a formula that works. Just don't expect many surprises.
Bosses are typically large and strong. Difficulty is uneven when fighting them, though. Some are extraordinarily easy, while others seemed to pound me no matter what I did. For example, to me, the Level 4 boss was tougher than all but the Level 7 and Level 9.
While there are more levels than the average fighting game, many of these levels are very short. One level, in which you pursue a scientist on a watercraft, is so tiny that it feels more like a mini-game than an actual level.
As far as the fighting goes, you punch, kick, throw, use weapons and have ''desperation'' attacks. Nothing new here, either.
In a nutshell, while this game offers nothing new, what it does offer is a good, fun diversion.

Replay Value: 4
Depends. If you let this game stand on it's own, it offers a fun diversion for a while. However, if you compare it to other fighters, it just doesn't stack up. Personally, I'd rather put in a number of other games than this one. It's not bad, but it just doesn't stack up.

Overall: 4.5 (rounds up to 5 for the purposes of this site)
I was and am a huge fan of brawlers like this one, but I just didn't get into this one the same way I typically get into these games. Whether it was the small characters, the short levels, the generic enemies or some other aspect, my feeling was this game just didn't compare to the top games in this genre.
It's not a horrible game by any stretch of the imagination and I would call it better than a number of games I've played during my life, but it just didn't give me any reason to recommend it to anyone who is not a die-hard fan of this type of game. If you love brawlers, play it. If you don't love them, look somewhere else for your entertainment.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/14/03, Updated 03/14/03