Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Designer: Tokuro Fijiwara

Release Date: 12-12-1988

Bionic Commando for the NES (also known as Top Secret: Hitlers Revival in Japan) was a sequel to the popular arcade game of the same name in Japan (Top Secret). Not too many people remember that. What they do remember is the blistering difficulty the game was known for. Now I’m sure some of you were thinking “Hey, I’ve played that and it wasn’t too hard…pussy”. Those people can bite me. As I played through a couple of days ago, I’ll admit it wasn’t as hard as it used to be. But it was still goddamn hard. Remember, at the time, lots of us were used to Mario-esque platformers. And seeing as how Bionic Commando had no jump button, you can imagine the frustration. It wasn’t unlike ripping out one of our thumbs. But at the same time, we were introduced to the joys of killing Nazis in video games.

Sigh, memories.

One of my favorite facts about this game is its tie-in with another great Capcom game called Commando. The hero of that game was Super Joe - but I’ll review that another day.

Anyways.

So in Bionic Commando the protagonist, Radd Spencer, is on a mission to rescue Super Joe from Nazis (Nazz in the games manual) led by Generalissimo Weizmann (whose last name was changed to Killt in the states). In the game Weizmann is attempting to resurrect Hitler (Master D in the states) so that he may lead them to world domination - an operation known as “The Albatross”. Seeing as how he’s super and your first name is “Radd”, Joe is the first pick to stop the operation. He is apparently captured and you’re sent in to pick up the pieces.

Note to bad guys: You do know that Hitler lost right? You would be resurrecting a loser who shot himself in the head on his honeymoon covered in gasoline on fire with his wife. There’s gotta be someone better for Christ’s sake. I’m sayin’ just think about it. That’s all.

Anyways.

As I stated before, Bionic Commando lacked a jump button - and while this sucked for some people, it was the same thing that made it so great because we got to use his bionic grappling arm. It could be used directly up, horizontal left and right - that’s it. This turned out to be one of the best things ever for those willing to stick with it. The arm could grapple enemies, certain objects and deflect certain types of ammunition. Very cool at the time. Aside from the cool arm, you had other helpful opportunities like communicating with allies for important information (you could tap in to enemy information lines too, but if you got detected, you were in a world of hurt).

Instead of moving from stage to stage, the player had the option to choose an area from the map screen in between stages via helicopter (you had to complete the current stage first however). Having a choice was a nice change to the usual linear setup.

After you selected an area you could select different types of equipment that had different advantages depending on which area you chose. There were also green truck icons you would run in to that would send you to a battle in the top-down view of Commando. Once that was completed you could earn extra continues (always a nice touch, wouldn’t you say?). The developers even threw in some neutral areas where you could get equipment and information - but if you started any shit, you’d get jumped by a large group of soldiers until you could get your ass out of there.

I have to say that playing through the game after twelve or so years has shown me how well the the structure and gameplay have stood up. Hard: YES. Fun: F**K YEAH!! For those of you still lucky enough to own a working copy on whatever system you have it on (there were several by the way), try picking it up and see how you fare. Even if you get your ass handed to you it will be a blast.

Durka!

Then: 8.5 out of 10 Now: 8 out of 10