I missed a few beat’em ups when compiling lists for the SNES, Genesis, and NES. I’ve covered a few of them already, but I wanted to come back to one on the SNES. Captain Commando was released by Capcom in the arcades in 1991 and was ported to the SNES in 1995.
Strangely, it took Capcom four years to port this game, but it did the same thing with Knights of the Round and The King of Dragons. I have played this Captain Commando on the Capcom Beat’em Up Bundle. It has been a while since I played that version, but I remember liking it quite a bit.
I got my hands on a copy of the game for the SNES, and this will be the first time I’ve played this version. It should be good. For some reason, I don’t think about Capcom when I think about beat’em ups from the 1990s, but they have some amazing games in the genre!
TLDR: An above-average beat’em up and a solid port of a Capcom arcade game.
Narrative
Captain Commando takes place in a futuristic Metro City, which is the setting for Capcom’s other beat’em up franchise, Final Fight. How many Capcom games have callbacks to Final Fight and Street Fighter is amazing. I wonder how many people noticed this in 1991 or 1995.
So, the year is 2026, the world is filled with crime, and four heroes are going to try to eliminate crime on Earth and the rest of the Galaxy. It seems like a tall order for them, and I guess Mayor Mike Hagar’s approach of literally fighting crime didn’t work. He is an awful mayor.
Who are you fighting in this game? Well, you’re fighting a bunch of criminals who have been given evil superpowers. These criminals are also known as the Super Criminals and are led by an alien known as Scumocide (In Japan, he was known as Genocide, which is a much better name).
The story gets the job done. It tells you who you’re fighting and why. There isn’t much else to say about it.
Gameplay
The gameplay is very good! Captain Commando has great controls and sticks to a familiar style of combat that worked well in the arcades. There are several stages, each with a boss fight. This is everything you should expect from an early 1990s beat’em up.
This game breaks tradition by having four playable characters. One of them is amazing, and the only reason this game stood out to me:
- Captain Commando – He is your generic video game hero.
- Mack the Knife – He is a space mummy who fights with two daggers. He is supposed to be an alien but looks like a mummy to me.
- Ginzu the Ninja – His name says it all. Ginzu is a ninja and fights with a sword.
- Baby Head – It is a baby riding a mech! This is the most video game thing I’ve seen so far!
I’m starting to notice some similarities with other Capcom games. While I could make a bad attempt at being funny and say that Baby Head is based on a Fighter’s History character, it would be more accurate to say he is based on Mike Hagar from the Final Fight series. I also could’ve said Max from Streets of Rage 2.
You can find weapons and food during the stages. These are standard for beat’em ups. The game gives you five continues, and each continue gives you two lives. As you get more points, you’ll get more continues. It is exactly what you should expect.
I like the gameplay in Captain Commando. It delivered what I expect to see from a beat’em up from the 1990s. When this game was made, beat’em ups were fairly new, and you can forgive this game for not trying anything new.
Visuals
Captain Commando looks very good. The character and enemy sprites look great, and the stages also look good. While it isn’t as good-looking as the arcade version, it does look good for an SNES game.
Each of the four main characters look great! They stand out from the other main characters of the different beat’em ups I’ve played. I think Baby Head and Mack the Knife are the best looking. The other looks good but feels more generic.
I find it very funny that Baby Head shares some animations with Mike Hagar. I understand wanting to reuse them and to put them on this character made me chuckle. It is like this baby is going to be his reincarnation or something silly like that.
There are the usual pallet swaps of the stage enemies and bosses. I never thought much of this when I was little, and I don’t think it is much of a problem. The enemies get reused quite a bit. It would be nice if each stage had specific enemies.
It seems like Capcom was willing to ignore this when they ported it in 1995. They might have been able to do something with the improved cartridges at that time, but it was also late in the console’s life. It does make me wonder why Capcom waited so long to port this game.
The stages look okay. Each one has a theme, and they also get a little weird as the stages sometimes go in different directions than you might have expected. It is easy to see what you can and can’t destroy.
Captain Commando is a great-looking beat’em up. While it is a little strange that Capcom waited so long to bring this game to the SNES, it still looks great.
8/10. This is a very good beat’em up. While it isn’t as good as Final Fight 2, Knights of the Round, or The King of Dragons, it is a solid game. The controls and graphics are good, and the characters play differently from each other.
Pros
- Good Controls
- Good Graphics
- Fun Story
Cons
- Repetitive
- Two Lives per Continue
Conclusion
Captain Commando is a good beat’em up that probably should’ve been ported to the SNES earlier than it was. I wonder if it was delayed due to Nintendo’s developer licenses. I do like that this is in a Final Fight/Street Fighter multi-verse.
Many of the developers from the 1980s and 1990s did things like this, but I don’t remember noticing it when I was a kid. Playing this game and looking up some information on it has made me want to look up some more information on Capcom’s games.
I would put Captain Commando in the same group as the Rush’n Beat series. It isn’t as good as the Final Fight games, Knights of the Round, or The King of Dragons, but it is as good as Project Justice. It should’ve been on my list of Best SNES Beat’em Ups.