Corben Wedge and Sarmon. There are two more playable characters, one of which we're not quite in a position to showcase.
You are the last of the four great warriors. Your mission is to dethrone the evil lord Qwesul. You begin your quest in rancid, putrid catabombs of his castle. However, beware - Qwesul is aware of your presence, and has placed guards on every floor. Morever, he captured the other three Great Warriors, and took control over their souls. They are now his guards, and will attack anyone who enters the castle. Even you....
— The first paragraphf of the plot section from the game's manual.
Capital Punishment is an obscure Fighting Game developed by the Serbian developer ClickBoom exclusively for the AGA-based Amigas in the late 1996, really late in the systems' lifespan. While a rather roughly designed game, handful of things about this one stands out.
This is one of those fighting games with very few playable characters coupled with handful of AI-exclusive characters on top of that, akin to Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury: King of Fighters and Red Earth among others, and the game's main single-player mode - dubbed Epic - has you fight both the bosses and other playable characters. The gimmick with the game's structure is that as the other playable warriors are stated to be Brainwashed and Crazy, the fights with them are followed by Mirror Matches that has you take control your past opponent confronting one's evil spirit. These are optional, but winning these have them join your party, letting you switch characters between further fights. These extra fighters are also your extra continues, and you may need them, as the game is rather bloody hard.
Oh, and one of the fighters happens to be a Dominatrix that looks like a gender bent version of Daredevil and goes lengths the likes of Mai Shiranui, Ivy Valentine and the girls of Dead or Alive wouldn't dare to reach by completely exposing her breasts.
The game provides the following tropes:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The very first fight in the Epic mode is set in the sewers.
- Adjustable Censorship: During the installation setup you can optionally chose whenever to have parental lock applied. It removes the blood, disables most of the stage traps and also applies the Censor Box onto Demona's sprites.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The so-called "special moves" (which are usually baked in tripple hit combos) are performed by pressing the fire button three times without moving and then pressing any of the cardinal directions. The input method makes them impractical to the point of being predictable against human player, and it's unlikely the ever ferocious AI would ever let you perform them either.
- Badass Native: Wakantanka, The Big Guy of the playable roster.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: The manual states that the characters you didn't pick at the start have been captured by Qwesul and have their own taken over. The purpose of the Mirror Matches is to provide a chance of snapping them out of Qwesul's control.
- Break Meter: These two bars around the fighter's portrait are not Life Meters. These are in fact two seperate stun meters, which of these being depleted depends on the attack that hits the opponent (head blows affecting the upper bar, body blows affecting the lower bar), with depleting either one of the bars resulting in an opponent getting fatigued (and yes, it's possible to stun the opponent twice in a row if both of these bars are low enough). These bars also double as Guard meter, as they are still depleted when blocking (by holding back+down) as well.
- Cleavage Window: Exaggerated by Demona, whose outfit bares entire breasts rather than just enough of them to still cover the nipples.
- Continuing is Painful: If you lose in the Epic mode outside of the Mirror Matches, you'd have to continue as remaining characters in your party (assuming you still have anybody left, otherwise it's Game Over).
- Easy-Mode Mockery: The "training" difficulty option only lets you play through the first three (not counting the Mirror Matches) fights of the Epic mode..... and the game still isn't that easy anyway.
- Extremity Extremist: Downplayed, Wakantanka's fighting style is more punch-heavy compared to the other characters', with up+forward+fire and forward+fire having him do elbow strikes a torso-level punch (the other characters do head-level and torso-level kicks with the same commands respectively).
- Fate Worse than Death: At least what the manual states when it comes to those under Qwesul's Mind Control.Should you fail to accomplish your mission, you will suffer a fate worse than death. Qwesul has the power to make you immortal, and for eternity you will be confined to a single room, becoming one of his guards, and that is the CAPITAL PUNISHMENT!
- Hitbox Dissonance: It can go optionally two ways. The game's advanced options section includes an "accuracy" setting that would determine the collision detection of the characters, with "easy" (a more traditional collision with square coordinates that tolerates meaties) or "realistic" (a "pixel-perfect" collision system.... that also requires such precision that certain moves would whiff if used too close) being available.
- Life Meter: It's the green and red bars at the very top of the screen, not any of the two bars next to the portraits (see Break Meter above).
- Mirror Match: Each succesful fight with an other playable character in the Epic mode is followed by such fight, where you take control of the character you just defeated against the same character's shadowy clone. Defeat the shadow, and the fighter's "soul gets freed" and joins your party, allowing you to switch characters before the next fights. Fail such match, and the campaign still continues on, just without the character that would have otherwise joined.
- Ninja: The third boss-exclusive character encountered in the Epic mode and the only one with a cheat code to let him use in the versus mode.
- Nipple and Dimed: Averted by Demona, whose exposed nipples are in full display.
- Regenerating Health: Opponent's slowly gain health and stamina while standing still, and the game's default "mixed" energy setting also has opponents gain a bit of health every time they hit their target. Other settings include "plain" (standard fighting game life behaviour with no Life Drain) or "tug of war".
- Shadow Discretion Shot: Sort of. The final boss fight is set in an area shrouded in fog, with both of the opponents being completely silhouetted.
- Shapeshifting: When you finally confront him, Qwesul often morphs into various creatures in his attacks.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: Can't get more shameless than a dominatrix that fights with completely exposed chest, nipples and all. There's also her winpose which has her turn her back to the camera Cammy-style.... followed by leaning upside down to look at the camera beneath her legs, accentuating her buttocks.
- Schrödinger's Player Character: While this is a fighting game, with it's single-player nature it's aversion is still noteworthy. The fighters you didn't pick became Brainwashed and Crazy by the Big Bad and there's even a chance to make them join your party if you succeed at their Mirror Matches.
- Sequel Hook: In the ending cinematic we see glimpses of some godlike(?) figure descend upon a smaller figure (hard to tell if it's us or Qesul), and then QWESUL LIVES.... TO BE CONTINUED... flash to a logo of Capital Punishment 2......with the numeral in the logo being shaped a bit like a question mark, which amusingly implied not even the developers were sure if they'd ever get to develop a sequel.
- The Smurfette Principle: Demona is the only female character of the cast..... and she's certainly very female.
- Stage Fatality: Provided the "traps" option is enabled, few stages have lethal hazards like spiked walls opponents can knock opponents onto, which usually results in an One-Hit Kill.
- Tech-Demo Game: The developers have pushed the Amiga 1200 to it's absolute limits with all of its graphical effects, which ended up having a side effect of making the game quite a challenge to even run. The game requires an AGA machine with a hard drive at minimum, and even then a boot disk is more than recommended to free up the RAM resources that would've been otherwise used by the Workbench, and even then it's not unheard that it would take either a fan made patch or tracking down a pre-installed version to have any chance of booting up the game.
- Three Round Deathmatch: Averted by default, as said default settings have number of fights to 1.
- Use Your Head: The male playable characters have this move, under the up+back+fire command (the same command for Demona has her do a short range whip attack instead). Wakantanka also has a ramming charge done with back+fire (the same command has other playable characters doing a flying kick).
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Corben Wedge, which essentially wears nothing but "shorts" made out of bandage wrappings, as well as lower leg bandages.
- Weapon Specialization: In place of punch and headbutt attacks the other playable characters have, Demona uses her whip at close or longer range. If used at a proper distance, her up+fire (the long range) attack can reel the opponents in Scorpion-style.
