"Let me tell you about the man I met when I was still young..."
Bionic Commando is a platformer series by Capcom. The original title was an arcade game released in 1987, starring a soldier who must fight his way into enemy territory to destroy their missiles. At first sight, Bionic Commando seemed like a conventional platformer, but there's a catch: there is no jump button. Instead, the protagonist is equipped with a grappling hook to swing and climb places. The game was marketed outside Japan as a sequel to Capcom's earlier arcade game Commando (Capcom) (hence the similar titles), to the point that the English promotional flyer claimed that the game's protagonist is none other than Super Joe himself, although the two games were not connected... At first. It was ported to a variety of home computer platforms following its release.
A follow-up for the NES was released in 1988. The console sequel not only refines the wire swinging gimmick of the arcade game, but also fleshes out the rest of the game with an added emphasis on exploration such as the addition of a life bar that the player can extend through bullet collecting, the procurement of items and weapons (which are chosen at the start of each mission) which help facilitate the player's mission, and the ability to communicate with friendly agents and wiretap enemy conversations for additional information. The game now starts in an overworld map in which the player uses an helicopter to not only transport the protagonist to enemy areas in any order (although some stages required proper equipment in order to be explored), but also visit neutral zones to meet up with allies and enemies alike, and even engage against enemy convoys through optional top-down scrolling stages akin to the original Commando.
The NES Bionic Commando also featured a much more fleshed out plot than its arcade predecessor. Rad Spencer (also known as Ladd Spencer in the original translation, later renamed Nathan “Rad” Spencer), a bionic arm-equipped One-Man Army working for The Federation, is sent to infiltrate Imperial territory in order to rescue his missing comrade Super Joe (fortifying the title's otherwise tenuous ties with the original Commando) and find out what he knows about the stolen top secret Nazi project codenamed Albatross. After rescuing Joe, Spencer discovers that Project Albatross is an abandoned weapon that the Imperials now seek to complete by reviving the project's originator - Hitler himself (hence the game's Japanese title, meaning Resurrection of Hitler).
All references to the Nazis were edited out from the NES version's overseas release, with Hitler himself being renamed Master-D, although the controversial dictator's likeness was left unchanged (making it obvious who he is meant to be), along with a particularly gory death sequence..
Despite this, the NES version of Bionic Commando was a cult success and the game inspired a few remakes and successors throughout the years, including a book in the Worlds of Power series, most notably a 2009 sequel again titled Bionic Commando for seventh generation consoles, which was developed by the now-defunct Sweden-based developer GRIN. The 2009 incarnation of Spencer also appeared as a character in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, with the Rearmed rendition as an alternate DLC costume in the former.
The Rearmed 2 website can be found here.
List of titles:
- Bionic Commando (1987) (arcade, 1987) - Titled Top Secret in Japan.
- Ported to the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST in 1988.
- Included in Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2005, and Capcom Classics Collection: Remixed for PlayStation Portable in 2006.
- Bionic Commando (1988) (NES, 1988) - Titled Hitler no Fukkatsu: Top Secret in Japan.
- Included in Capcom Classics Mini-Mix for the Game Boy Advance in 2006.
- Bionic Commando (1992) (Game Boy, 1992)
- Released for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in 2011.
- Bionic Commando: Elite Forces (Game Boy Color, 2000)
- Released for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in 2014.
- Bionic Commando Rearmed (Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 / PC, 2008) - Titled Bionic Commando: Master-D Fukkatsu Keikaku in Japan.
- Bionic Commando (2009) (Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 / PC, 2009)
- Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 (Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3, 2011)
Featured Tropes:
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: Inverted; a couple of notable sub-bosses and bosses also have bionic arm weaponry, and yours is largely useless against them (but they can still knock you around with theirs).
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: "This base will explod in 60 seconds."
- IT WILL EXPLOD!
- It's become an Ascended Glitch with signs for a Club Explode with the last E not lit in Rearmed 2.
- Bottomless Magazines: Played straight in Rearmed for every weapon except for Super Joe's machine gun, which does need to reload after firing a set number of rounds.
- Bottomless Pits: Some levels have places where you can fall off the screen.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The sequel has a couple of these: "Is that a long health bar, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?"
- Canon Welding: The arcade game was not originally connected to Commando at all in Japan, but the NES game's inclusion of Super Joe means the two series are canonically part of the same universe.
- Composite Character: The 2009 sequel establishes that Super Joe was just a codename used by a certain Joseph Gibson. Joseph Gibson was one of the playable character in Mercs, the sequel to the original Commando.
- Crate Expectations: Wooden crates show up here-there as a block to stand on.
- Cyborg: Yes indeed, although the sequel tries to real-physics it up a bit.
- Determinator: Spencer doesn't like to give up. Even when faced with impossible odds, he just sees it as a challenge. Try to (and almost succeed in) kill him, and he'll make you suffer for it. It's almost to the point of psychopathy: the guy does not, cannot, and will not lose if he can do anything about it.
- Divided States of America: The nation was initially unnamed, but in the Rearmed duology, the 2009 sequel and comic interquel, it's called the Federal States of America - the result of a political and economic balkanization of the United States of America in the early 21st century, reformed by a hardline government that eschews all libertarian values to maintain law and order.
- Fake Difficulty: Not being able to jump and no air control introduces a certain amount of this, but the original arcade game was teeth-gnashingly difficult due to sluggish response to the controls and not allowing you to use your bionic arm in the air.
- Final Boss: Hitler (aka The Leader or "Master-D") in the original and remakes, Arturus in Elite Forces, and Groeder in the 2009 sequel.
- Floating Platforms: Averted; just about everything Spencer can attach his arm to is conceivably attached to the ground in some manner (for example, the various poles scattered across the stages).
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: Your bionic arm functions like one, which you have to get a lot of mileage out of since there is no jump button.
- High-Tech Hexagons: As of Rearmed, a 5-hexagon symbol is the predominant logo. In-universe, the hexagons are part of the logo of TASC, the Tactical Arms and Security Committee supervised by Super Joe that first commissioned bionic technology; Spencer's shirt has the hexagon logo in the 2009 game.
- Hit Points: You start the game as a One-Hit-Point Wonder, but by grabbing items that various Mooks drop, you can gain more hitpoints to start out with, up to a maximum of nine per life if you're dedicated enough to get 300 of them. (Of course, you still die instantly when you fall in one of the game's many Bottomless Pits.) No longer the case in Rearmed as you get the Hit Points meter to start. It does get upgraded, but only once.
- Idiot Hero: For the most part, Spencer is a fairly competent guy. But in the sequel, how in the name of all that's holy did he NOT get that his bionic arm has his wife's in it?! Partially justified, due to the fact that this comes from denial. We never see his wife interacting with him except when he was asleep.
- Jump Physics: Well, okay, more like swinging and arcing physics. But still.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Master-D is an obvious stand in for Hitler, especially since despite bowdlerizing all other Nazi references, they left Hitler's very recognizable face in the game. In Rearmed and the backstory presented in the 2009 sequel, he is known simply as "The Leader" (with his face is obscured by a breathing mask in the former, though you can still see the top of his iconic mustache poking out beneath it, as well as when his head explodes). Rearmed 2 gives us another antagonist, General Sabio, dictator of the island nation Papagaya threatening to launch missiles at the FSA. Obviously a stand in for Fidel Castro and Cuba.
- Leap of Faith: A few notable instances in some parts of the game (particularly Stage 6 in the NES game). Also the title of one of the songs from Rearmed, appropriately enough.
- Mood Whiplash: The halfway point of Rearmed is interrupted by Spencer mentioning his missing wife to Haley. It's an important plot point in the 2009 sequel, but in Rearmed it came right out of nowhere.
- Mook Promotion: In the original NES game, the rival enemy bionic "Giant Soldier" were simply unnamed minibosses. In Rearmed, Gottfried Groeder took its place and served as a Recurring Boss and The Dragon to the Big Bad, and who returns in the sequel as the final boss.
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Nintendo Hard: This game is really difficult. Rearmed on the hardest difficulty cranks it up to eleven.- Stage 1 isn't too bad. The next few areas, while harder, are still reasonable. Stages 5 and 6 are really very hard.
- Rearmed starts out harder than the later levels of the NES version, mainly due to intelligent enemies (they duck behind stuff to avoid your fire, etc...)
- The 2009 game is notoriously difficult due to a mix of Spencer almost being a One-Hit-Point Wonder, big guns ammunition, and grenades being rarer than rare while your small gun eats through its own ammo like popcorn, enemies having Improbable Aiming Skills and Spencer having Super Drowning Skills due to the sheer weight of his bionic arm (although it doesn't explain why a trained supersoldier can only hold his breath underwater for ten seconds before suffering Critical Existence Failure). The Checkpoint Starvation, forcing you to go through whole levels again should you get killed inches away from your goal, and the Trial-and-Error Gameplay nature of certain levels don't help either...
- Non-Indicative Title: There was nothing "bionic" about the unnamed protagonist in the original arcade game or with Ladd/Rad Spencer in the NES and Game Boy versions. The grappling hook they used to swing into places was just that, a grappling hook. Played straight with ReArmed and the 2009 sequel, in which one of Nathan's arms is replaced with a bionic one.
- One-Man Army: And Spencer is called out on this in the sequel. According to Armstrong, over 10,000 troops fought against the Imperials, but Rad Spencer and Super Joe got all the glory. For their part, the soldiers in Rearmed all say how much easier Spencer's actions are making the fight, and the Imperials are hugely demoralized because of how bad Rad is kicking their asses. Also the reason why he's pulled out of death row and sent to Ascension City in the sequel: Even after ten years in prison, he's considered so capable and uniquely adapted to the situation that he's the best shot the Federation has.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: Super Joe, from the original Commando, appears briefly in the NES version and continued to appear in later games.
- Puzzle Boss:
- All of them. None of them can be taken down by direct fire. Instead, you'll have to listen to enemy conversations to figure out their weaknesses.
- In the original game, more often than not, the puzzle is less about "how do I take this guy out" than it is about "how do I avoid this guy long enough to destroy the reactor and win."
- Recycled Title: Bionic Commando is the localized western name of both the arcade and NES games, which are separate outside of the gameplay concept. By the Game Boy game, however, Bionic Commando began to be the series title in Japan. Bionic Commando is also the name of the 2009 sequel.
- Respawning Enemies: Averted and played straight — unless the enemy spawned from an opening / shutting door, most enemies will stay dead for good no matter how far you stray from them. However, if you leave an area through a doorway, then come back, the enemies will respawn.
- Ret-Canon: The connection between the original Commando and Bionic Commando was originally an American invention for the Arcade game when they were promoting it, claiming that the nameless player character were controlling was actually Super Joe himself. The NES version added Commando like overhead segments and made Super Joe into a real character in the game. The Rearmed remake and the 2009 sequel retconned Super Joe's identity into "Joseph Gibson," essentially linking the original Commando with its sequel Mercs.
- Right Hand of Doom: The bionic arm, not really noticeable when two pixels wide, was upgraded to a design worthy of a piece of farming equipment in Rearmed and the sequel. But damn if it isn't cool as hell.
- Shout-Out: "Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!"
- Spell My Name With An S: The NES version calls the main character "Ladd," while the Game Boy version uses "Rad Spencer." Rearmed and beyond rename the character "Nathan Spencer," but keeps "Rad" as his nickname. note
- Spikes of Doom: Deadly spikes do appear in the series, starting from the first game.
- Springs, Springs Everywhere: First game has springboards that help the player reach higher ground.
- Truce Zone: Various neutral zones in the NES and Game Boy games.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: In-game, Spencer really enjoys his job, even though his job is killing a whole lot of people. For the player, the variety of ways in which you can utterly humiliate your enemies before killing them (or while killing them), lends itself to this trope.
- Video Game Remake: The Game Boy version practically a port of the NES one with a change in setting. Elite Forces on the other hand, follows the same plot, but has completely different stages. Rearmed is a straight remake of the NES game with polygonal graphics.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Spencer is weighed down by his bionics and can't swim. Further, he's even more susceptible to radiation due to the sensitive electronics keeping him plugged in and bionic. While initially only justifying Bottomless Pits, the radiation-cloaked Ascension City is a lot more dangerous for Spencer.
