YMMV / Bionic Commando (1988)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: That Master D in the NES game was actually Adolf Hitler using a pseudonym, and that the Badds were actually the Nazis in disguise. We also never see the final boss call himself Master D, so it could be further implied that Generalissimo Killt was just calling him Master D to conceal his true identity.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The Final Boss of the NES game is killed in one hit while dropping down to him. Rearmed appropriately gives The Leader's helicopter a proper battle, though said battle is more or less just a slightly more complex Fabricator fight.
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack for Rearmed, composed by Simon Viklund of PAYDAY: The Heist fame, is full of incredibly faithful electronic recreations of the NES game's backing music. The main theme in particular is incredibly fitting.
• Catharsis Factor: Killing Hitler/Master-D/The Leader. In the NES version, it's one of the few cases of licensed NES media to feature such a bloody scene of someone's head exploding. Rearmed doubles down on this: You get a Repeat Cut of his exploding head rendered in 3D as he screams in defeat.
• Demonic Spiders: The Cable Backpack Soldiers in Rearmed are incredibly nimble and will use their backpacks to perform quick dodges of Spencer's attacks, and return fire with their weapons that are exempt from standard soldiers' Denial of Diagonal Attack.
• Game-Breaker: The rocket launcher in the NES version, which is obtained about 40% of the way through the game. It kills virtually everything, bosses included, in one hit, and travels through enemies too, so you can kill several at a time. Needless to say, the game becomes drastically easier once you acquire the rocket launcher and there is no need to use any other weapon for the rest of the game. Rearmed reduces the Bazooka's effectiveness by having it be a standard on-impact explosive and bosses taking more than one rocket to kill, but it's still an extremely potent weapon provided you don't use it point blank.
• Goddamn Bats: A variety across all the games, from the remote-control aces of the NES game to the knife-wielding psychos in Rearmed to the pesky snipers of the sequel.
  • Close Combat Soldiers from Rearmed move quickly and are frequently positioned on ledges that have to be grappled to.
  • Rearmed's Propeller Droids hover above the player and shoot a large electric lance downward that usually prevents their weakness (arm attacks that lower them to Spencer's attack angle) from being used.
• More Popular Spin-Off: To an extent. The Rearmed remake was meant to promote the sequel, but Rearmed is often considered the better game, to the point of getting its own sequel (by a developer made from the remnants of the Rearmed team after GRIN went kaput) in the same style.
• Player Punch: Haley is killed off rather anticlimactically just before the final boss fight of Rearmed. Just in case you didn't already know Hitler "The Leader" was evil.
• Scrappy Weapon: The machine gun from the NES version - the game acts as if it is important or powerful, when it is neither. It only shoots bullets, and they have a pretty short range. The regular weapon you start the game with is better in almost every way — it has long range, and with a "turbo" button-equipped controller (or Turbo feature in an emulator) fires just as fast. The fact that the machine gun is kind of out of the way, and a little tricky to actually get if you don't know how, makes it even worse. Rearmed fixes this by changing it to a hitscan weapon with an absurd rate of fire that makes quick work of human enemies and lives up to the hype it receives.
• Signature Scene: Master D's head exploding, a shocking bit of violence for an NES game considering how rampant Nintendo of America's censorship policies were in that era. Rearmed makes it even more graphic, which stands out from the relatively nonviolent ways enemies die otherwise.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The NES game is seen as a considerable improvement over the arcade original for taking the basic concepts and fleshing them out into a much more interesting experience, as well as providing a fairer challenge.
• That One Level: Area 6 introduces bouncing mines and a Mook who spawns helicoptering mines in the first area, has some of the hardest climbing and swinging in the game at the beginning of the second area, and then a really tough and annoying rolling mine segment where Giant Mooks throw mines which roll down horizontal shafts, which you can't jump over — you need to use the arm to hoist yourself up (which takes time) or use springboards to go over them. This level was actually made easier in Rearmed, with the mines being replaced by non-damaging barrels, although harder difficulties ups the ante to damaging barrels, including one-hit instant kills on Super Hard.