A fun, short-but-sweet action platformer with some incredibly baffling regional differences. I played the Master System version, which has six stages… unless, of course, you play the American version. In the US, they used a smaller cartridge size and consequently had to cut the third and fourth stages. As a result, reading the manual gives some extremely incorrect ideas about what the game will actually contain, listing four whole bosses that simply don’t appear. You can probably guess how baffling the whole experience was.

As for the game itself, it’s honestly pretty good. The combat is quick since enemies generally die in one hit. The controls are pretty smooth and responsive. Where Captain Silver really shines, however, are the visuals. The first stage especially is one of the better visuals I’ve seen on the console. Our hero himself does look kind of odd though, with his head always tilted towards the ground in a forlorn expression.

The final stage (stage 4 in the version I played) does take a turn for the worse, switching from action to pure platforming. There are a ton of moving cloud platforms and they always turn right before you expect them to, leading to many untimely deaths. What’s worse is that when you make it to the second screen, if you fall down to the first and die, your checkpoint gets reset to the start of the stage instead of the second screen. Frustrating.

Overall, I enjoyed my (incredibly short) time with Captain Silver. At some point I’ll probably return to play the “full” version. In the meantime, this is the first review for the game on here! If this kind of game is your style, definitely play the European/Japanese version for the true experience.