[Played on Retron 5 with the original cartridge]

Bionic Commando is a game that really takes time to get used to. Your bionic arm is an excellent and fun way to maneuver around the levels but you aren't gonna be very great with it immediately. You really need to practice with it.

I kind of had a hard time getting through this one, so I kind of lost a lot of my motivation to push onward. I wouldn't say the game is unfairly difficult though. My only gripe is enemies can sometimes parachute right over you when you're trying to accomplish a platforming puzzle and that can be extremely annoying. I guess you just have to take it slowly.

I'm not sure why but I liked the structure of the game a lot, going through levels and obtaining new items from beating them or from non-combat areas, and being able to customize your loadout each level. It's not as fun when you're required to use a specific item for a specific level, but usually, levels don't do that much, so you're more capable of just playing how you want.

Overall this is just a good, solid game. Well worth at least trying.

7/10

Here's a game I missed when it came out and am really glad I got to experience, even if 35 years too late. For anyone who doesn't already know, Bionic Commando's unique gameplay 'hook' (pun entirely accidental but I will proudly own it) is that you can't jump - the A button instead activates your bionic grappling hook which you can use to grab onto platforms and either pull yourself up or swing from.

I'll be the first to admit that this felt incredibly clunky at first. Not only did it mean that a strategically-placed crate was a bigger obstacle than a giant killer robot, but its implementation felt quite unintuitive compared to grappling hook controls in newer games - you don't need to hold the A button to keep the hook connected, you pull yourself up with the A button instead of up, and you can't control your momentum while swinging, only using the directional buttons when you want to release. Nevertheless, the controls are quite tight and very consistent once you get used to them.

Bionic Commando is yet another example of the idea that movesets can only be judged in the context of the challenges the game asks you to overcome - it's why Resident Evil 4 is so loved despite its supposedly 'stiff' tank controls. Incredibly for such an early game, this doesn't just establish and flesh out an interesting control scheme - it combines it with inspired level design that is carefully curated to your moveset. Whether it's a tall tower with respawning enemies attacking from both sides, or a Donkey Kong-esque sequence with guys chucking rolling bombs at you from above, barely a moment in this game is dull - and apart from the customary bullshit spike at the very end of the game, very little in this game is unfair. One cool thing I didn't mention about the controls is that while you can only fire your weapon horizontally, the grappling hook can be used to stun enemies and can be aimed both vertically and diagonally upwards! This creates a really good gameplay experience centred around not just the unique platforming mechanics but also positioning and threat management. I also absolutely need to give credit to this game for including a relatively easy first level with few enemies to give the player time to get used to the unconventional controls - something not many games from this era bothered to do!

For me, the fact that Bionic Commando didn't get a 16 or 32-bit sequel (that I know of) is a huge waste. This game is bursting with ambition, and while the moment-to-moment gameplay is fantastic, it feels like there were a lot of elements that weren't fleshed out entirely thanks to hardware limitations, like the top-down shooter segments you get when you run into an enemy convoy. Also, the snippets of (sometimes amusingly) badly-translated dialogue you can glean from the communication rooms and neutral zones hint at a much more complex plot than could be fit into the NES cartridge. I would have loved to see what Capcom would have done with this in the mid-90s - improved graphics, tighter controls, a more robust item system, throw in a few plot twists and you have yourself a potential all-time classic.

Bionic Commando does so much stuff well that I can't even fault it for the usual 80s-game quirks - bullshit endgame difficulty (the penultimate level is a hundred flavors of crap), limited continues, repeating bosses. It's one of my favorite games of its era - back when the design principles that made for a good platformer were not quite yet codified, this is one experiment that came out just right.

Significantly different from its original Arcade release, the NES version offers far more stages and customization of equipment before starting a stage.

The grappling hook takes times to get used to, and I think it's utterly fascinating how much cognitive dissonance the lack of a jump can cause at first. Once you get used to it though, the game makes full use of the grappling abilities to traverse levels and fight enemies.

Visuals are also nicely detailed and colorful, while the soundtrack is solid as well. Overall this significant rework of a so-so arcade game ended up being one of the best on the NES.

A very clever, creative 2D platformer that does a lot with its unconventional controls. I've seen a few people say that if you could just jump normally that it would make things easier and better but I don't really get that point, since the game is literally designed around its unique control scheme and is integral to its pseudo-puzzle platforming level layouts. I'm particularly fond of the way that not being able to immediately jump feels almost like an evolution to the intentionally sluggish controls of Castlevania, where there's just as much importance placed on strategic positioning and planning as there is on just executing everything well after the fact.

There's also some pretty great variety to the level design as well, with the elements of verticality especially playing well into the grappling mechanics and leading to a lot of surprisingly fast paced, tense moments in between the more meticulous planning. Not really a fan of gaining more max hp by grinding though, feels like a very odd thing to implement in a 2D action platformer that makes the balancing feel off from level to level and is also just, very tedious to properly play with. The lives system along with a few purely inconvenient elements, such as needing to have certain colours of communicators to even access the terminals, leading to some pretty pointless trial end error, further contribute to making the experience feel quite rough in certain regards, with the end game being especially nasty. Even so, I still had a good time, might be one I feel a bit more patient towards when I let it sit with me for a while as well. At the very least, it felt like a bit of fresh air even if it still obviously played into a lot of the conventions that would be typical for this type of game.

CAPCATHON, GAME 3: Bionic Commando (1988, NES)

Bionic Commando on NES is still a great game, through and through.
It's not as graphically dazzling as its arcade predecessor, the translation can range from "funny" to "confusing", and the early-game can be horrible, especially while you're stuck with your default gun and if you don't know that you can grind enemies for health (such a bizarre mechanic for an action platformer- surely incorporating a normal health bar would have been much less difficult and would have reaped much better results), and even when you get how the game properly works and you begin to crawl forward towards your goal, you lose all your lives and must restart from the beginning.
But if you stick with it, for just a bit longer, you'll find a very rewarding game. Once you get the rocket launcher, enemies can be mowed down like pins by a bowling ball. The over-the-top shooter perspective segments, while initially seeming like a shoehorned inclusion to keep the game fresh, actually hide items that let you continue after a game over, letting you keep all your items and progress. (They're not substitutes for saving or a password system, for the record, but they help nonetheless). If you talk to the NPCs, you will be pointed in the direction of very helpful items, such as the flares for Area 4, or the Communicators, making the Federation army seem like a tight-knit group.
But none of this compares to the sheer joy that is controlling Nathan "Rad" Spencer: the clunky but promising formula of the arcade game has been reworked into something of a "tactical platformer". Since you cannot jump, you must think laterally to ascend and navigate the many levels you'll be going through. Despite some general stiffness, the control is much better here than in the arcade game- swinging in particular has been reworked for the better.
The music is also great too: although it's repetitive, it's not grating, and some especially catchy tunes are definitely going to get stuck in your head. I also recognized some tracks from the arcade game, which I thought was a nice touch.

All in all, after the initial "difficulty wall", Bionic Commando felt like a fairly balanced game, with a few deaths that I can admit were my fault, and not the game's. I reccomend you check this incredibly solid platformer out!

Very creative and ahead of its time, honestly. It's a bit shocking how well the mechanics are utilized here for an early NES game, predating Mega Man 2 and Metal Storm for example. I played this in a vc and pretty much everyone thought this game was a much later NES title at the least.

Speaking of Metal Storm, it bears a lot of similarities with this game and now I'm in the mood to revisit it soon I think. I'm sure fans of that game will definitely like this one, and vice versa. Reminds me also of Mr. Gimmick in that with some fine tuning (and some more varied colors) you could probably fool someone into thinking this is a retro indie game or something like it.

This is one I often say is my favorite game of all time. The game is really rough around the edges, it has a pretty steep learning curve at first and it doesnt hold your hand in that regard. But once you get passed that slump its incredibly fun. For an NES game im so surprised of the amount of depth the mechanics have. The swinging feels so fleshed out. I feel like im always changing the way I approach the level design. That is another aspect I love. The levels are so great, they fit the swinging so well, and they never feel too samey. The music is amazing as well. This one just kind of hits for me, and I wish it caught on more.