Capcom's sci-fi superhero manga version of FINAL FIGHT built directly on top of that game's bones, featuring among its playable characters a baby in a mech suit and a mummy wearing a backwards hat, and sporting a final boss that is a fur-lined cape wearing intergalactic supervillain emperor named "Scumocide".

Incredibly, the game is actually much less exciting than that description would imply. Art, music, enemy design, mechanics all a half step down from what you'd hope, and it all kind of comes together as less than the sum of its parts somehow. It's playable and somewhat novel, but not the gonzo gem it should be. We do owe it for the Captain's appearance in MVC2 though.

Takes on what Final Fight established and refines ever further!
Even though the stages are shorter this time around, there are more of them to go through, making this game more varied in its environments!
Outside of that, the weapons feel like they have more of an impact on the gameplay more than Final Fight, and the additions of dashes and mechs are nice to have!

Overall, Captain Commando is a really good arcade beat 'em up experience that I recommend everyone check out!

Beat em ups as a genre have been a blindspot for a while, and I'm working actively to improve on my knowledge of the genre. I've played games like TMNT: Shredder's Revenge and the Simpsons Arcade game, neither of which I particularly enjoyed, and I've played River City Ransom, which can be better described as a brawler than a beat 'em up. I just finished Final Fight. Final Fight suffers from so many problems in comparison to other brawlers I've played. As much as I love so many of the characters Final Fight's world gives you (Rolento main in USF4, I love that dude), it's often times boring, and rarely interesting. It's stronger moments are few and far between and it's combat not only feels bad, it's approach to enemy encounters is egregious at best.

Captain Commando on the other hand, blew me away. I played both Captain Commando and Final Fight through Capcom's Beat 'Em Up Bundle on Steam, and Captain Commando immediately towered above any other arcade beat 'em up I had played at that point.

You can almost approach designing a good beat 'em up with a selection of boxes you need to tick. You need a craftsman's attention to presentation, enemy design must be interesting and rarely annoying, and you have to have at least three interesting and varied characters that any player can understand the playstyle of within a couple of seconds of playing them. It's the blueprint you'll see a lot of classic arcade beat 'em ups follow. Whether it's The Ninja Warriors, Streets of Rage, X-Men or Alien vs Predator, you'll find they fit the criteria one way or another (Although, shoutouts to The Punisher, which I've only fiddled around with but it's brilliant stuff despite only having two playable characters).

Captain Commando ticks every box. It's presentation is to die for, with it's over the top character design a highlight feature. The four Commando's (Captain, Baby, Ninja and Mummy) all have different playstyles that are immediately palatable to the beginner player. I found myself leaning towards CapCom and Baby, but both the Ninja and the Mummy were still fun enough to mess around with, and I see myself doing a whole playthrough with them in time. Captain Commando's enemy design is rarely annoying with out being outstandingly memorable, and it finds success within those boundaries. Unlike Final Fight, which often spawns multiple enemies on screen WHILE fighting a boss, Captain Commando gives the player a chance to breathe, targeting the enemies they find most threatening while still having the outside threat of being third partied by a lower tier goon.

While playing any beat 'em up, it can often be hard to truly say how one is greater than the other. Systems are often finger nail deep, and rarely do you have any form of extra moves outside of the few given to you. You can say that the pixel art is gorgeous, or that the music is brilliant, but more often than not after an engaging hour worth of gameplay it's over and done with. Unlike a multi-hour, story driven game of any other genre, someone who hasn't played a large number of arcade games (like myself) will often find it hard to differentiate the best, from pretty good. Now though, I think I've got it figured out.

Arcade games want you to come back to them. They want you to fire them up and breeze through their campaign (or, in the past, insert as many quarters as you can), so you need to push you over the edge some how. For some the allure of just 1CCing any arcade game they get their hands on is enough, but for the casual arcade enjoyer, you need something else bringing you back.

As a child, if I was brought to an arcade I would play one of two video games, Daytona USA or Dig-Dug. Long before I was into fighting games, these were the games I would go back to time and time again. What was it that separated Daytona from any other racing game? What was it that separated Dig Dug from any other Namco arcade game I had the choice of playing? X-Factor. It might be strange to hear Dig Dug had X-Factor, but the game design of Dig Dug was the X-Factor to me. Unlike in Pac-Man, where walls restricted your movement, you could move anywhere!

Captain Commando's X-Factor is evident to anyone who looks at it. There's no game that has character designs that look like the Commandos. It's guns, especially the rocket launcher, all have an appeal to them that draws the player to picking them up. It's level design is wacky because it's not grounded in any reality that I know of.

Captain Commando might be the best arcade beat 'em up Capcom has to offer (although I've still got a few more to check out, namely Alien vs Predator and Battle Circuit), and it's one I'll be loading up as often as I think of playing a beat 'em up.

I really liked the art of this one and the general outlandishness of the designs. Like you can play as a knife-wielding mummy in trousers or a baby piloting a mech suit. All while moving through colorful environments of escalating wackiness. And it has vehicles which I always like in games like this, even if these are pretty clunky.

I wish there was a super power, though; it’s just attack, grab and jump which while they have nice animations and a few interesting combos, just don’t offer enough variety for my taste. There are weapons, but those all feel pretty overpowered and are balanced around only lasting a few seconds. The core combat just felt simplistic compared to other beat-em-ups I’ve played. It really makes me appreciate the more expressive move sets of the newer ones like Shredder’s Revenge.

Fortunately it’s short, and has infinite continues in the Capcom Beat ‘Em Up bundle, which was enough motivation to see it through to the end in one sitting. Overall not particularly interesting combat-wise but a goofy and eye catching diversion.

Capcom's influence in gaming is pretty legendary. Their name allegedly is from a term it coined in it's heavier arcade days early on in their history "CAPsule COMputers" This was because, according to wikipedia:

"Capsule" alludes to how Capcom likened its game software to "a capsule packed to the brim with gaming fun",

It's a pity then that CAPtain COMmando a 1991 beat 'em up doesn't manage to quite hit that description despite using a similar naming convention.

It plays over 9 stages with a choice of 4 playable characters, and the most immediate thing that leaps out is how shoddy the playable character design is. A Sherriff with a quiff, a ninja, a mummy and a baby piloting a mech. They are mostly ugly. The art design just doesn't have any cohesion to it and that extends throughout the game with levels from sewer chases, meseums, aquariums, space stations and ninja samurai villages (including bizarre deaths of being cut in half which are a total tonal shift from the colourful visual design) just nothing fits together well like it's ideas from various games mashed together and not a single rhyme or reason is given for it. Not that that is a terrible thing on it's own, sometimes that kind of puzzle fitting of elements works. No one would argue how well Demon's Souls came together or the legendary Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. For Captain Commando it just feels obviously out of place and takes itself too seriously to be funny with it.

As a game it plays fine though it's very basic. Attack, jump and a special attack using both buttons that eats a bit of health but hits enemies around you when surrounded. The basic move set is identical to Final Fight only you can dash and attack at the end which made it infinitely more playable than the latter. The enemies can be irritating when en masse on later stages. Some with weapons that drop when attacked you can pick up to fight with like missile launchers so useless they won't kill enemies you and can't be used close range leaving you a sitting duck hilariously. There are also guns, shuriken and weird mechs you jump on to punch or freeze enemies that feel hugely less effective than simply punching someone. Some of the bosses are pure money sinks if I was playing this on an actual arcade to boot. The final boss especially was an exercise in frustration if I didn't have infinite continues. Freeze, on fire, on fire, freeze, punch.

....

Anyway trauma being relived aside I am grateful for the Capcom Beat 'em Up bundle for finally allowing me to finally play the game that Captain Commando originated from after being amused by him in Marvel vs Capcom 2 over 20 years ago but I can absolutely see why they had him as a cameo only going forward. An ok game overall, just forgettable and lacking in synergy.