The 61FPS Review: Bionic Commando, part 2
Be forewarned: Here be spoilers.
GRIN made a bold statement when they announced Bionic Commando, saying that this dreadlocked, be-wifebeater-ed fellow with the hotdogs all over his metal arm was the very same Radd Spencer from twenty years ago meant this game was a bonafide sequel. For most players, the story in a videogame is inessential, a throwaway. You and I, being the devoted weirdos we are, might care about the thousand-year continuity from Mega Man to Mega Man Legends 2, but the average hardcore videogame player doesn’t give it a second thought. The Legend of Zelda’s on to something. The series’ creators know that it’s character, setting, and a sense of history that’s most important for giving your tale weight, not an actual history.
Bionic Commando begins ten years after the NES game. Radd’s in jail and has been stripped of his bionic arm. He was, we are informed, married at some point in the past and his wife went missing. Super Joe, the legendary soldier Radd rescued back in the day, is now a disgraced figurehead. Turns out he ran the TASC, the military branch in-charge of making bionic soldiers like ol’ Radd. Those same soldiers, once relied on to blow up Hitler’s head, are now enemies of the state, feared by the powers that be for being too powerful and unstable. When a terrorist military made up of “bionics” blows up Ascension City, Radd is sent into the wreckage to retrieve an unnamed weapon of mass destruction the terrorists are after. In exchange, he gets his freedom and Super Joe promises to tell him where his wife is. By the end it’s revealed that Super Joe, in league with old Bionic Villain Gottfried Groeder (introduced in Rearmed,) was behind the evil scheme all along. More than that, it turns out that bionic enhancements like Radd’s arm were made from organic parts. The most effective soldiers were those augmented with organic parts they had a strong sentimental attachment to. Yes, Super Joe made Radd Spencer’s arm out of his murdered wife.
Now, all of this is told through mercifully brief cutscenes, text retrieved from hacked communicators, and in-game radio transmissions. There’s a lot of story given to the player and it doesn’t, for the most part, interrupt the flow of actually playing the game. It doesn’t, however, make a damn lick of sense. No character’s motivations are properly explained and while continuity is shoved down your throat throughout, the details of history are left out completely. When Super Joe turns evil, it’s never really explained why. He just wants the WMD MacGuffin to activate some giant secret base that’s never even mentioned until the last twenty minutes of the game. It is mindnumbingly stupid. Of course, the story in the old NES game was mindnumbingly stupid as well. This story’s offensive not because it’s hamfisted camp, but because it keeps you from actually playing throughout the game’s beginning and its finale.
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Tags: ben judd, bionic commando, bionic commando rearmed, capcom, grin, kenji inafune, mega man, metroid prime, nes, ninja gaiden, playstation 3, shigeru miyamoto, super mario 64, team ninja, xbox 360
The 61FPS Review: Bionic Commando, part 1
Ever since Shigeru Miyamoto remade Mario into a bouncing mass of yelping polygons in 1996, game designers across the world have been asking the same question: how do we bring our old 2D games into the third dimension? This has never been a creatively bankrupt ambition. Videogames are, and always have been, an iterative medium funded by familiarity. The rules of a game are polished over time and mascots, franchises, brands are insurance on their evolution. Taking the fundamentals and characters of classic games to explore the potential of three-dimensional design wasn’t selling out; it was buying in.
Over the past thirteen years, only a handful of designers have effectively translated two-dimensional games into 3D. More often than not, old franchises have been modernized as completely different games. Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden games are about weighty melee play, not the vicious platforming gauntlets of the original series. Mega Man’s first polygonal outing was a kart racer, not a speedy run-gun-and-jumper. But games like Super Mario 64, games that truly capture and add a new dimension to their predecessors’ play, are rare. Retro’s Metroid Prime did it, managing to translate the rules, architecture and style of its 2D parent series perfectly, even while sacrificing the thrill of seeing Samus onscreen. GRIN’s Bionic Commando gets it right too. But in their effort to recreate the rock solid rules of 1987’s Bionic Commando, GRIN failed to make a complete work of art.
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Tags: ben judd, bionic commando, bionic commando rearmed, capcom, grin, kenji inafune, mega man, metroid prime, nes, ninja gaiden, playstation 3, shigeru miyamoto, super mario 64, team ninja, xbox 360
The Problem With The Simpsons’ Games
I’ve been reading and enjoying Mackey’s ongoing retrospective of the mostly-atrocious retro games based on The Simpsons. Though the titles have existed throughout time, Bart’s rude antics really flooded home consoles and the PC in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
I’ve been pondering specific reasons why the older Simpsons games are so ill-bred. For ages, I figured it was a two-part problem: one, developers probably threw darts at a board to come up with concepts, and generally missed hitting any idea that might have made for a fun game. Two, The Simpsons has been a red-hot property since the day it was born, and there was an early rush to capitalise on the dysfunctional family.
I don’t think I’m far off the mark, since both shortcomings stem from a common root: in the early ’90s, it was still unclear what exactly made
The Simpsons so funny.
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Tags: acclaim, nadia oxford, nes, pc, retro, snes, the Simpsons
Bionic Commando is Love: T-Minus One Week
This morning, I got to work and an envelope was sitting on my desk. I opened it. Then I saw this inside of it:
Then I was all:
And, well, after that… after that was private.
We’ve waited twenty-one years for each other. The bond of true love transcends decades and distance and now, once again, Bionic Commando and I will swing across the roof-tops declaring our undying devotion to the world. The game’s official release date is May 18th, which means that you’ll be able to walk into a store and buy yourself a copy twenty-four hours after that. Last summer, I wrote one post a day the week leading up to Bionic Commando: Rearmed’s release on Xbox Live Arcade and PSN. I’ll be doing the same for Radd Spencer’s rebirth for the next seven days.
To kick things off, I’d like to discuss the recent multiplayer demo released on XBLA.
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Tags: bionic commando, capcom, grin, john constantine, nes, playstation 3, psn, Radd spencer, XBLA, xbox 360
Punch-Out Commercial Takes Little Mac Into Reality
I may have my doubts about Nintendo’s newest take on Punch-Out, but one thing I can’t deny is how well this newest installment of the franchise taps into my treasured old-school Nintendo memories. Being ancient enough to have thoroughly enjoyed the last game 20 years ago means that anything remotely Punch-Out-related instantly appeals to my nostalgia-addled brain; so, obviously, when I saw Nintendo’s real-life reimagining of Little Mac and Doc Louis in their newest commercial for the game, I couldn’t stop laughing like a jackass.
Video after the cut.
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Tags: 8-bit, bob mackey, commercials, nes, nintendo, nostalgia, punch out, super punch out
Games I Wanted to Love: Fester’s Quest
When I was a young, NES-exclusive gamer, there were a few titles I kept going back to with my heart set on loving them. Sunsoft’s Fester’s Quest is probably the most extreme example of this disappointment-causing phenomenon; I probably rented the game a half-dozen times, yet I’ve still never been able to make it past the first level. What frustrates me the most about this lack of progress is that Fester’s Quest should be a good NES game. Hell, it has the essential qualities of an 8-bit Nintendo classic: amazing graphics (just check out that opening cut scene), great music, upgradable weapons, tons of usable items, a huge game world, and differing styles of play. Fester’s Quest was even made by the same people who had previously given us Blaster Master, for god’s sake!
Yet, despite all of these positive qualities, Fester’s Quest is practically unplayable. There, I said it; I’d say it again if I had to.
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Tags: 8-bit, bob mackey, fester's quest, frustration, nes, nintendo, nintendo power
Game Endings Out Of Left Field: Super Mario Bros 2
A thousand years ago, I believed it was easy to make money from your hobbies and interests. I shipped out a lot of my fiction, most of it bad, and prayed magazine editors would throw my stories on the “Yes” pile without actually looking at them. Surprisingly, I fooled some editors who were blind, or perhaps dying, and took home a grand total of fifteen dollars (Canadian) for my efforts.
So I earned a little money with my early attempts at publication, but the advice and experience I gathered was far more valuable (I’d place it at an even thirty bucks). One thing I learned is that you can tell an editor his or her mother sleeps with dogs, and a polite smile or a nonchalant shrug will be your answer. However, if you end a submission with “It was all a dream” (or any variation—seriously, any variation), that editor will drive to your house, light your work on fire, ring the doorbell, and throw the burning paper bouquet in your face the second you answer the door.
In spite of everything, the ending for Super Mario Bros 2 blew me away when I first saw it, and it still makes me smile.
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Tags: 8-bit, game endings out of left field, nadia oxford, nes, nostalgia, super mario bros 2
Ryu vs. Sub-Zero vs. Shaq: The Ten Most Absurd M.U.G.E.N. Battles, part 2
Cyriaque Lamar is a New York-based writer with a New Jersey-bred weltanschauung. He’s had original work published at Cracked.com and performed at The New York International Fringe Festival. Cyriaque is thrilled to contribute to 61FPS, as it brings him one step closer to his childhood dream of living on the set of Nick Arcade.
5.) Apocalypse & Ultraman vs. Onslaught & Galactus
If you thought that Predator brawl was bad, get an eyeful of this. Two giant bosses from the Marvel vs. Capcom series, a homemade Galactus, and, for no reason whatsoever, Ultra-freaking-man. This is a fanboy’s wet dream distilled down into some 100 proof nerdgasm firewater. If Jerry Bruckheimer owned an animation studio, every one of its movies would look like this, but with Martin Lawrence’s disembodied voice screaming from the Technicolor void.
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Tags: arcade, cd I, Cyriaque lamar, duck hunt, family guy, final fight, genesis, Kirby, luigi, mario, marvel vs Capcom, moonwalker, mortal kombat, mugen, nes, nintendo, predator, primal rage, Robocop, sega, shaq fu, star wars, street fighter, Teenage mutant ninja turtles, the legend of Zelda, the Simpsons, top ten
Ryu vs. Sub-Zero vs. Shaq: The Ten Most Absurd M.U.G.E.N. Battles, part 1
Cyriaque Lamar is a New York-based writer with a New Jersey-bred weltanschauung. He’s had original work published at Cracked.com and performed at The New York International Fringe Festival. Cyriaque is thrilled to contribute to 61FPS, as it brings him one step closer to his childhood dream of living on the set of Nick Arcade.
Do you spend your free time wondering whether E. Honda could best Fat Albert in a sumo match? Then the M.U.G.E.N. game engine is your one-way ticket to the funny farm. Since 1999, this free computer program has allowed fighting enthusiasts to create dream matches using just about every pugilist ever to grace a 2D arena. The game also accommodates a jaw-dropping array of homebrewed characters. (Want to see Chun-Li spar with Dark Phoenix, Chain Chomp and a killer whale? Of course you do.) Selecting those fights that most embody the game’s WTF ethos is a Herculean task. Nonetheless, your correspondent here at 61FPS braved hundreds of YouTube clips to bring you those brawls so utterly baffling that they flip your reality head-over-ass and invite you to an insane 32-bit block party where Blanka’s doing bong rips and Sonya Blade’s giving Haohmaru a hummer behind the garage.
10.) Kirby vs. Kintaro
What do you get when you pit Nintendo’s own tensile titan against this Clash of the Titans wannabe from Mortal Kombat 2? A smackdown of Ray Harryhausen-sized proportions. There are few things more inspiring than watching everyone’s favorite Plasticine puffball kick the ever-loving crud out of Goro’s brother-in-arms. This is like Rudy for anyone who had a Nintendo Power subscription circa 1995.
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Tags: arcade, cd I, Cyriaque lamar, duck hunt, family guy, final fight, genesis, Kirby, luigi, mario, marvel vs Capcom, moonwalker, mortal kombat, mugen, nes, nintendo, predator, primal rage, Robocop, sega, shaq fu, star wars, street fighter, Teenage mutant ninja turtles, the legend of Zelda, the Simpsons, top ten
John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself. 
Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.
Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.
Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines.
Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.
Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.
Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.
