For newcomers to the role-playing genre, Final Fantasy VI‘s opening could be fairly disorienting, I imagine. Your little robot guys start walking, then some tiny people run up to you. The screen freaks out as a crunchy sound effect plays and all of a sudden you’re in a different place with intense music playing and […]
Twenty years ago this week I drove across town to the nearest Target one afternoon as soon as my classes were out. My goal: The Super NES game case, where a brand new release was on sale. I’d seen it advertised in late-night MTV commercials, of all things, and the gushing EGM review from a couple […]
We’re done with Bionic Commando now, and I’m very disappointed in you all for not reading it by the thousands, because this is a truly great game. I’ve always liked it, but after breaking it down stage-by-stage I see that it truly was masterfully crafted. Capcom created a platformer that broke the rules of platforming, and they […]
This is the end, beautiful friend. All that swinging around like a loon and collecting bullets from the corpses of defeated foes in order to incorporate the strength of the dead into your own essence leads to this: Area 12, the Empire’s headquarters. A below-ground concrete bunker surrounded by concertina wire and fascist emblems. Area 12 […]
Area 11 is as colorful and bright as Area 10 was dim; rather than the Empire’s sewers, this appears to be its furnace. You’ll meet a few human enemies here, but the real challenge comes from the need to perform non-stop advanced grappling in order to proceed. For instance, the level begins with a moving platform, which you […]
Once you’ve rescued Super Joe, he mentions a guy called Destroyer-3 in Area 18. This answers one of the weirder questions of the game, which is, “What’s with all those ‘Destroyer’ dudes in Area 18?” If you happen to enter Area 18 before completing Area 7 and rescuing Joe, you’ll find these three guys — Destroyer-1, […]
Bionic Commando doesn’t want you to rescue a princess or a damsel in distress; instead, the plot revolves around saving some old guy from captivity. This was clearly a game designed when ’80s action movie stars were still in their prime. The glass ceiling of viable heroism hadn’t begun to shift upward to accommodate the entire […]
Quick housekeeping note: I’ve changed the structure of the Patreon for this and my other side project sites to work on a monthly basis rather than per-item. Please consider supporting my work here and elsewhere! Your contributions are a huge help to sustain this work, and for me personally as well. Thank you. The newly […]
Oh, so you managed to survive the gauntlet that is Area 6 of Bionic Commando? The stage that serves the same “do or die” road bump as, say, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne‘s Matador battle? Nicely done. Welcome to the rest of the game. The travel pass you acquire from Area 6 has exactly one use in […]
If you can survive the towering gauntlet that is Area 5, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll be up to the task of taking on Area 6. You don’t have a choice in the matter. Area 6 sits at one end of a lengthy map corridor leading to the Badd empire’s inner regions, and you can’t […]
I’m as surprised as anyone by just how many parts this Bionic Commando series is turning out to be. I figured by this point I’d be toward the end of the game already, but I’m still working toward the halfway point. Maybe the second half will be much faster, but who knows? I mean, I already […]
Note: I just realized I never bothered to mention that The Anatomy of Mega Man Vol. I is available on Gumroad, if you’d like the PDF. So… there’s that. If Area 2 was the game’s optional warm-up, Area 3 is more of an instant-kill death trap trial-by-fire… though still an optional one, as it […]