Captain Commando review: four heroes, one crowded screen

A superhero in energy gloves, a mummy with knives, a ninja and a baby driving a robot walk into a city and start punching. That is the whole pitch, and Capcom never felt the need to explain it further. You picked the one you liked the look of, and the crowd behind you sorted out the other three.

A Final Fight engine with more seats

Captain Commando follows the same gameplay Capcom had built for Final Fight. Walk right, clear the crowd, beat the boss waiting at the end of the stage. One button attacks, one jumps, and pressing both at once throws a special move that costs you a sliver of your own health. You can dash by pushing the joystick left or right twice, and a running attack is the best habit a new player can pick up.

What changed is the headcount. Depending on how the operator set the machine, it took up to four players at once, and four heroes on one screen plays differently from two. Fights get loud and messy, enemies get knocked into each other, and nobody is ever sure whose hit finished the boss.

A brawler for four is less a game than a small, happy riot.

Four characters, four reasons to fight over the joystick

Each commando is a real choice. Mack the Knife is a mummy-like alien from outer space. Ginzu is a trained ninja and the only one who can throw shurikens. Baby Head is a super genius infant who fights inside a robot of his own design, still one of the best jokes the genre ever told with a straight face. The Captain himself fires bolts of fire and electricity from his gloves, which makes him the safe pick for anyone who just walked up.

The nine stages run through a futuristic Metro City set in the year 2026, which reads a little strangely now that we are the ones living in it.

The mascot who got his own cabinet

Before he had a machine of his own, Captain Commando was a fictional spokesman used by Capcom USA in its console games during the late 1980s. So a lot of kids knew the name from home before they ever saw him throw a punch, and finding him on an arcade floor felt like running into a character who had finally stepped out of the instruction booklet.

What it meant back then

A four player brawler changed how you walked into an American arcade on a Saturday. You did not wait for a machine, you waited for a slot. At the mall, at the bowling alley, in the back of a pizza place, a kid you had never met could drop a quarter in beside you, grab the ninja, and for a few stages the two of you were a team. When he ran out of money he just walked away, and somebody else stepped in.

Playing it today

Alone, it is a solid and slightly plain brawler. The enemies repeat and the stages blur together. With a full crew it comes alive again, because the design was never about one player's skill. It was about four people shouting at the same screen, and that part has not aged a day.