Code Like It's 198x

Bionic Commando

The platform game without a jump button

Classic GamesSource-checked

Capcom's 1987 coin-op gave its soldier a telescopic grappling arm instead of a jump, an idea Tokuro Fujiwara had first tried at Konami. GO! and Software Creations turned it into a run of British conversions that CRASH and ZZAP!64 rated above 90% in 1988, and a very different 1988 NES version, sold in Japan under a title naming Hitler and cleaned of Nazi references in the West, became the version most people remember and the one Capcom remade in 2008.

Every platform game of 1987 had a jump button except this one. Capcom’s Bionic Commando gave its soldier a telescopic mechanical arm instead: fire it upwards and it hooks a branch or a girder and hauls him up, fire it at an angle and he swings from it like Tarzan, fire it sideways and it punches an enemy in the face. Wireframe later asked the question players must have asked at the time: “Whoever heard of a platform game without a jump function?” The answer, once the arm clicked, was that it felt faster and freer than jumping. The coin-op went on to two very different lives: as a run of British home-computer conversions that the magazines loved, and as a rebuilt NES game, sold in Japan under a title naming Adolf Hitler, that became the version most people remember.

Fast facts

  • Developer: Capcom. The grappling-arm idea came from Tokuro Fujiwara, who had first tried it in Konami’s Roc’n Rope.
  • Arcade: 1987. Known in Japan as Top Secret.
  • Home computers: published in Britain by GO!, U.S. Gold’s label, in 1988; Spectrum and Commodore 64 versions by Software Creations, with music by Tim Follin.
  • NES: a new game with an overworld map, released in Japan on 20 July 1988 as Hitler no Fukkatsu: Top Secret (“Hitler’s Resurrection”) and in America the same year as Bionic Commando.
  • Game Boy: an adaptation of the NES game, 1992.
  • Remakes: Bionic Commando Rearmed (2008), a 3D Bionic Commando (2009) and Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 (2011).

The arm

In the coin-op the player parachutes into a forest behind enemy lines. The mission, as Computer and Video Games summed it up, is to infiltrate the enemy, destroy their super missiles and find the plans for their next attack, over five timed levels of scrolling platforms: a jungle, a fort, a complex of pipes, a control tower and the missile silo itself. Without a jump, every way up is through the arm. It fires straight up, or diagonally, and the player swings on it, lets go at the right moment and lands on the next ledge. It also knocks out soldiers, although only for a moment, and it can snatch the power-ups that drift down by parachute.

The idea was not new. Fujiwara had given the hero of Konami’s Roc’n Rope a grappling hook before he moved to Capcom in 1983, but there the climbing was, in Wireframe’s words, “wooden and ponderous”. In Bionic Commando the hero “is swift and liberating”, and Wireframe called the coin-op “the original king of the swingers”. Mastering it cost players money. The same magazine suggested that the pockets of change the learning took were one reason the NES version, not the arcade original, became the one people remember, at least in North America.

Computer and Video Games spotted the game early. Its report from the AOU coin-op show in Japan in the spring of 1987 listed “two new games” from Capcom, “Top Secret, and Bionic Commandos”, not realising that Top Secret was the Japanese name for the same machine. Clare Edgeley’s review later called it “a simple but thoroughly enjoyable shoot ’em up with one innovative feature — a bionic arm”.

The British conversions

The home-computer versions came through the deal that U.S. Gold’s new GO! label signed with Capcom in November 1987. Capcom had its own home versions made in America, and GO! released those first; with Bionic Commando it chose to have the game written in Britain instead. The Games Machine put it simply: “Capcom do their own C64 conversions, but GO! prefer to redesign for the UK market.” The Manchester studio Software Creations, which had converted Bubble Bobble for Firebird, wrote the Spectrum and Commodore 64 versions, and Tim Follin wrote their music.

The reviews in the summer of 1988 gave GO! its first clear hit from the deal:

  • CRASH gave the Spectrum version 92%. One reviewer admitted he had laughed on hearing that GO! meant to put the coin-op on the Spectrum, then found that Software Creations had “done a grand job”. Another called the 128K music, a different tune for every level, “the best music I’ve ever heard on the Spectrum”; 48K owners got sound effects and a multiload. The verdict: “the first successful conversion from the new GO!/Capcom deal”.
  • Your Sinclair gave it 9 out of 10. Its reviewer compared the bionic arm to the lazy tongs “that your gran always uses to pick up pieces of paper off the floor”, and praised scrolling so smooth “that you never think of the playing area as anything other than one vast landscape”.
  • Sinclair User was cooler, complaining of flicker and fiddly diagonal controls: an “acceptable though unexciting conversion”.
  • ZZAP!64 gave the Commodore 64 version 90% overall and 97% for sound (“five superbly psychedelic in-game themes”), and called it “by far the best GO! conversion so far”. The Games Machine gave it 86%.

The 16-bit versions followed. The Games Machine gave the Atari ST version 91% and the Amiga version, “a straight conversion” of the ST game, 81%. The Amstrad CPC version was the disappointment: ACE found it an obvious port of the Spectrum version, in monochrome and slower than the other 8-bit games. At launch the game cost £8.99 on Spectrum cassette, £9.99 on Commodore 64 cassette, £19.99 on the ST and £24.99 on the Amiga.

The NES game

Capcom’s NES version, released in Japan in July 1988, kept the arm and threw away almost everything else. Nintendo Power described the new structure in its second issue. The player’s helicopter moves across a map of numbered areas while enemy trucks move to intercept it; if the two meet, there is a fight. Some areas are neutral, where the player talks to agents, gathers information and picks up weapons and items, although “once you fire a shot it seems that everyone else joins in”. Items such as a flare gun for a dark stage have to be found in one area and used in another. The mission is to rescue Super Joe, the hero of Capcom’s Commando, and to stop a plot code-named “Albatros”. The magazine was clear about the arm’s rule: “your bionics won’t allow you to jump.”

The villain at the end of the Western version is “Master-D”. In Japan the game’s full title was Hitler no Fukkatsu: Top Secret, “Hitler’s Resurrection”, and the enemy army and its revived leader were modelled on Nazi Germany. For the American release Capcom renamed the game Bionic Commando, renamed the leader and removed the swastikas from the enemy’s emblem, although the sprite of the leader itself was left unchanged. The finale was kept: the leader’s head explodes in a shower of red, a scene Wireframe later saw as foreshadowing the horror of Fujiwara’s Sweet Home and Resident Evil. Retro Gamer noted in 2008 that the original US version carried no references to the Nazi party, and that Capcom’s remake would follow it.

In 1992 Capcom adapted the NES game for the Game Boy. Nintendo Power thought it looked like “a faithful adaptation of the original NES game”.

Rearmed and after

Twenty years on, Capcom brought the series back twice. Bionic Commando Rearmed (2008), a download game made by the Swedish developer Grin, was in Retro Gamer’s words “an enhanced update/homage of the NES game”, not of the arcade original. Grin also handled the swinging in a full 3D Bionic Commando for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC in 2009, set ten years after the first game. Its producer, Ben Judd, told Edge he considered the original to have “one of the best ignored mechanics in gaming”. Wireframe later called the 3D game “a flawed sales disappointment”.

Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 (2011), by Fat Shark, added a jump button for the first time. Edge thought that “jumping damages the delicate balance of mechanics that makes the series so distinctive”, and noted that finishing the game unlocked a “retro” mode that took the jump away again.

Sources

  • Computer and Video Games issue 67, May 1987, p. 92: news from the AOU show in Japan (Top Secret and Bionic Commandos; the bionic arm).
  • Computer and Video Games issue 74, December 1987, p. 57: GO!’s Capcom conversions; Clare Edgeley’s arcade review of Bionic Commandos quoted.
  • Wireframe issue 7, February 2019, pp. 51–52: developer profile of Tokuro Fujiwara (Bionic Commando as “an ingenious upgrade” of Roc’n Rope; the NES ending; the 2009 reboot as “a flawed sales disappointment”).
  • Wireframe issue 12, April 2019, pp. 65–66: “Killer Feature: Bionic Commando” (“Whoever heard of a platform game without a jump function?”; Roc’n Rope; Fujiwara’s move to Capcom in 1983; the arcade game against the NES version; Grin’s 2008 remake of the NES game).
  • The Games Machine issue 7, June 1988, p. 67: Commodore 64 review, 86% (“Capcom do their own C64 conversions, but GO! prefer to redesign for the UK market”).
  • The Games Machine issue 11, October 1988, p. 57: Amiga version update, 81%, with the ST version’s 91%.
  • CRASH issue 53, June 1988, pp. 18–19: Spectrum review, 92% (GO!, £8.99 cassette; Software Creations; five levels; the 128K music).
  • Your Sinclair issue 31, July 1988, p. 68: Spectrum review, 9/10.
  • Sinclair User issue 75, June 1988, p. 77: Spectrum review.
  • ZZAP!64 issue 39, July 1988, pp. 12–13: Commodore 64 review, 90% overall, 97% sound (GO!, £9.99 cassette).
  • ACE issue 12, September 1988, p. 67: Amstrad CPC, Atari ST and Spectrum versions.
  • ACE issue 14, November 1988, p. 48: GO! advertisement (prices for every format).
  • Nintendo Power issue 1, July/August 1988: NES preview (Super Joe captured by “the Imperial Army”).
  • Nintendo Power issue 2, September/October 1988, pp. 7–18: NES feature (the map, neutral areas, the Albatros plan, Master-D, “your bionics won’t allow you to jump”).
  • Nintendo Power issue 40, September 1992, Pak Watch: the Game Boy version.
  • Retro Gamer issue 51, 2008, p. 8: news of Bionic Commando Rearmed (an update of the NES game, “notably different to the arcade version”, with no references to the Nazi party).
  • Edge issue 183, Christmas 2007, p. 30: preview of the 3D Bionic Commando (Grin; set ten years after the original; Ben Judd).
  • Edge issue 225, March 2011, p. 105: Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 review (Fat Shark; the jump; the “retro” mode).
  • Natsugee.com, “ヒットラーの復活 トップシークレット” (web, secondary): Famicom release date, 20 July 1988, and price. https://natsugee.com/famicom/hitler-no-fukkatsu-top-secret/
  • Wikipedia, “Bionic Commando (1988 video game)” and Japanese Wikipedia, “トップシークレット (ゲーム)” (web, secondary): the Japanese titles; the renaming of Hitler as Master-D with his sprite unchanged, and the replacement of the swastika emblem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic_Commando_(1988_video_game)

See also

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