Captain Commando was a mascot before he was a hero. In the late 1980s Capcom’s American office used his name as a brand: its adverts listed “Captain Commando” as a trademark of Capcom U.S.A., and ANALOG Computing described the NES 1942 in 1988 as the latest entry in Capcom’s “‘Captain Commando’ action video game line”. In 1991 Capcom finally gave him a body and a game, produced by Yoshiki Okamoto. They put him in a future Metro City, the city of Final Fight, and surrounded him with an odd team: a knife-wielding alien mummy, a ninja and a baby in a robot.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Capcom, arcade, 1991, on the CP System board.
- Players: up to four at once, depending on the cabinet’s settings.
- Heroes: Captain Commando, Mack the Knife, Ginzu the Ninja and Baby Head.
- Setting: Metro City in the year 2026.
- Home versions: Super Famicom and Super NES (1995); PlayStation (Japan, 1998).
The Commando team
The four heroes play very differently. Captain Commando, the leader, fights with energy gloves. Mack the Knife is a mummy-like alien with a pair of knives; Ginzu is a ninja with a sword and the only one who throws shuriken. Baby Head is an infant genius who rides a robot. Zero’s arcade reviewer, early in 1992, thought that “any game starring characters like” the Ninja, Mack the Knife and Baby Head was “definitely worth a look”. Baby Head, it noted, was not very fast, “but those robotic arms have a lethal clout”.
The game runs on the same lines as Final Fight: walk to the right, beat up everyone, fight a boss. Its additions were the four-player cabinet and the robots, mechs left lying about the stages that any hero could climb into; they punched, threw flames or froze enemies. The stages start in Metro City and take in a museum, a circus, a ninja house and an aquarium, with a surfboard ride along the way, and the game ends in a fight with the villain Scumocide. Capcom ran it on the CP System, the board behind Final Fight and Street Fighter II, with 4 MiB of game data.
Reception
British reviewers were polite. The One saw it at a trade show in late 1991 and reported that “Capcom’s own super hero Captain Commando, although up to the usual competent standard, did fail to inspire any great enthusiasm”. Zero summed it up as “simple but not desperately exciting”. At least one player was keener: in 1992 a Mean Machines reader wrote in to say he had tried it in an arcade, “and it was brilliant”, and asked when it would reach the Mega Drive.
It never did. Capcom took it to Nintendo’s console instead. The Super Famicom version was on show in Japan at the end of 1994 and came out in 1995, reaching the Super NES later the same year. It cut the game to two players, reduced the number of enemies on screen and took out the robots. A closer conversion for the PlayStation came out only in Japan, in 1998.
After the game
The game had no sequel, but the Captain kept fighting. Marvel vs. Capcom (1998) brought him back as one of Capcom’s fighters, alongside Mega Man and Strider, and Edge found that these resurrected heroes “work brilliantly as modern 2D fighters”. In his special attack the Ninja and Baby Commando charge in to help him. He also appeared in the Japanese crossover game Namco x Capcom (2005), made with Namco. The arcade game itself was reissued in Capcom’s compilations, including Capcom Classics Collection: Remixed and Capcom Classics Collection Volume 2 (both 2006), Capcom Beat ’Em Up Bundle (2018) and Capcom Arcade Stadium (2021).
Sources
- Info issue 17, November 1987, p. 86: Capcom advertisement (“CAPCOM and Captain Commando are registered trademarks of CAPCOM U.S.A. Inc.”).
- ANALOG Computing issue 61, June 1988, p. 85: Arnie Katz’s review of the NES 1942, “this latest entry in Capcom’s ‘Captain Commando’ action video game line”.
- The One for ST Games issue 38, November 1991: arcade show report.
- Zero issue 27, January 1992, p. 71: arcade review (the characters, the robot, “simple but not desperately exciting”).
- Mean Machines issue 23, August 1992, p. 33: reader’s letter.
- Fabien Sanglard, The Book of CP-System: CP System games list and board table (Captain Commando, 1991, 4 MiB, CPS-B-21).
- Edge issue 15, December 1994, p. 15: Capcom showing the Super Famicom Captain Commando at a Japanese trade show.
- Nintendo Power issue 62, July 1994: Captain Commando in Capcom’s Super NES line-up.
- Gamers’ Republic issue 5, October 1998: Captain Commando among Japanese PlayStation releases.
- Sega Saturn Magazine issue 29, March 1998, pp. 92–93, and Edge issue 58, May 1998, p. 90: Marvel vs. Capcom (Captain Commando and his partners).
- Hardcore Gamer vol. 1 no. 3, August 2005, p. 39: Namco x Capcom.
- Retro Gamer: The Ultimate Retro Companion, volume 2 (Imagine Publishing, 2008), Capcom feature: Capcom’s scrolling fighters, among them “Okamoto’s own Captain Commando”.
- Kurt Kalata, “Captain Commando”, Hardcore Gaming 101, 11 November 2018 (web, secondary): the Capcom of America mascot, the year 2026 and Metro City, the four characters, four players, the robots, the stages, Scumocide, the Super NES and PlayStation versions. https://www.hardcoregaming101.net/captain-commando/
- Wikipedia, “Captain Commando (video game)” (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): release dates, setting, characters and weapons, player counts, the robots, the Super NES changes, the PlayStation release, the compilations, Yoshiki Okamoto as producer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Commando_(video_game)