Crucial Classics - Bionic Commando

1up.com has another entry in its 'Crucial Classics' series, and this one features a truly excellent NES title, Bionic Commando. From the article: "Most of Bionic Commando's innovations came in its hero's bionic arm. While the lead-footed character could not jump, a tap of the A button sent a moderate length of cable zipping out at a 45-degree angle, in hopes of attaching to anything vaguely resembling a platform. From there the player could perform a Tarzan-like swing to cross distances or simply retract the slack, allowing their commando to hang from the ceiling or even climb up to the next tier. The arm could also be sent straight up or horizontally, but Capcom's designers wisely made the useful angled shot the default."

Comments

Umihara Kawase

[Chemical]

For anyone who liked Bionic Commando and it's grappling hook swinging action, you need to check out Umihara Kawase, a quirky Japanese SNES game about a young girl out to save humanity from an invasion of Darwinian Nightmare Fish.

The game plays a little differently than Bionic Commando, and has much more sophisticated physics, but the concept is the same. You use an elastic fishing line to grapple onto objects and swing yourself around. Because the line is made of rubber, it's stretchable and bendable, allowing you to pull off some crazy maneuvers, such as swinging your line underneath a platform, then retracting the line to fling yourself up onto the ledge. The learning curve is sharp, but once you learn how to play it is a tremendously fun game. I highly recommand this quirky little game to any fan of Bionic Commando (or video games in general).

If you wanna see what I'm talking about, you should check out this video of the game being played to its full capacity.

Re:Bionic Commando who couldn't jump

[Dwedit]

He was white.