Today I would like to introduce you to the game The Punisher. Old-timers (including myself) certainly remember the arcade machine with this title. It stood in most "game rooms," as those atmospheric dens were called a quarter of a century ago...
There's nothing strange about it - The Punisher stood out among other beat 'em up games with its incredible, comic book atmosphere. After all, we played as the famous Frank Castle, whose task was not to capture the "main villain" but to seek revenge - and in the most brutal way possible.
As I mentioned, the game is a straightforward beat 'em up. The producer of this game has released many titles of this type, but Capcom really went all out and gave us a really well-crafted title. Besides the game's execution, the vast arsenal of weapons also deserves attention, with which you can make a mess of your opponents. Katanas, baseball bats, axes, and various firearms are just waiting for you to pick them up and use them on your enemies.
The opponents are truly diverse. From ordinary "pawns" in the gang hierarchy, through better-armed thugs, the game will also throw karatekas, ninjas, and even cyborgs at us! The latter are really troublesome, and many players have ended their gameplay just trying to defeat them.
It's also worth noting that besides Frank Castle, we could also play as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury, but let's face it, this character was only chosen in two-player mode. Everyone just wanted to play as The Punisher, even though these two characters didn't differ in any way.
The game was released in 1993 on arcade machines and still remains one of the best games of its kind.
The gameplay is very dynamic, with up to 10 opponents appearing on the screen at once, so defeating them sometimes requires some monkey business. But that's why we loved arcade rooms.
The version known from arcade machines was never released on computers. Within two years of the arcade version's release, the game was released on the Sega Mega Drive console, but it was not 100% faithful to the original.
The Mega Drive was simply not powerful enough to handle this title, so many details were cut from the game. For example, objects that could previously be destroyed were turned into static background elements. As for the sound track from the Sega version, I won't even comment, as it's possible that the specialist who converted it from the arcade version got water in their ear and went to work, or something to that effect. It's simply worse than bad...
A port to the original Sony PlayStation was also planned, but this project hit a dead end and the game was eventually canceled.
Gosh, it's still a great game that I played many years ago! The comic book graphics have aged gracefully, and the sound effects and soundtrack are still top-notch. You can easily run the game on the MAME emulator and spend about an hour completing it.
So, if you're fans of good games of this genre, what are you waiting for, Arek?
This is not the last beat 'em up game from Capcom that I would like to introduce to you. I will present more titles soon 😉.
Comments
Post a Comment