I Played Captain Comic · 2:42pm Jul 24th, 2020
My nostalgia is really active lately. And, full disclosure, I was terrible at this game as a kid, and more than twenty years later, I'm no better.
Okay, so for anyone who thinks that Episodic games are a new thing. Nope, they've been around a long time. The difference here being that the whole game was too large for removable media at the time.
So you get a blurb of story while a midi of The Halls of Montezuma plays.
You are Captain Comic, Galactic Hero. And what brought you to Planet Tambi? Treasure. … To be fair, you're recovering stolen treasure, so it's not just a treasure hunting trip, this is business.
You then get a screen that shows off the items and enemies. (I'll try to give a rundown of what items do (if anything,) assuming I can get them. Again, I am terrible at this game.)
With the blurb of story done, you're sent into the game with another clip of The Halls of Montezuma.
Okay, so arrow keys move you left and right, space bar jumps. And once you get a soda 0 on the number pad shoots. (The sodas increase your firing rate.) You also use alt to use keys/open doors. The controls are a bit awkward for me to use at this time and I didn't see any way to change the key bindings. The Shield Icon and bar represent your health, those little balls on the bottom are your lives (Which I only now realize are little Captain Comic heads.)
This is a platforming shooter, but it's not exactly linear. I found myself going back and forth, exploring new areas and revisiting old. Not exactly common in games this old. But, again, I'm not any good at this game and never managed to beat it.
Okay, so the graphics are good for their time. Early NES level pixel art. The backgrounds are pretty well done for the era of games which this came out of. With the talent and resources of people these days I could see someone doing a great graphical upgrade while keeping it Pixel art.
It's abandon ware, so the game itself is free, and it's old so it doesn't take up much space. So even the digital cost of storage is low. Give it a shot if you feel it would be interesting.
