A playthrough of Capcom's 1992 sci-fi action game for the Nintendo Game Boy, Bionic Commando.

Bionic Commando for the Game Boy was released more than four years after the NES version, and thankfully Capcom saw fit to do more than merely port the existing game to a new platform. The core game remains absolutely intact on the handheld, but this remake improves on it in just about every way imaginable.

Handled by Minakuchi, the development company responsible for Mega Man 1 and 3-5 on the Game Boy, Bionic Commando clearly shows signs of the company's prior experience with Capcom - and, on an interesting side-note, was in development around the same time as Mega Man 2 for the GB, perhaps providing an explanation as to why MM2 ended up the way it did with another developer...

Bionic Commando's face lift updates the game considerably. It now features an anime-inspired, futuristic sci-fi aesthetic, and all of the graphics and sound have been redone to reflect this. While this does ultimately mean we lose Hitler as the antagonist, the game benefits a great deal from the well-drawn cinema scenes that regularly punctuate the action and the significant increase in the level of detail in the graphics. The tone also makes it feel a bit closer to Strider on the NES. If only they had given that game this treatment!

And now, the guy that used to vaguely resemble M. Bison looks just like M. Bison. For some reason I really liked that.

I *really* loved the soundtrack on this one, too. While the tunes here are not as widely recognized as the classics in the NES version, the new music is a substantial improvement. The instrumentation is far better, the arrangements are fuller, and the entire thing is far more dramatic in nature. Don't get me wrong - I love NES BC's soundtrack. I just love the Game Boy version's much more.

A couple of differences have been made to the game play - the Commando-style skirmish sections are now standard platforming stages, a few stage layouts have been altered to better suit the smaller screen, and the controls have also been tweaked, making the grappling arm easier to wield. The game definitely feels different, but it's still quite familiar, and I think that most people will like the changes once they get used to them. I certainly did.

Overall, I can't recommend Bionic Commando highly enough on the Game Boy. The NES is rightfully hailed as a classic, but despite being significantly more refined and fleshed out, the Game Boy version rarely gets acknowledged in the same regard.

If you are a fan of Bionic Commando, do yourself a favor and play this. It might not make you throw out your NES cart, but I bet your Super GameBoy will get used far, far more often. Given the choice, I'd chose this version first every time.

Excellent stuff, Minakuchi and Capcom. Back in the early 90s, you guys really knew how to go the extra mile.

*Recorded using the Retroarch DMG shader for those classic bile-colored pixels. Dot-matrix FTW!*
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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