The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 14 | Heil THIS

This is the end, beautiful friend. All that swinging around like a loon and collecting bullets from the corpses of defeated foes in order to incorporate the strength of the dead into your own essence leads to this: Area 12, the Empire’s headquarters. A below-ground concrete bunker surrounded by concertina wire and fascist emblems. Area 12 […]

Additional resources

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 13 | Top secret

Area 11 is as colorful and bright as Area 10 was dim; rather than the Empire’s sewers, this appears to be its furnace. You’ll meet a few human enemies here, but the real challenge comes from the need to perform non-stop advanced grappling in order to proceed. For instance, the level begins with a moving platform, which you […]

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 12 | Loose ends

Once you’ve rescued Super Joe, he mentions a guy called Destroyer-3 in Area 18. This answers one of the weirder questions of the game, which is, “What’s with all those ‘Destroyer’ dudes in Area 18?” If you happen to enter Area 18 before completing Area 7 and rescuing Joe, you’ll find these three guys — Destroyer-1, […]

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 11 | No more another castle

Bionic Commando doesn’t want you to rescue a princess or a damsel in distress; instead, the plot revolves around saving some old guy from captivity. This was clearly a game designed when ’80s action movie stars were still in their prime. The glass ceiling of viable heroism hadn’t begun to shift upward to accommodate the entire […]

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 10 | The waste land

Quick housekeeping note: I’ve changed the structure of the Patreon for this and my other side project sites to work on a monthly basis rather than per-item. Please consider supporting my work here and elsewhere! Your contributions are a huge help to sustain this work, and for me personally as well. Thank you. The newly […]

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 9 | The back nine

Oh, so you managed to survive the gauntlet that is Area 6 of Bionic Commando? The stage that serves the same “do or die” road bump as, say, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne‘s Matador battle? Nicely done. Welcome to the rest of the game. The travel pass you acquire from Area 6 has exactly one use in […]

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 8 | The wheat from the chaff

If you can survive the towering gauntlet that is Area 5, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll be up to the task of taking on Area 6. You don’t have a choice in the matter. Area 6 sits at one end of a lengthy map corridor leading to the Badd empire’s inner regions, and you can’t […]

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 7 | A tower struck down

I’m as surprised as anyone by just how many parts this Bionic Commando series is turning out to be. I figured by this point I’d be toward the end of the game already, but I’m still working toward the halfway point. Maybe the second half will be much faster, but who knows? I mean, I already […]

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 6 | Botany bane

Note: I just realized I never bothered to mention that The Anatomy of Mega Man Vol. I is available on Gumroad, if you’d like the PDF. So… there’s that. If Area 2 was the game’s optional warm-up, Area 3 is more of an instant-kill death trap trial-by-fire… though still an optional one, as it […]

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 5 | Born with a heart full of neutrality

I touched on the Neutral Areas in a previous update, but it’s worth looking more thoroughly into them. By and large, the Neutral Areas do precisely as advertised — they allow you to interact with enemy and unaffiliated characters non-violently, allowing the story to advance in small but useful ways. The Neutral Areas also throw […]

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 4 | Meet with enemies and descend

At this point it behooves us to discuss some of the unique features that set Bionic Commando apart from other platformers of its vintage. Yes, it’s very neat that you can swing about with a grappling arm, but by no means was that the extent of Bionic Commando‘s deviations from run-and-jump standards. The map screen, for […]

The Anatomy of Bionic Commando | 3 | Fumbling toward Section Three

With Area 1 conquered, you return to the overworld map, hovering above the ruins of your conquest. At this point, you’re given three options for transferring to other areas: Area 0, which is pointless; Area 4, which angles away and leads into the bulk of the map; and Area 13, which appears directly above Area 1 in […]

The Anatomy of Games

Charmingly amateurish game design analysis by Jeremy Parish

Tag: capcom