Game 59: The Adventures of Captain Comic

Name:The Adventures of Captain Comic
Number:59
Year:1988
Publisher:Michael Denio
Developer:Michael Denio
Genre:Side-scroller
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour 30 minutes

You ever replay a game from your youth, that at the time you thought was bad, only to discover that yes, it was bad? The Adventures of Captain Comic is that game for me. Captain Comic represents an important milestone in the DOS side-scrolling timeline, it was the first EGA game with smooth-scrolling. Smooth-ish scrolling, anyway. It is a bit stiff-looking. I don't understand the technical details myself, something to do with graphical memory. Captain Comic goes around the issue by not redrawing the whole screen each second, just the parts of the image that has changed.

But enough of that, let's talk about the game itself. Captain Comic is a Metroidvania-style game set on the planet Tambi to where you find treasures stolen from Omsec. In your way on this dangerous quest...are birds and other assorted inanimate objects that are half your size. Its typical platformer cheap difficulty, have enemies that are shorter than you that you can't hit. What makes this game troublesome is that you have a limited number of lives, no continues and no saves. A rarity for PC games I find. In theory I could probably beat this given enough time. Its just...oh, I don't want to do that.

There's just so much dead space. In theory some of that dead space is intended to be challenge, like a series of pits or areas with enemies. But the pits were only troublesome if they were next to enemies, which happened less than you'd think. The entire opening area is much larger than it needed to be. And enemies respawn, which I dislike in my games as a principle. Its not a constant struggle, but it is annoying.

I can tell the guy tried. You've got some cool environments. I liked the mountain area and the moon. But so much of it just feels random, which is strange considering the sci-fi setting. Shouldn't I have noticed that moon when I flew in on my space ship? Why did I have to find a rocket ship next to a pirate ship? Why are balls of light bouncing across the screen? Is this supposed to be humor? You're not doing a good job of it if that's true.

Weapons:
You shoot fireballs straight in front of you. Except if you get an item, then the fireballs go down, then up, repeat until they hit an enemy or they disappear. This feels like a cheap way to compensate for a lack of a crouch button. 1/10

Enemies:
I've seen games where enemies are supposed to be annoying before, but games where there are only annoying enemies? Everything's a bird, a jumping crab thing, a ball. How about a reason why these treasures are lost here, beyond bizarre wildlife? How about some aliens? Sigh... 0/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
In theory, this whole non-linear level design thing could work...but you know it doesn't. I feel less like I have a choice in the matter and more like I'm merely being given the illusion of choice. From the starting location, there are three doors I need a key for. One is a dark room, another leads to an unreachable platform. Further, the one that's actually open offers a path that also leads to an unreachable platform. So I never really had a choice of options after all. 2/10

Player Agency:
Movement is sluggish, and the second you press a key you shouldn't be pressing, you stop dead. Space jumps and Comic jumps in an awkward fashion. Somewhere between Castlevania and Mario. You have limited air control, but mostly you'll just be using it to stop dead mid-air. I like how you can jump right next to the top of the screen and momentum carries. The insert key shoots. I'll leave it as an exercise to the player as to how that's annoying. I've seen better, and its failures are mostly limited to technical ones. 3/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
At times I get a faint fond feeling I get with spring, but that could be incidental. 1/10

Graphics:
Its solid. I know what I'm looking at. Sometimes it even looks good. Not the best EGA game I've ever seen, but I've seen far, far worse. 2/10

Story:
Get treasures from...whatever. To be continued...I did try and be fair to see if text was going to show up later, but it doesn't. 0/10

Sound/Music:
PC speaker sound effects and annoying music. I literally just starting playing some of my own music before finishing the game, even though I never figured out how to turn off the in-game sound. 0/10

That is 9. That puts it at the same spot as The Hunt for Red October. They sort of share the same things, games I randomly picked for no reason, and ended up being awful. I might want to stop doing that, or finally beat Dungeon Master.

Of interest here is that this game was hacked by a Ukrainian to make a...mod...? I think its just a graphical change. I could be wrong. I'm not going to check it. Otherwise it got okay scores. There was an NES version published by Color Dreams which seems to be slightly uglier and where most of the reviews come from. User reviews are most positive, but to be cruel, I think they're mostly based on nostalgia. This game's going to be a lot better if you're PC exclusive and wanted something like Mario. Which is probably why the NES version is considered meh.

What do I do, trying to find something fun I can actually beat? Accomplish neither of those things. Back to the regular grind, I guess. Yippee. Captain Comic will return in another game...which I'll get to at some point.