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Denisha Cerniglia
In the game's instruction manual, the character is only known as "Player". In the game's ending, his name is revealed as "Ladd". The Game Boy version, a retelling of this game, calls the character "Rad". In the Game Boy Color remake, the main character is unnamed. His full name of Nathan "Rad" Spencer was revealed in 2009's Bionic Commando for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
Gameplay begins as Ladd starts in Area 1, in which he is told that the first several areas, already infiltrated by Federation troops, have communication devices and rooms that can be used to stay in contact with the Federation and for wiretapping to gain intelligence from the Empire. Upon reaching Area 3, Ladd finds through enemy intelligence that Super Joe has been transported to the Imperial "disposal area", which a Federation spy later confirms. However, upon reaching the disposal area, an Imperial commander tells Ladd that Super Joe has been transported elsewhere. Eventually, Ladd locates and rescues Super Joe from a POW camp, who informs Ladd that the Albatros project is a powerful laser cannon the Badds were unable to complete. However, the one person vital to the project's completion, Master-D (Hitler), is dead, and Generalissimo Killt has been unsuccessfully trying to resurrect him. Super Joe tells Ladd that they must stop Killt before he succeeds, and he asks Ladd to accompany him to the Imperial base located in Area 12.
When Ladd reaches the Imperial base, Super Joe tells him to break the power system in order to release two power barriers that are guarding the incomplete project. After doing so, Super Joe tells Ladd to defeat Killt and escape while he goes to destroy the base's power source. When Ladd reaches Killt's chamber, Killt boasts that the Albatros project has been completed without Master-D's help, turning off the device that would have resurrected him. As Killt is about to kill Ladd, electric shocks begin to occur around the holding tank containing Master-D's body, reviving Master-D and instantly killing Killt. Master-D then exits the tank and approaches Ladd, saying that he will use the Federation's forces to take over the world. Ladd vows to fight against Master-D, who calls Ladd a "damn fool" and unveils the Albatros. After destroying the Albatros, Ladd encounters a dying comrade named Hal, who gives Ladd a bazooka and tells him that Master-D is escaping and that he needs to shoot the bazooka into the cockpit of Master-D's escape chopper. Ladd uses his bionic arm to swing himself towards Master-D's escape chopper and fires the bazooka into the cockpit; upon doing so, Ladd screams: "Your number's up! Monster!" Then, in a series of slow-motion frames, the game shows Master-D's head explode.
The 60-second alarm inside the Imperial base sounds off. Ladd escapes, realizes that Super Joe is still inside, and runs back in to rescue him. The Federation's commander orders the full evacuation of the base. At the Federation base, troops surround Ladd and Super Joe to celebrate their victory. On August 2, 2010, an old Super Joe recalls the entire story and hopes that it will live on.
One of the most prominent differences is the identity of the ultimate antagonist of the game, who is meant to be a revived Adolf Hitler in the Japanese version. For the English version, the character was renamed "Master-D", however his appearance remained the same.[7] There is a gory ending sequence in which Hitler's face explodes, which was also kept intact in the English version.[9]
The music for the game was created by video game music composer Junko Tamiya, who was credited under the pseudonym "Gondamin".[10] Two songs from the Arcade versions are used in some areas. The music for the original arcade game was developed by Harumi Fujita. Tamiya adapted two of the original arcade tracks (The "Bionic Commando Theme" and "The Powerplant") and expanded the soundtrack by adding several more new songs in the console versions for the Japanese Famicom and the NES versions.[1]
In 1988, Nintendo Power featured it on the cover of its second issue with an 11-page "monster review" plus foldout poster.[4] In 1997 Electronic Gaming Monthly ranked it the 32nd best console video game of all time, assessing that the fact that the player could not jump and had to instead swing around with his bionic arm added an unexpected level of depth to the platform genre.[13] In 2003, the NES version of Bionic Commando was inducted into GameSpot's list of the greatest games of all time.[14] In 2008, Nintendo Power ranked it as the 17th best Nintendo Entertainment System video game, describing it as one of the console's most original action games due to the ability to swing.[15] GamesRadar ranked it the fourth best NES game ever made. The staff called it a classic and praised its grappling mechanic.[16] The Japanese magazine Famitsu gave it 26 out of 40.[2]
A portable adaptation of Bionic Commando was released for the Game Boy in 1992. The Game Boy version is based on the NES game, featuring the same gameplay and stages, and a similar plot, but changes the present day setting into a futuristic one. A second remake, Bionic Commando Rearmed, was developed by GRIN and released in 2008 as a downloadable game for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows.
The game was novelized as Bionic Commando by J. B. Stamper as part of the Worlds of Power series of novels based on the NES version. The main character is identified as Jack Markson, who loses an arm when ninjas attack his hotel room and kidnap Super Joe. The Federation replaces his missing limb with a bionic arm that has a grappling hook and a number of other gadgets that are not featured in the game, like a flame thrower and a device that forces prisoners to tell the truth. Like most books in the series, violence was toned down to non-lethality in most cases (he usually shoots enemy soldiers with tranquilizers), although certain events, like the deaths of Hal and Killt, are kept. Much of the game's middle is skimmed over in order to fit it all into the book.
Bionic Commando was released by Capcom in December 1988 for the NES. The unique thing about this game is that your character cannot jump. Instead, you are equipped with a grappling arm that allows you to swing around like Spider Man! Another interesting thing about this game is that it somehow slipped some language/violent content past Nintendo's "Quality Assurance" people.
Bionic Commando any% is a pretty frustrating category. I absolutely hate it. I really only did this run because I wanted to set a bit of a higher benchmark for anybody else interested in running this category. The time can drop by at least 20 seconds; my sum of best splits is 15:18, but I omitted a lot of the optimal strats and found some new things since I did this run. Sub-15 is probably even possible.
The reason this category is awful is the truck skip at area 8. Feasel explained to me how this works (thanks!!), and I'll pass along that knowledge. Basically, your helicopter functions on a 2-frame rule on the map. When you confirm your destination, your helicopter either moves 20 or 21 frames afterwards, depending on the frame rule. The trucks will move on the frame after you confirm your destination, though, so they're immune to this. The end result is that you have a raw 50% chance of either "gaining" or "losing" a frame of movement to the trucks.
To skip the truck at area 8, the truck need to arrive before we do. Of the 10 movements it takes to get there, we need to "lose" a frame of movement to the trucks on 6 of those. If we go in completely blind, that means there's a 37% chance to get the skip. You can tell if you got the good/bad frames on most of the map movements by looking at what pixels certain trucks stop on, though. For these attempts, I made sure that I had at least 3 "good" frames in the first 4 movements. The visual cue for this is the truck at area 12; if you get at least 3 "good" frames, there will be one row of white pixels between the number 12 and the back of the truck. Otherwise, the back of the truck will be touching the bottom of the numbers. By forcing 3 out of 4 good frames, we increase the odds of truck skip to 65%.
Unfortunately, this means that most attempts never get to play a single stage. Even if you do get favorable truck luck at the start, you still need to play 2 of the hardest stages and then hope you succeed at the truck skip. After losing several perfect runs to the truck skip, I just stopped caring and wanted to be done with this category.
So yea, this is very improvable, but I need a break from it. I'll probably revisit it later. Area 6 was disastrous in this run, mostly from a failed ceiling clip at the end, failing to enter doors, and omitting the optimal strats. Area 9 also had a lot of slop. I lost like 8 seconds in area 12 from failed elevator clips, which really sucks. Areas 5, 3, 7, 10, and 11 are quite good, but the rest of the mistakes are incredibly costly.
I have to give a HUGE thanks to feasel for getting me into this game. Running Bionic Commando has been an incredibly fun experience for me, and it has definitely grown to be one of my favorite NES games. He also taught me the mechanics of the game and showed me how to do most of the shortcuts, which is pretty darn important.
I also need to thank Master-88 for laying down the ground work for the 100% category. His 26:57 run on SDA had very few execution errors, but we have just found a lot of new optimizations and tricks in the 4 years since that run was completed. I definitely took a lot of my level routes from his run, and his map route was the foundation for the truckless route I came up with and used in this run. Also, he discovered the "room storage" glitch that I use to save over a minute in area 8. Though it was not really understood at the time of its discovery, his posts and videos of it are what made me investigate it more. On the subject of the room storage glitch, big thanks to Omnigamer for helping me figure out EXACTLY how it worked. That saved me a lot of trial-and-error time.
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