Released in 1988 and based around Capcom's arcade game of the same name, Bionic Commando is a single player action platformer. You play as Ladd who with the use of a powerful bionic arm, must swing through enemy territory to rescue the kidnapped commando Super Joe while also stopping the plans of the evil Badd army and their leader, General Killt, from resurrecting the powerful project Alatros. And if you looked at the game for more than a few seconds, especially the final boss of the game, Master-D, that the Badd army are actually the Nazis, and the final boss is a resurrected Adolf Hitler. Yeah, the original Famicom version pretty much leaned in on this being about defeating the Nazis, Right down to the game's title being translated to Hitler's Resurrection: Top Secret.
However, there was a massive issue with displaying Nazi imagery in the west, so the game was heavily scrubbed, with the Nazi logo being replaced by an eagle, or an albatross? But they still kept in Hitler, though given his head blows up in the end of the game, I'm not complaining mind.
The fact that this is something in a video game in what was still the ultra-conservative family friendly Nintendo of America is, for lack of a better term, mind blowing.
So, with all that in mind, how do you take a game that already is heavily censored for the western market and make it work for a kids novel? Let's find out.
We open in a penthouse in Buenos Aires as our protagonist Jack Markson, which definitely feels like such a John Everyman type name, is celebrating the defeat of a terrorist group named the Nazz, alongside Super Joe. The two celebrate with pizza while also mentioning that Badd is still out there and their leader, Generalissimo Kilt (not Killt like in the game), has the plans for Project Albatros. Their celebration is cut short when bullets fly into the penthouse and almost hit Jack and Joe. But before they can even think about what just happened, they get attacked by a bunch of shuriken wielding ninjas. Ah yes, ninjas, a famous attack squad for the Not-Nazi Badd. Sure enough it's Kilt whose ninjas manage to overpower Jack and Joe. Jack goes to get his gun, but has a code of honor in which he won't shoot someone first, not even a Badd. Though kind of semantics when you're being attacked by ninjas. Jack manages to escape by leaping out the window, but Super Joe isn't too lucky and gets captured.
Jack wakes up in a hospital bed in a top secret army hospital in Maryland. The captain is there who tells Jack that he survived the fall by landing in a pool, but before he fell he had grabbed one of the shuriken from the ninjas and the fall resulted in damaging his right arm so badly that it had to be amputated. And in its place is a plastic arm that shoots out a metallic bionic arm, making him a [[Title of the book and game]]. Now, like the game it can be used to swing like a grappling hook. Unlike the game it has a whole slew of new abilities. It can disable electromagnetic fields, it can unlock safes, it can be heated up and be like a fire punch I guess, and pointing it at people can force them to tell the truth like it's Wonder Woman's lasso. But with his new arm, he begins training so that he can save Super Joe. If it'll be a successful mission is still not certain.
Jack prepares for four weeks, learning how to use the bionic arm and learning the basics of the mission. The action areas where you can do battle and the neutral zones which if you fire a weapon you're screwed. But soon he's ready and he parachutes into stage one. Jack's journey in the first stage mirrors that of the game. He swings to the upper level avoiding Badd gunfire and uses the communicator to guide him to the next area, while also eavesdropping on Badd soldiers mentioning not to use the elevator. Jack continues his journey and almost falls to his death, but the bionic arm saves him in time. He then gets surrounded by soldiers and uses his bionic arm to punch them out. He says that he should challenge for the world heavyweight title after this ends, which now makes me wish for some bizarre Bionic Commando/Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! crossover.
Setting his gun to STUN and shooting darts out of it (because this is a kids book and the good guys aren't using real bullets), Jack continues facing off with Badd foes until he gets caught in a cage. Kilt shows up and taunts him before the walls begin to move in on themselves, ready to squish Jack like this was an 80s cartoon. Though, honestly a Bionic Commando cartoon would have fit right in at the time. We were deprived. Fortunately Kilt and the Badd army didn't consider putting a roof in their cage, so Jack uses the arm to go up into the air ducts and crawls away to the rooftop where he takes his helicopter and makes his escape. With a first aid kit to heal up, Jack's next area is a neutral zone named San Genaro, which apparently has the best pizza in the world. Unless it's Pete's Pizza I fail to see that being possible.
At the restaurant, Jack sees a dark haired woman with green eyes named Heather Willis. A fellow agent who was just starting training when he arrived but now is a top tier agent. She hands him a paper to mention flare bombs in the arcade above the pizza place, then leaves. Jack goes up, but gets accosted by a boy named Tiger who wants to shine Jack's shoes to earn money to go to America. Jack declines for now and heads upstairs. But instead of an arcade is a room filled with a spike pit. He manages to get one of the flares but almost slips on an icy platform to the pit, but given the arm has a heat power, he uses that to melt his way. He runs into Tiger again who annoys him about wanting to go to America before Jack leaves on his chopper, noticing Heather leaving on a boat. He also sees Tiger heading to the docks. But before Jack can react, he almost gets attacked by more Badd planes.
Jack finds the entrance to Stage Four underwater in a cave. Since he has heavy combat boots, he sinks down like a stone. He then encounters an octopus, which does not happen in the game mind you. He uses two bionic hooks like a catapult to evade the octopus. Upon entering the cave, he uses his communicator and talks with a top spy agent named Hal Hamilton, who acts as a double agent to relay info to the agency. He then uses it to eavesdrop on Kilt who is talking with a mysterious entity only known as The Hand, a second in command to many of the world's most powerful dictators. Kilt is frustrated with that Albatros isn't finished, but The Hand assures him it will be soon, but Jack Markson needs to be eliminated first. Jack goes to face them, but gets caught by a giant Venus Flytrap, which unlike the giant octopus does happen in the game. Jack uses his fiery arm to escape and burn the plant alive, but the secretions cover him which I guess is enough to scare the Badd soldiers who tell him that Kilt and the Hand have escaped and the wide shot gun is locked in a safe, which works for Jack given we established this bionic arm has a safe cracking mode.
Jack then heads to the next neutral zone and talks with Heather who we learn was engaged to Super Joe before he was kidnapped. She says that only Jack has the tools to rescue Joe. Jack laments having the bionic arm, but she says that the rest of the agents are jealous and wish they had such a cool tool, which is enough to perk Jack up. Tiger then shows up and says that he can help Jack because aside from being a shoeshine boy he was also a delivery boy and has delivered to several of Badd's bases. Because I guess despite being a secret terrorist organization, they still order out. But that knowledge helps Jack as Tiger draws up a map for the next stage, Stage 5. It's more climbing up a large series of roofs, but this time there are Killer Copter enemies that attack him. He overhears The Hand and Kilt again before getting the rocket launcher item from the stage and leaving in his chopper. However, the chopper gets blown up by one of the Badd soldiers, but Jack escapes in time.
He awakens in a secret base in the neutral zone of San Pedro. Heather and Tiger are there and say that he's still doing great and that there's still six more stages to head to, which even Jack is getting tired of. And given there's like 35 pages left I think we're about to fast forward, aren't we? Apparently so as Heather shows a list of the items in each stage of the game. But we head to Stage Nine, which means we indeed skip most of that as we approach the final levels of the mission. He talks with Hal over the mission in this stage He almost falls into a fire pit but swings to safety and defeats more enemies. He talks with the captain who tells him that Super Joe is in stage seventeen and that Project Albatros is nearing completion with the help of the evil Master Destructo, or Master D as the game calls him. Jack goes to Stage Seventeen, only to then have to go to Stage Seven because that's where Super Joe is. So we're entering a wild Super Goose chase.
Jack heads through a tunnel and evades the gunfire of more Badd soldiers. He shoots the ceiling and it lands on the soldiers, but doesn't keep them down for long. He finds a door that he needs to use a permit on, but it doesn't work... because he put it in the wrong way. How very Stine-like with that cliffhanger. Arriving in Stage Seventeen, Jack finally finds Super Joe alive. But the Hand is there too who taunts at Jack saying he'll die. Then the Hand sends out a giant robot which Jack easily bests because the arm has an electrical field that fries the bot. He saves Super Joe at last, but Joe relays that Albatross is finished and planned to destroy North America in two hours. The two split up with Jack running into Tiger and Heather again. They arrive at the final base where Jack encounters the Hand and the coffin containing Master Destructo. As well as the Albatros which is a giant weaponized airship. The Hand says that the double agent Hal is dead, and that the Hand intended to destroy Master Destructo by poisoning him, but Destructo wakes up and straight up murders The Hand with a shotgun before activating the Albatross and running off.
With little time left, Jack uses his arm to reach the weak point of the Albatross and continues to shoot at it until it finally blows up. The Albatros is defeated and the Hand is dead, but Kilt and Master Destructo are still out there. He sees them boarding a helicopter and as it begins to fly, Jack fires a rocket into its gas tank, blowing up the chopper. I assume if the book could do so, we'd get details of Master D's head blowing up. But before Jack can celebrate, alarms blare and the voice of the now dead Kilt play, saying that since he doesn't want successors, the compound is going to blow up and all the soldiers within it. So yeah, maybe aligning yourself with the in-universe Nazis wasn't a good job idea. Jack makes it to the roof, only to find out from Heather that Joe got caught, so Jack goes back down and manages to free Joe as the group escape just as the compound blows up. Our heroes celebrate as they fly off to safety.
This might be the frontrunner so far for the one most consistent with the actual game, right down to some of the level structures and even a lot of the weapons featured. That being said, much like Mega Man 2, it veers way off from the original game at times too. Like with the octopus, or the additions of Heather and Tiger, as well as the Hand, which seems like an odd choice to make since in the game it's Master D who turns on Killt, not any other character. But in terms of being a story with its focus always being on giving us something close to the game experience, this one comes the closest so far. I can tell that our F.X. Nine of this book took more time in writing a story that more closely mirrors the book, which also cutting a lot of the redundancy that bogs down the book a bit. And who is the F.X. Nine for this book? Why it's J.B. Stamper. Yes, the same J.B. Stamper of the Tales for the Midnight Hour book series. With that knowledge it's surprising that there's no kid named Ty in this. Though I guess Tiger counts.
I like that there's more focus on a lot of backstory with many of the other missions before Jack's rescue mission for Super Joe. It fleshes out these characters more, even if they do come off as fluff. And just enough time with the central and side characters to make none of them feel like Superfluous Clay. Maybe Hal, since he does end up killed off before the book ends, but otherwise Heather has her role, Tiger has his, Joe is mostly our damsel and Jack is the plucky hero who doubts his abilities but saves the day in the end. And we get enough of Badd's main bad guys for them to work as villains, even if Kilt just sort of fucks off by the end as Stamper switches the pre-Master D villain over to the Hand instead. Props as well for the book doing a solid job recreating the final boss fights as well as the last shot at the chopper that finishes the game.
So does this work as an adaptation? Honestly, of the ones so far, it definitely does. It doesn't suffer from being too silly like Castlevania II, and it doesn't do a bunch of wrong and confusing things like Mega Man 2 does. It presents Bionic Commando in many ways like an eighties action film with lots of breakneck action and espionage. Something that could exist as a Rambo or Commando style film. It's a shame then that Bionic Commando feels so lost in the shuffle with Capcom IPs. They tried to bring it back briefly, even with that new game they had on the PS3 and 360. But that was a bust and since then it's been a dormant IP. One I do wish had more love, so it's cool to see J.B. Stamper put in the work to prove that there is a viable idea with Bionic Commando that sadly fell on deaf ears. Maybe if she made the arm Jack's wife they would have listened. Ah well, live and learn. Worlds of Power: Bionic Commando gets an A-.
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