The Punisher (Japan 930422) - MAME machine

Arcade Video game published 31 years ago:

The Punisher © 1993 Capcom Company, Limited.

The Punisher is a side-scrolling beat-em-up based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, in which one or two players take on the role of either 'The Punisher' or 'Nick Fury' and must battle through six dangerous locales filled with violent criminal gangs, leading to a final confrontation with criminal mastermind, 'The Kingpin'.

As well as the standard punch and kick moves, each character also has a special attack. This move is powerful enough to fell several enemies at once, with the trade-off that each time a special attack is executed, some of the player's energy is lost. Energy levels can be replenished by finding food that lies hidden in some of the background objects that litter the levels.

Many enemies carry weapons, such as axes, baseball bats, swords and knives and should players manage to knock these from the enemies' hands, the heroes can pick up the weapons and use them against the enemies. In keeping with their comic book counterparts, each player character also carries a handgun; this only comes into play when confronted with gun-wielding enemies, at which point the players' guns are drawn automatically. Once the gun-carrying enemies have been killed, the players' guns are automatically re-holstered.

A large and powerful gang boss awaits the heroes at the end of each stage. The five gang bosses are Scully, Guardroid, Bonebreaker, Bushwacker and Guardroid 2. The sixth and final level takes place in The Kingpin's lair, ending with a showdown with the criminal mastermind himself.

TECHNICAL
Runs on the "CP System" hardware.
B-Board #: 91634B-2

# of players: Up to 2 simultaneous.
Type of control (per player): 8-Way Joystick
# of buttons (per player): 2
→ [1] Attack, [2] Jump

TRIVIA
The Punisher was released in April 1993 in the Japanese arcades. It was known there as the 26th video game made for this system.

Exported as "The Punisher [B-Board 91635B-2]".

This game features the main characters from the comic books respectively titled 'The Punisher' (First appearance: Amazing Spider-Man 129, 1973) and 'Nick Fury' (First appearance: Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos 1, 1963), Agent of SHIELD, both published by Marvel Comics. The acronym SHIELD stands for 'Surpreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division'.

Scully, the first of the boss villains here, is loosely based on a villain named Chester Scully who appeared in issues 22-23 (August and September, 1989) of the Punisher's first ongoing series, which ran from 1987 to 1995. The leaping kicks he uses in the game are an homage to the cover of the 23rd issue where his comic book counterpart is shown attacking the Punisher by kicking at him while jumping.

Bushwacker, the 4th stage boss, is based on the homonymous Marvel's super villain (enemy of Daredevil, The Punisher and Wolverine). Although, there are some aesthetic differences from his appearance in the game and in the original comic: half of his face is horribly scared in the comic, while in the game his face seems in good conditions. Also, his special right arm, altered bionically to function as a gun, is still revealed on his real form on the comic, while in the game he can turn his arms from normal form to guns form, like a type of mutant morph (and this should sound incongruous, because he's a mutant's hunter on the Marvel's comics). He appear on the Capcom's game before he was hired by Kingpin for kill Punisher in the original Punisher comic series, so his presence fit perfectly in the game's plot.

Jigsaw, the non-boss enemy appearing in the 2nd area of the final stage (elevator's top) is one of the most dangerous enemies of Punisher in the original comic series. Although, is showed different in the game - in the game he appears like a commando-mercenary, while in the comic he was a former killer of a notorious mobster family of New York. - By the way, his scared face (caused by the same Punisher in the comics) is identical to his original appearance on the comics.

Bruno Costa, the bald gangster with sunglasses appearing in the scenes of attract mode and during the first stages of the game, is also showed in the comic, and he's the responsible of the massacre of the Frank's Castle family, like the game says. However, Punisher killed him in the comic's series, while in the game he's killed by Guardroid (the 2nd stage boss).

Hidden Bonus Level: Looking in the game source code, there's a hidden second bonus game in stage directory. It shows an airplane hijacking or something and two of the generic game thugs burst through the winshield. They run across the screen to the left and then punisher shows up. There are several stewardesses on the floor as hostages and when you go over to them they get freed. But then the stage like instantly is interrupted and randomly takes you to the score screen after every stage and says 'Stage 7 complete' and then switches to an alternate credits screen with all the enemies in the game running across and doing random things. It's probably a part of the game not completed and not remove from the final product and still present in the source code. The only way to see this hidden stage is to browse the source code or using a cheat with emulator like MAME.

Soundtrack releases:
Pony Canyon / Scitron - Tenchi wo Kurau II The Battle of Red Wall: G.S.M. Capcom 7 - PCCB-00133 - August 20, 1993.

An unofficial Chinese version is known as "Biaofeng Zhanjing".

TIPS AND TRICKS

• Super Kick: Down, Up+Attack
• Super Air Kick: Forward(x2), Jump, Down+Attack
• Special Ending: finish the game without having to continue to see a different credit sequence (badguy parade).
• On 2nd area of first stage, the enemy Cool will appear for few seconds from a open door, then he will flee: if you're fast, you can kill him before he disappear with the handgun that the players draw automatically in that moment.
• When you're in the 2nd area of stage 2, the gangsters' mansion in Florida, there are 3 jail cells in which 3 girls are being held hostage. Break open the cells and then stand still. The girls will give the players thank-you hugs that restore energy to their lifebars.
• At the end of the 2nd stage you'll fight against the Guardroid. At the end of the room where the battle is set, you'll found an huge bed and a painting in the wall. Destroy this objects for obtain extra weapons and energy that could help you during the fight
• In the 3rd stage (the harbor) you'll encounter several cars, where gangster carrying machine gun will exit from there for attack the players. If you destroy those cars before they'll exit from there, they'll disappear in the explosion: also, you can see the poor driver carbonized after the car's explosion!
• The Punisher and Nick Fury's personal handguns are usually drawn automatically whenever enemies carrying firearms - and also the robots called 'Pretty Boy' - turn up. With the exception of the robots, which are tougher to deal with, try to refrain from killing the enemies armed with guns until after you've killed some of those who aren't carrying guns. This certainly comes in useful during the showdown at the end with the Kingpin, who's drawn much larger here than he was in Sega's own "Spider-Man - The Videogame", made 2 years earlier.

STAFF
Game Designers: Akira Yasuda (Akiman), Maeda, Buchi, Jun Keiba, Junichi Ohno (Ohn)
Program Designers: Kazuhito Nakai, Tomohiro Ueno, Y. Kawabata, Mitsu, Y. Mikami (ZZR)
Character Designers: Eripyon. N, Matsunaga, Mayo Seriya, Daniel, Vlad T., Inukichi, Minobe Hiroaki (Minobeyan), Yokota Yokozo, Koizumi, Iwai, Go, T. Tathivana, Mikiman, Marilyn Higuchi, Harusan
Sound Designers: Yoko Shimomura (Pi B Shimomura), Isao Abe, Toshio Kajino, Syun Nishigaki, Nobuhiro Oouchi (Nobu. Oouchi)
Director: Noritaka Funamizu (Poo)
System Adviser: Jaboon
Illustration Designer: Sensei
Special Thanks: Tanuki, Yasushi Ikeda (Ikebomb), Yuko Takehara (Yuko), Koguma, Alex Jimenez (Alex), Scott

CONTRIBUTE
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