America still needs you...
Written: Sep 05 '04 (Updated Mar 30 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fun gameplay, hilarious voice work
Cons: not the best Beat 'em Up ever, slightly repetitive enemies
The Bottom Line: Anyone with a liking for Beat 'em Ups and the Avengers should enjoy this game, it isn't the best in the genre, but it is great fun
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| flash-hammer's Full Review: Captain America and the Avengers for Sega Genesis |
One of the first games I got for my Megadrive (Genesis) was Captain America and the Avengers. At the time I was hugely into Marvel Comics and all their superheroes, and I had enjoyed the arcade machine on holiday in Florida the previous summer (along with the blinding X-Men arcade game from Konami), so the conversion for my new console was an essential for my parents to look for that Christmas.
The game is a Beat 'em up in the vein of games like Double Dragon and Streets of Rage, where your character can move up and down as well as left and right, smacking up hordes of enemies on route to taking on a much tougher boss character. Captain America spiced things up by making you also take on a sub-boss, and throwing in shoot 'em up levels where your chosen avenger has to fly/swim to a location, blasting down all the enemy robots that come at you.
The game supports 2 Player play, but even if you have a multitap you aren't going to encounter the arcade game's 4 player action. You have 4 Avengers to choose from, the famous Captain America, aka Steve Rogers, the WW2 experimtal supersoldier who was frozen for years, only to re-emerge when the world needed a hero, the invincible Iron Man, aka Billionaire Tony Stark, who dons his armour to fight crime ever since he had to make his first suit to save his life, Hawkeye aka Clint Barton, an archer with uncanny accuracy, trained by Cap himself and Vision the Avengers robotic warrior.
The story of the game is pretty simple, Cap's arch enemy, the Red Skull, has somehow found a way to control the mind's of the Avengers other advesaries, and is using them to distract the heroes while he builds a giant laser on the moon. Amongst his army of nefarious villains are The Living Laser,Whirlwind,The Mandarin,Ultron,The Wizard and Crossbones. The Avengers must battle through all of these and more, as well as their robot armies, before heading to the moon for a showdown with the skull. But they won't have to do it alone, help will be at hand from fellow heroes Sub Mariner,Wonder Man,Quicksilver and the Wasp.
Graphically, the game isn't the best looking title for the console, but it also certainly isn't the worst, while the robots you fight are mostly the same barring the colour scheme, but the sprites themselves, along with those of the heroes and bosses, are all pretty nice and well animated, if a bit on the small side.
The stages are well presented though, with some nice touches, such as in the early levels, which take place on city streets, you see civilians running past screaming. The levels themselves also contain lots of nice little details, such as cans lying on the ground (which can be picked up and thrown at enemies).
The sound almost won this game an extra star. The music in the game is over the top heroic stuff that verges so far into corny that you have to love it, and the voice acting, my god I could write an essay on it alone. I will start by mentioning that all the voices in the game could have been done by the same guy, just altering his voice slightly. Its what he says that makes the game legendary, with such unforgettable exchanges in conversation such as:
Captain America/Iron Man etc - "You Can't Escape"
Whirlwind(in the same voice) - "You will be the one escaping!"
It doesn't sound anywhere near as funny in text as in the game, trust me, another favourite is when your character loses a life, they shout "I CAN'T MOVE".
The controls in the game are the height of simplicity. A is Jump, B is Attack so is C. To perform a projectile attack, such as throw Cap's shield or Shoot Iron Man's laser, pressing A+B together does the trick.
I can't really complain about the controls, they respond pretty well, and it isn't as if they will take time to master. One thing that puzzles me, is why they chose not to make the projectile attack button C, seeing as the Snes conversion actually had a separate button for it. But it isn't exactly a game breaking complaint.
Captain America is a Beat 'em Up, a favourite genre of mine, but I also feel it is one of the console's best Beat 'em Ups outside of Sega's own Streets of Rage games. It may be partially nostalgia speaking, but even at the time I could differentiate between good and crap examples of genres (Spiderman for Megadrive = Good, X-Men for Megadrive = Good, Spiderman and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge for the Megadrive = bile), and I always thought Captain America and the Avengers was pretty great.
The game, partially by good gameplay and partially via the comedy provided by the voices, just stands out amongst the majority of 16-Bit Beat 'em Ups for being a refreshingly fun experience. The levels were all pretty varied, from the streets to scuba diving in the ocean fighting a robot octopus to flying through space and doing battle in a space station.
The bosses are all also pretty cool, and they each have their own unique patterns and weaknesses, it isn't your average Beat 'Em Up where the bosses are just tougher versions of the regular enemies.
The game also has the only false ending ever to catch me out in a game, even though the instruction manual gives away the surprise, I got so caught up in the game I forgot about it.
The game isn't without it's faults however, and they do definitely see to it that Cap won't be scoring full marks. First of all, the regular enemies, while pretty cool looking robots, get old really quite fast. You will have fought literally hundreds of the same sprite, just coloured differently. While I know this happens in most Beat 'em Ups, they usually at least have a few variant sprites. While this game also has the rather cool bearhug robots, and the inane bug-bots, they appear sporadically, and it isn't always enough to keep it interesting.
The game also suffers from being a bit easy. As in I can now complete it without much hassle, apart from some of the latter bosses. At the time I thought it was rock solid, but now it seems a bit on the simple side, with the bosses being the only real challenge the game throws at you.
As two more minor complaints that aren't about the gameplay. The characters on offer could have been better. As in throwing Vision out and replacing him with Thor! when I think of the Avengers, I think of 3 major heroes, Cap, Iron Man and Thor. What were Data East thinking not including him!?
The X-Men's foe the Juggernaut also makes an appearance. While I never really viewed him as an Avengers nemesis, it isn't his inclusion that bothers me, its his face. Instead of the face holes in his helmet, he has this one red circle. He actually looks like a robot which confused me, if there are any Avengers fans out there who could maybe clear this up? did they ever fight a robot Juggernaut?
On the whole, I would say Captain America and the Avengers is a definite worthwhile purchase for anyone who has a love for 16-Bit Beat 'em Up games, and possibly a liking for the characters involved. It doesn't reach the giddy heights of greatness of Streets of Rage 2, but it is certainly an above average entry into the genre, and a great fun adventure, especially on 2 Player mode.
As a word of warning, I would avoid the Snes conversion of the game, which is actually terrible.
Recommended:
Yes
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flash-hammer
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