This Week in Retro: Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 [2010] (Patreon)

February 1, 2011: A Farewell to (Bionic) Arms

by Diamond Feit

The recent (ongoing) pandemic has made me consider my relationship with video games, specifically the sheer number of video games available to me at any time. Simply put, there are too many. I own more than I could ever play, yet I maintain a wishlist on every service that offers that option, and I continue to buy more and more of them as time passes. I feel like we could all benefit from a temporary freeze of new releases, say… two years? Would anyone run out of games to play if games stopped coming out for that long? Probably not.

At the same time, there remain a few series of games that make instantly curious whenever they appear on the radar. It doesn't matter how busy I am, and it doesn't matter if I am underemployed; if I see a new Castlevania or Metroid or King of Fighters appear on the timeline, I'm going to need more information and a release date—and it had better be soon.

This week marks the 10th anniversary of a series' death knell, one that I absolutely adored when it went silent for nearly 20 years only to be elated when it came roaring back with multiple high-profile releases. But then it was over, seemingly for good. I remain conflicted about this. Part of me wants it to continue and flourish, while part of me feels we can just let it rest.

That series is Bionic Commando, and 10 years ago, we got what seems likely to be its final entry, Bionic Commando Rearmed 2.

Bionic Commando as a concept began as an OK arcade game with a gimmick (a soldier with a gun uses a grappling hook to get around instead of jumping) that underwent fundamental improvements when it was converted to the Famicom. The NES game known as Bionic Commando is one of the best video games ever made (feel free to jump back to my story about its 30th anniversary if you need more information), which only underscores how odd it was that no "series" followed. A 1992 Game Boy game more or less retold the same tale with a sci-fi twist; a sequel in 2000 re-retread the same waters; and... that seemed to be that. For a long time, all I had to look back on was that NES game, and I was convinced it was special.

Evidently I was not alone, and in 2008 (20 years after the NES game’s debut), Capcom released Bionic Commando Rearmed, a remaster/remake that all but overwrites the original. Yes, some points were lost in translation—the presence of Hitler is now merely a suggestion rather than an overt fact—but the remake improves so much upon the 1988 version that I totally understand anyone who prefers Rearmed; those opinions are valid.

What I cannot understand is how, three years later, Rearmed got a sequel which utterly fails to build upon or improve anything at all, and that somehow this spelled doom for a series which had only just begun (again).

In Rearmed 2, Rad Spencer returns (now sporting an excellent mustache) and has joined a team of bionic-powered soldiers in an initiative to topple a South American dictator. Right off the bat, this feels like a downgrade. One major reason the NES game had such an impact on me was its strong anti-Nazi stance. I don't need every game about a hero with a grappling hook to be one where I shoot Hitler in the face, but replacing the target with a generic jungle warlord isn't a solid substitute.

As the game progresses, the real villain turns out to be someone else; I won't say who, exactly, but given that you only meet so many characters during the course of the game, the list of suspects isn't very long.

Speaking of villains, the boss battles in Rearmed 2 are a major flaw. The 1988 game kind of shrugged at the whole idea, instead asking players to destroy an energy core to clear every stage. These cores are only sometimes guarded by what could charitably be called a "boss," and even then, players can ignore the fight if they are fast on the trigger and shoot the core directly. Rearmed in 2008 improved upon this by either revamping boss ideas from 1988 or inventing brand-new fights that require players to use the bionic arm creatively. These bosses all resurfaced after their first defeat for a more challenging battle.

Rearmed 2 came up with all-new bosses, but instead of challenging players to grapple their way to a solution, these contests are more exercises in waiting for a scripted moment to attack. The worst of these is a giant robot gorilla that admittedly looks fabulous but fights using exactly two patterns that repeat over and over... until it doesn't, and only then can you shoot its head before it goes back to its repetitive basic attacks. Then, like in Rearmed, the bosses appear a second time, only adding the slightest of changes. Here, the whole thing is just tedious.

Unfortunately, this is a common theme in Bionic Commando Rearmed 2: Introducing alterations that don’t sit well next to what were improvements in Rearmed. Rearmed balanced all the weapons to be situationally useful, but Rearmed 2 limits them by making every gun (aside from the default pistol) require ammo. Rearmed did away with the 1988 inventory system and made all upgrades stack, but Rearmed 2 ties power-ups to Spencer's bionic arm, which only has so many upgrade slots available at once.

The biggest and most controversial change brought about in Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is the [gasp] jump button. Yes, after two decades of being defined by his unique grappling ability which perfectly compliments his airborne limitations, Spencer can now jump and swing with his bionic arm. When I first encountered this for myself during TGS 2010, I wrote "jumping thus represents a shortcut available to players who need it, while the game remains focused on swinging that giant metal arm." Having played the full game and acquired a decade of hindsight, I'm forced to ask: What was the point? Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 treats jumping as superfluous, and rewards players for not using it, which means it doesn't really add much to the experience. There's even a "retro" difficulty which disables jumps—strangely, it must be unlocked—all but proving that Spencer's feet should never ever leave the ground under their own power.

There is no real mystery to decipher when it comes to figuring out what went wrong with Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, however: The game simply had a troubled development cycle. Originally started by GRIN, the studio behind Rearmed and the gritty 3D Bionic Commando reboot of 2009, GRIN would go bankrupt mere months into production. While many members of the team would end up working with new developer Fatshark to complete the game (including composer Simon Viklund), they had to yield to a new boss. In a 2011 post-launch interview, Viklund said he started out as the "creative director" on the project, but once control passed to a new studio, "my involvement was naturally downsized considerably."

(Whatever else can be said about Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, I can assure you Viklund's score holds up well 10 years later. It sounds retro yet also distinctly electronic, and it has an energy distinct from other chiptune-based soundtracks.)

This isn't scientific, but in preparing this column I was surprised by how small a footprint Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 seems to have left on the video game landscape. Rearmed 1 is downright beloved, but Rearmed 2 seems to be forgotten. I could not find a single walkthrough on GameFAQs, nor any interest on Speedrun.com. By all accounts the game sold poorly, was not reviewed well, and as previously stated, the series simply vanished after that. Rad Spencer has appeared in a couple video games since, but Capcom seems to have tucked Bionic Commando away in the same disused filing cabinet in between Armored Warriors and DarkStalkers. The Osaka publishing giant is willing to dust these brands off every couple years for merchandising or cameos, but they are apparently unworthy to receive new installments.

At least in the case of Bionic Commando, I don't know that anything of value was truly lost. Anyone willing to put in the work can take the best parts of Bionic Commando for free and include them in their own platform action games; Spencer has a good look and excellent taste in music, but Capcom doesn't own the concepts of grappling hooks or killing Nazis. So I feel bad about what happened to Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, and I wish Rearmed 1 could be available on more platforms, but I'm weirdly at ease with laying Rad and Super Joe and the whole "bionic" buzzword to rest. *sniff* Your number's up...

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan and is an active Twitter user.