Bionic Commando Direct Feed (Patreon)

I mentioned recently that I'd like to capture new screens for the next Anatomy book, which will be time-consuming but not exactly a burden since the novelty of RGB-modded NES hardware still feels so fresh and fun. Here's the first step in that process: A full play through of Bionic Commando. It was pretty interesting playing this on real hardware for the first time in god knows how long — I had forgotten just how much slowdown and flicker were part of the actual game. Capcom really pushed that poor little MMC1 chip to the breaking point with this one.

This is a warts-and-all run through the game, with a game over and a few tricky grapples that I missed a few times... along with an awkward pause to look up how to exit a level. Still, I aimed to be as thorough as possible for the sake of the book. I've also put this under a creative commons license, so anyone is free to use this footage (presumably the graceful parts, not the game over) for their own needs. It's meant to be reference-quality, aside from my clumsy screwups, so hopefully it lives up to that aim!

I'll try and make a habit of posting video footage as I go from now on, so you can follow along with my video and book production processes. If you want, I mean. It's optional. If you don't want to see what things look like down on the factory floor, you can just ignore production-level posts and wait for the final results!