Category: Comics

Though I may be quasi-immobilized at the moment, I can assure you that this man is not.

As much as I love Ultimates era Samuel L. Jackson Nick Fury, I’m all stoked on classic honky Nick from playing Capcom’s 1993 Punisher arcade game tonight. This is one of those beat ’em ups that I can’t believe I missed when it was released. Sure, there was a console port, but it can’t compare; I would have given a sock full of quarters to be in some grimy arcade playing this.

First of all, Punisher is seriously the most violent brawler I can think of off the top of my head. With Player Two taking control of a ripped, cigar-puffing Nick Fury, he joins Frank Castle in a handful of goon-thrashing stages, during which they’ll both frequently brandish axes, hammers, uzis, dynamite, grenades, baseball bats and so on.

Guns are really a special treat in beat ’em ups, and when you pick them up in Punisher, all hell breaks loose. This is most apparent after questioning one of the bosses you just defeated. Once you get the answer you seek, Castle and Fury execute him. This was not in the console version!

All of the mayhem in the game is punctuated with cartoony KA-BLAMs and POWs, typically following or preceding an instance that gives both players an excuse to do their best Rob Liefeld-style jump kick through whatever brick and mortar obstacle stands before them. KA-POWIE!

The music is really excellent, too, oddly enough. Some of it seems like it was composed for an RPG, actually, with large scale synthesizing serving as a strange symphony behind the tossed barrels, pipin’ hot turkey legs, and enemies flying back from your punches and kicks with all the fury of a muffled sound chip screaming.

It is truly a heck of a game.

*PHOTO: I really like picturing the cabinet just being out in the middle of some inner-city basketball court like this, waiting patiently for the next challenger.

I think I figured out why CVS is selling all of those boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for such an outlandishly cheap price: none of them contain the elusive MACH 5 toy! I bought another box today, but got the same red car once again. My troubles, they run deep.

I suppose since I had a countdown for Jon Favreau’s Iron Man up for a month I should mention that I finally got a chance to go check it out last night. My general reaction mirrors a lot of what I had already heard about it. I liked it a lot, Robert Downey Jr. was perfectly cast, and it really was worth it to stay after the credits (even if it had been spoiled for me at that point by some ne’er-do-wells).

The most impressive part of the movie to me was that it wasn’t just all about SFX. Most of the movie was spent outside of the suit setting it all up, and I dug pretty much all of the characters and the actors that played them. However, when it was finally time to suit up, well, I don’t think many superhero movies look more impressive than this one. Favreau’s intention to shoot the CG Top Gun style as opposed to something like Stealth (sorry, Jimmy) really paid off.