The Punisher
Sales flyer for the arcade game
Developer(s)	Capcom
Publisher(s)	Capcom
Designer(s)	Akiman (Akira Yasuda)
Composer(s)	Yōko Shimomura Isao Abe Shun Nishigaki
Platform(s)	Arcade Sega Mega Drive
Release date(s)	Arcade April 22, 1993 Mega Drive/Genesis NA June 1, 1994 EU 1995
Genre(s)	Beat 'em up
Mode(s)	Single player 2 player Co-op
Input methods	8-way Joystick 2 Buttons
Cabinet	Upright
Arcade system	CPS-1 + QSound
Display	Raster, 384 x 224 pixels (Horizontal), 4096 colors

The Punisher is a 1993 arcade game released by Capcom which stars the Marvel Comics anti-hero, The Punisher, and co-starring Nick Fury as the second player's character.

The Punisher is a beat 'em up where Punisher and Fury are on a mission to thwart the crime lord Kingpin, engaging on various foes and final bosses mostly in hand-to-hand combat. Tag line of the game is "If you're guilty, you're dead." This was the last game Yoko Shimomura worked on for Capcom before leaving to work for Squaresoft.

[edit] Gameplay

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Cover artwork of the Mega Drive version (PAL version)

The gameplay follows the same side-scrolling beat'em up formula Capcom established in Final Fight. Much in the same way that Capcom's Cadillacs and Dinosaurs did before, there's a distinctive feature of this game which is the frequent use of several firearms (Ingram, M-16, flamethrower), along with the traditional melee and thrown (including baseball bats, hammers, knives, katanas and shuriken), as well as improvised weapons (such as lead pipes or fire extinguishers). There are also several sections of the game in which the characters automatically draw their handguns in order to shoot their enemies. Some elements of the background can be destroyed, sometimes for a bonus reward.

Unlike in Final Fight and many other side-scrollers of the era, which differentiated characters according to size and speed, Punisher and Nick Fury's size, abilities, and tactics are essentially the same; they both use the same basic punch, throw, and special piledriver and "crowd control" attacks. There are several end-of-level bosses, some of them well-known Marvel Comics villains such as Bonebreaker, Bushwhacker, Jigsaw, and finally Kingpin. Bruno Costa and his gang also appear in the game as small-fry enemy characters; other types of enemies to be defeated include street gangs, mafia mobsters, T-800-like cyborgs, martial artists and female-ninja kunoichi assassins.

[edit] Mega Drive/Genesis port

A port of the game was released for Sega Genesis in North America during 1994 and for the European Mega Drive during 1995. This version, while published by Capcom, was developed by Sculptured Software. There were several changes to the game, including some censorship (for example, the ninja women are no longer wearing skimpy costumes and the boss Scully isn't shot after his interrogation). In addition, many of the previously breakable background objects were rendered unbreakable, due to the limitations of the hardware at the time.^[1]

[edit] See also

• Punisher computer and video games

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Make Mine Marvel: The Punisher Arcade Game on Marvel.com
• The Punisher Genesis at MobyGames
• The arcade game and the Mega Drive/Genesis game at GameFAQs
• THE PUNISHER shrine at GameSpy