The Punisher (Arcade)

While the Punisher is best known for waging his one-man war on crime by way of firearms and explosive ordnance, it’s not too surprising to see him turn up in a brawler where fist-fighting is the greater focus. After all, many beat ’em ups already see the characters punching their way through an entire city of criminals, so it is easy to see Frank Castle doing the same if he thought it would work. The Punisher arcade game does see him both fighting hand-to-hand and whipping out his weapons though, meaning while this particular warpath is more physical than usual for Frank, it definitely feels like the anti-hero is true to himself in this 1993 brawler from Capcom.

 

After getting a primer on Frank Castle’s tragic origins of losing his family after they were silenced to cover up the mob activity they witnessed, we join The Punisher tracking down those responsible. Working his way through lesser goons in the mob, Frank gradually battles his way up to the big guy in charge, the Kingpin. While the action starts in New York City, the Punisher’s efforts to trace the criminal organization’s activity take him across America, fighting as often in caves and sewers as he does on streets and in buildings as he hunts down the people associated with the Kingpin and the hit that changed his life. Rather strangely, this quest for revenge can be played as a two player adventure with the second player assuming the role of Nick Fury, the head of the special U.S. spy agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D.. While it’s easy enough to say that he’d also want to take down the Kingpin’s country-spanning criminal empire, it is a touch strange he’s present from the start when Frank is starting to connect street toughs to the broader mob, but it does lead to an amusing touch. The Punisher is running on fury, destructive and merciless while Nick is nominally a more by the book lawman. What this mostly amounts to is Nick Fury wagging his finger disapprovingly throughout, saying they’ll need to talk about the Punisher’s methods but sitting back and allowing the Punisher to kill suspects or fire bazookas at buildings.

Nick Fury thankfully doesn’t drag things down, because letting both him and the Punisher let loose leads to some satisfying fighting. Nick and Frank are both musclebound brawlers with some over-the-top hand-to-hand prowess. While they’ve got some hard-hitting punches and kicks that link together well into rapid and responsive combos, they can also get in close to grab enemies and hurl them about with ease. Both can do incredibly high jumps, meaning you can even piledrive those villains you grab. Charging kicks, dodge rolls, and flying kicks also make them both incredibly mobile, and by pressing your attack and jump button at the same time, you can utilize even more powerful moves. Sweeping the ground around you or twirling around grabbed enemies deals heavy damage and protects you at the same time at the cost of a bit of health, the basic melee fighting already exciting because of how well the characters control and how cool the moves can look when executed. The Punisher didn’t leave his weapons at home though, because whenever an enemy appears with a firearm, Frank and Nick will pull out some pistols and go to town themselves. This leads to an occasional shift in the fighting format that keeps things fresh, the player now able to let loose and start rapidly firing to try and clear away the thugs before they can get in some shots themselves.

Perhaps the best addition to the fighting that keeps it consistently novel is the abundance of weapons you can pilfer from the enemy. Not only are you already able to lift up many objects like barrels to hurl at baddies, but defeated foes can drop objects like bats, swords, and even a few different gun types. The found weapons are all fairly strong, each of them limited in use by ammo or durability, but while throwing a knife is a nice brief change, it’s often getting the heavy duty and stranger tools that really thrills. Axes and hammers look brutally strong when swung, dynamite can be turned back on the enemy who tossed it, and the flamethrower has a good reach for how far its flames can extend outward. While the hand-to-hand fighting it already effective and entertaining, grabbing useful items to hold back the enemy forces still always feels worth doing due to a mix of power and enjoyment. Grenades hold the unique distinction of being a weapon you can take with you for as long as you please, the player able to throw these when they desire in a similar manner to the special moves but without the health cost. If you need to clear an area or hurt a boss badly, just unleash the grenade reserves you’ve gathered, although they are appropriately rare compared to the general generosity when it comes to weapons in general. Abundant health can keep you fighting longer too, The Punisher not feeling like an arcade game that tries to rush you to spend more quarters even during its most hectic or dangerous moments.

 

Appropriately, as you fight yourself up the hierarchy of Kingpin’s mob, you go from facing off with street thugs with simple weapons to more skilled killers and surprisingly even androids. Martial artists and lady ninjas serve as foes who are harder to put down, joining the usually present and abundant regular thugs who often try to use the game’s strong weapons against you. Perhaps the most interesting enemies though are the Pretty Boy androids, machines that extend their arms in long and strange ways and can even fight in different states of disrepair. Admittedly, most of the enemy types will blur together, and even the bosses aren’t immune to this issue. A fair few are just really big guys, something that feels less special when the early bosses are recolored and return among the regular goons, so even though we have a boss like Bushwhacker who can morph a hand into a missile launcher, it still mostly comes down to hand to hand combat from both sides. Thankfully, most bosses play pretty fair, you can knock them around and learn how to avoid their tougher hits, and there are still fights like the one against Bone Breaker that stand out since he replaced his lower body with tank treads and thus can command his battle arena better than most foes. While the Punisher is more grounded than most of Marvel’s heroes, it does feel like some more oddities like Pretty Boy and Bone Breaker could have helped the enemies better carry their part in this brawler that is thankfully still entertaining and fast-paced.

THE VERDICT: The Punisher and Nick Fury’s two-man war against organized crime makes for a quick and thrilling brawler, the game adeptly switching between satisfying fist fights, quick firefights, and plenty of weapon use so no one type of combat loses its luster. The focus on how well the two leads control and the variety in their fighting methods was certainly a fruitful decision, but the enemies of The Punisher could do with more diversity, especially in the fair but fairly similar boss battles.

 

And so, I give The Punisher for arcade machines…

A GOOD rating. When it comes to how The Punisher and Nick Fury fight crime, this arcade brawler really nails a mix of power and range. Your basic attacks already have enough mix-ups thanks to the grabs, specials, and comboing potential, but when you do whip out a pistol for the shooting sections, those guns are quick to fire but not so strong they trivialize things. As a result, the gun sections last a bit but you are still taking down thugs at a fast pace, selling your power without making it overwhelming. The other weapons are the real smart addition though, the player actually excited to see certain enemies because it means they can pilfer their items and enjoy a brief but enjoyable change in how they approach combat. As said though, it feels like the ball is really in the court of the heroes when it comes to sustaining the experience. The Punisher was wise to make most enemies and bosses vulnerable to your fighting methods, hurling a huge boss overhead is a cool reward for pushing in and actually pulling it off, but while the setting variety is wide, the bosses do need some more concepts to play with.  The game already introduced robots and cyborgs so a wider range in those designs could serve as the attention-grabbers while the more grounded baddies stick around for the standard fighting, but more attack variety from the opposition could have served them well too. The lady ninjas will already crawl about, disappear, and spin across the battlefield with their swords, variety not absent but it is the most apparent area for improvement in an otherwise well-constructed brawler.

 

While some of the grit of Frank Castle’s usual war on crime is replaced instead with bombastic action, The Punisher does feel like a good adaptation of the hero for those not looking to explore those darker corners of the anti-hero’s adventures. Here he’s fist-fighting his way across America to take down the mob, pretty much embodying the bravado of the man who thinks he can be judge, jury, and especially executioner. Finger wag all you want Nick Fury, but the exciting action of this arcade brawler definitely justifies the lengths it goes to, to the point where it’s the villains not being able to keep up with The Punisher’s methods that ends up keeping this from being an all-time beat ’em up classic.