Captain Silver (Master System) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
136A playthrough of Sega's 1989 action game for the Sega Master System, Captain Silver.
Captain Silver was originally a 1987 arcade game from Data East that was developed by Jorudan, the guys who later went on to create Imperium and Alien vs. Predator for the SNES and Mad Screaming George's Paranoiascape for the PlayStation.
It's a pirate-themed platformer in which you, a guy dressed up as a mall Santa's elf helper, wildly flail at things with your sword. Captain Silver apparently left behind a nice stack of haunted loot when he got sent to Davey Jones' locker, and it's up to you to find and defeat Captain Silver's spirit in order to remove the curse and claim the riches as your own.
(The hero reminds me of Pielle from Breakers. Anyone else?)
Being based on a quarter-munching 80s arcade game, Captain Silver is pretty simple and straightforward: kill everything as you walk to the right. You swing a sword that hits anything in front of and above you (super convenient!), handily dispatching any clown musicians or cheshire cats that have the audacity to get in your way. Occasionally you'll have to jump over random things that can kill you outright, like fountains (um...really?) and pits, but for the most part, you're marching in a straight line. Picking up items wins you points that can be spent at a store for things like improved firepower and jumping, and there are a couple of bosses to fight. But, as you've probably already deduced from the length of the video, there isn't much to it.
That is in large part due to the fact that in this video I'm playing the US version of the game. Sega sometimes axed content from Master System games that they were bringing to the American market in order to order to cut manufacturing costs, and ouch. They did a real hatchet job on Captain Silver.
The Japanese and PAL versions of the game weighed in at two megabits (256K), whereas the US cart was only one megabit (128K). In order to shoehorn the game onto a cartridge half the intended size, two full stages and a big chunk of a third were cut, as were some enemies and most of the bosses, and the ending cutscene was replaced with a short text scroll. The fully intact version of the game only lasts 20-30 minutes, but thanks to all of the cuts, the US release barely manages 10-15 minutes worth of content before coming to an abrupt end. The changes make the game much easier, too, so there's a good chance that you would've been able to beat it the first or second time you played. Not a lot of value to be had, that's for sure.
I really like Captain Silver, though. The awkward and stiff controls feel comfortably familiar - it handles like a really forgiving version of Karnov, Trojan, or even Atari's similarly themed Skull & Crossbones - and the graphics are nice. The backdrops are colorful and detailed and the enemies are entertainingly weird. It's not the most attractive game you'll find on the Master System, but I thought that the overall style was pretty appealing. The sound isn't great, but the first stage tune is pretty catchy, and it's fun to hear your guy's digitized scream when he dies.
I would've been furious had I paid $30 for this back in 1989, but it would've been worth renting for an evening. It's fun and I liked its energy, but it's pretty obvious that a lot is missing here. Is anyone else shocked at Sega's audacity here?
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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