The Punisher Longplay (Sega Genesis) [QHD]
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Developed by Capcom and published by Sega in 1994
The Punisher remains my favourite Capcom CPS2 arcade game, thanks to its impeccable presentation and excellent gameplay. It didn't surprise me to learn that a home conversion existed, although I was surprised by the fact it featured on the Sega Genesis, not the SNES. Given how much I love the game, I thought I'd check it out.
On a technical level, it's quite decent - the artwork has been redrawn to fit within the constraints of the Genesis' capabilities, and all the levels from the arcade are present and correct. Even the digital speech effects from the arcade version are present, and the playback is excellent quality. There are some differences here and there - the arcade version was quite a violent game for its time (staying true to its Marvel origins), so it didn't come as a huge surprise to find Capcom had censored a few things for the home version. The execution of Scully, the first end-of-level boss, had been modified, the revealing costumes of the female ninjas have been toned down, and the exploding cars on level 3 (which reveal the charred remains of the driver) are removed completely.
Less impressive, however, is the collision detection. The sprite hit-boxes and range of both the player and enemy attacks don't match up very well, which means the combat doesn't feel as good as the arcade version; it gets close, but there are too many inconsistencies and annoyances that mar the overall enjoyment. This is most prominent when facing enemies armed with baseball bats or axes, where the enemy can somehow hit you, despite being positioned well above your position.
What really got under my skin was the fact that, despite taking over an hour to beat the game on normal difficulty, I discovered Capcom had chosen to lock out the actual ending. Having beaten the Kingpin, the game ends abruptly with a basic "Game Over" message, telling the player to try "Hard" difficulty. I didn't want to take the risk of wasting another 90 minutes to find the ending was locked out in that mode as well, so I went straight to the "Expert" difficulty.
Sadly, expert difficulty is absolutely no fun whatsoever. The game throws near-limitless waves of enemies at you - who all take an absolutely ton of damage - and set ludicrous time limits in which to beat the stage. Many are impossible to complete without the timer running out, costing you a life in the process, and its wildly inconsistent when (or if) you'll be awarded extra time; it smacks of a developer trying to eke out the game's content (and justify the cost) by ramping up the difficulty, without giving thought to how it would impact the player's enjoyment.
As we all know visuals and presentation mean nothing if a game isn't fun to play, and the Sega Genesis version of The Punisher is just a soulless time-sink that could have been so much more.
Chapters
0:00:00 Intro
0:01:32 Stage 1: Back to the War
0:07:28 Stage 2: Raid on Pantaberde
0:17:33 Stage: Waterfront Warfare
0:29:40 Bonus Stage
0:30:08 Stage 4: Death on Rails
0:44:28 Stage 5: Kingpin's Wrath
1:02:00 Super Bonus Stage
1:03:40 Last Stage: Final Punishment
1:38:10 Ending
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