Retro Game Reviews

The Punisher 1993 Arcade Review

13/12/2024

Guest Blog post by Adam @AngelicWiganer / @snoopfozziefozz

The Punisher Arcade Game (1993)

Wow, I hadn’t realised that I had gone so long without even touching a video game of some sort until I actually sat down the other day and booted up my Raspberry Pi loaded with hundreds of thousands of games from the times gone by. My last gaming experience was playing Mario Kart 8 on the plane home from Tunisia in August.

I can safely say life has definitely gotten in the way recently. The last week or so I’d been struggling with my own mental health issues, and I came to realise I haven’t been making time for myself at all. I still have a sealed copy of Astro Bot waiting to be opened at home.

Anyway, I digress. Once I had set up the Retro Box, I wanted to make sure that when I played it, I had a select number of titles which I was itching to play rather than scrolling aimlessly through thousands of ROM’s

I took some inspiration from various YouTubers on what their favourite arcade games were and it led me to make my decision that I wanted to play the majority of games from the Capcom CPS systems 1, 2 and 3. They seemed to have a lot of games and franchises which appealed to me.

So, without further ado. I’d like to bring you my review of the 1993 Arcade game The Punisher. The game marked the first collaboration of Capcom and Marvel, bringing beloved Marvel IPs to the arcades, and was a side scrolling beat em up. Capcom was tried and tested in this genre having brought to us the absolutely wonderful Final Fight a few years earlier.

The game brings us the titular character along with a pre MCU Nick Fury to go through six stages of fast paced combat in order to bring down the Kingpin. For a game that was released over thirty years ago I had immense pleasure playing this, bringing back all those nostalgic feelings. Now it’s a good thing that I can put multiple credits into the game and have multiple continues so I could beat the game, otherwise in real time money I reckon I would have spent like £25. But that’s the beauty of having these games on emulation, and just goes to show how difficult arcade games were in order to get them coins put into them all the time.

The graphics look amazing even by todays standards where companies are favouring a more pixellated style in these games. Frank and Nick move effortlessly and are animated brilliantly as are the various cast of bad guys you will be attempting to bring down. Thankfully the game is as intended to play, as the 1995 Genesis port was way toned down in terms of violence and the outfits of characters.
Its typical fare moving along and doing your combo moves , but I was particularly impressed with the extra melee weapons you can pick up along the way, they all have a number of uses which are displayed in the bottom left hand corner and you can also pick up grenades along the way. I loved using the machine guns, flamethrowers and also the lance which was a subtle nod to Arthurs’s weapon in Ghouls and Ghosts. As mentioned, it is pretty violent, and blood is shown whilst using various weapons which can cause puncture wounds like knives, swords and daggers.

The game possesses a lovely 90’s style soundtrack, whilst there are no bangers like the ones found in Street Fighter 2, its certainly not bad at all.

The Punisher fighting enemies in the sewers

It's not just The Turtles that fight the sewers

The Punisher throwing an enemy in combat

The Punisher gets punishing

On reflection I am thinking to myself why don’t I play these types of games more when I have some spare time. It doesn’t always have to be a forty plus hour RPG to get through (although I have just bought the Dragon Quest 3 remake and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth ha-ha). We can still enjoy a great gaming experience in less than forty-five minutes which is low long it took me to finish the game.

If you have the opportunity to play the arcade version of The Punisher, I would highly recommend that you do. I believe it is now on the compilation release of Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection which was released this year.

Moral of the Story. Make time for yourself to do the things you like to do, even if its just for thirty minutes. I hope to be back soon with more retro reviews and a review soon of Astro Bot.
In the meantime, thanks for reading and keep gaming.

Guest Blog post by Adam @AngelicWiganer / @snoopfozziefozz

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