The Punisher

Overview

The arcade beat'em up based on Marvel's anti-hero The Punisher, was release in 1993 by Capcom. Then released for the Genesis just a year later. The game stars two of Marvel's comic book characters, The Punisher and Nick Fury.  

Gameplay

Similar to any other beat'em up, The Punisher makes use of a eight way joy-stick and two buttons, attack and jump. Once the game begins, the first player will atomically be assigned to Punisher, while the second player will play as Nick Fury.

The player will fight a variety of enemies with the use of the attack button. With a certain combination performed, the player can activate specials moves; some of them be link into a combo. For example, after the player unleashes two hits, the player must tap forward twice to perform a straight jab punch that performs a couple hits on every enemy that's in the way of the range of impact before knocking them all down. A character also has a special that can knock down every enemy that's perform by pressing both the attack and jump button simultaneously, like other beat'em ups like Final Fight. When a enemy with a firearm or a robot named, "Pretty Boy" is brought in, the player's character will immediately pull out a gun and can fire at enemies with infinite ammo. Once those certain enemies have been defeated, the gun will no longer be in use until another robotic/weapon carrying enemy appears.

Optional weapons are at the player's disposal. Weapons such as steel pipes, M-16, dynamite, combat knives, flamethrowers, etc can be use. The player can only use the weapons a certain amount times as indicated on the bottom of the screen.

At one point in the game, a bonus stage will take place. The objective of the stage is the player must move a target on screen and fire at moving barrels before they roll off screen. The player will earn points for each barrel destroyed.

The Genesis Version

Just a year after the arcade release, Capcom develop The Punisher for the Sega Genesis in 1994 for the North American market, then in Europe in 1995.

As with the limitations with the Genesis hardware, all of the destructible environment were removed. Like Final Fight on the Super Nintendo, The Punisher went through some censorship. The blood splattering that occurs when stabbing an enemy with a knife was taken out. And at the end of the first boss fight, which takes place on a moving bus, Punisher shoots the first boss in the head, that was replace with Punisher just throwing him off the bus.