Developer: Realtime Associates Publisher: Mindscape Release: 1993 Genre: Beat em up
Let’s be completely honest for a moment: Captain America & the Avengers was an average at best arcade game. For its time it was one of the best representations of the comic books but that is not saying much. The game was largely able to skate by on its license and oh so bad localization. It was at least charming to say the least. While the Genesis version was an alright conversion its Super Nintendo counterpart is outright bad. I do not know what went wrong during the porting process but this game is embarrassing and best left avoided.
This version is incredibly deceptive as it certainly has the look of a winner. While it pales in comparison to the arcade it is more detailed than the Genesis game. The sprites are larger but that comes at the cost of some background detail. The game is not as bright for some reason but it does not redesign certain enemies and bosses like its Sega counterpart. The good stops there however. The frame rate is absolutely terrible. The entire game feels like it is moving in slow motion and it only gets worse as you progress. The animation is choppy, as if everything has a few frames at most.
The worst cuts are to the game’s sound. The vast majority of the arcade’s game’s voice samples are missing which robs the game of most of its charm. This is due to the game’s localization changes. The script in the arcade game is notoriously bad and someone decided to make it more coherent. They were not completely successful however. Some of the cheesier lines are still there but as a whole this edition plays it straight. Because the script is different they did not record new voice over lines and the game loses out big time because of it. The best I can say is that the music is good at least. Yay I guess.
With its broken animation and terrible framerate it should come as no surprise that the game is an absolute chore to play. The overall feel is sluggish, making lining up a simple attack an exercise in frustration. Captain America & the Avengers is not a terribly deep game but was decent for what it was. The greatest sin the SNES version commits that ruins it is granting enemies invincibility frames when hit. With this you can barely execute a three hit combo to knock enemies down. It is exceedingly rare to hit an enemy and not receive damage in exchange. This one change breaks the game and not only slows down the pacing but makes it unfathomably difficult.
Even by arcade standards Captain America & the Avengers was cheap and a money hog. A quarter granted you a single life that disappeared all too fast. Final Fight at least granted two! You have limited continues with this one and even though the game is only five levels long you will burn through them fast. When you add in all of this version’s issues you can see how the game is a nightmare. The cheap hits come left and right and the game is stingy with health power-ups. You will have to cheese your way through boss battles and even that is not enough. If it weren’t for the purpose of this review I would have given up on this one early as it never gets better.
I mentioned that Captain America & the Avengers is an average title and it is true. But despite that it is still worth at least one run. The game is heavy on the fan service with cameos from other Avengers left and right. The list of bosses is a deep dive of Avengers lore with every level featuring at least three or four. But you cannot appreciate any of it as this version is completely busted. It is not as though this is the best the system could do, it is simply incompetence. What a god damn shame.
In Closing
The Super Nintendo version of Captain America & the Avengers is one of the worst beat ’em ups for the system. This game should not have been released in this state. Read a comic book instead of playing this one, you will get a lot more entertainment out of it than with this travesty.
