Captain Comic

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Captain Comic

Developer(s)	Michael Denio
Publisher(s)	Unknown (MS-DOS), Color Dreams (NES)
Designer(s)	Michael Denio
Release date(s)	January 5, 1988
Genre(s)	side-scrolling platform game
Mode(s)	single Player
Platform(s)	MS-DOS PC, NES
Media	floppy disk (1)
Input	keyboard, joystick

The Adventures of Captain Comic (or just Captain Comic) is a classic 1988 MS-DOS platform game which is known for being one of the first side-scrolling games made for the IBM PC. It was completely created by Michael Denio. The MS-DOS publisher is unknown. Later a version for the NES was published by Color Dreams as an unlicensed title. An unofficial conversion for the SAM Coupé also exists[1]. It was also cloned as "Pioneer Xenia" in 1990 by a team of Ukrainian programmers [2].

In the game, the player takes control of Captain Comic, who is on a mission to the planet Tambi, to recover three treasures stolen from the planet Omsoc. Its author, Michael Denio, writes in the introduction to the game's manual:

"The Adventures of Captain Comic started out as an experiment to test the viability of two theories, the first as to whether a real arcade type game can be done on a standard IBM PC with an EGA card, and secondly, given the first can be done, if it is possible to make any money doing it. Well, I've come to a conclusion on the second point, but I'll let you judge the first point for yourself."

The game was given away for free (later, used as an incentive for the commercial sequel, Captain Comic II: Fractured Reality). Although neither the original, nor its sequel were commercial successes, Captain Comic is today one of the best-known classic PC games.

1 Story
2 Gameplay
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] Story

The game opens with this screen of text:

EPISODE I: PLANET OF DEATH

Entering orbit around the planet

Tambi, Captain Comic, galactic

hero, prepares for his impossible

mission: To recover the treasures

stolen from the planet Omsoc.

Armed with only his courage, he

enters the teleport chamber...

The player, as Comic, arrives by teleporting in front of a castle on the planet Tambi, where the quest begins. Comic must find the following three artifacts:

The Mystical Gems of Lascorbanos
The Thousand Coins of Tenure
The Crown of the Ages

To find them, he must travel through many varied environments, including:

The forest
The lakeside
A nearby moon (with low-gravity)
A space station on the moon
A dark cave
A lakeside storage shed
The inside of a huge computer
The inside of the castle

The game ends when Comic is in possession of the three treasures.

[edit] Gameplay

The items, treasures and enemies.

Captain Comic is a standard platformer, in which the player has health, lives, a score, and a set of useful items. The game is divided into a number of major areas (see list above), and each area is divided generally into three smaller "zones". Transitioning between zones plays a short tune and marks a "safe point", since all enemies are removed from the screen and Comic's position is saved.

Comic has twelve points of "shield" (health), but each time an enemy hits him, two points are removed. Once the shield has been reduced to 0, Comic is still alive, but will die on the next hit. (Thus Comic must be hit seven times to die, from full shield). Occasionally, shields can be found which instantly replenish Comic's health to full, or if it is already full, grant him an extra life. If Comic falls off the bottom of the screen, he is killed instantly.

Comic starts the game with four lives, and can go up to a maximum of five. If Comic is killed by either falling off the bottom, or being hit with no shields, a life is lost, and he is returned to the point where he last entered this zone. If all lives are lost, the game ends.

Many of the games enemies have different AI behaviour to one another - ranging from simple bouncing off the walls, to creatures who seek the player out. All enemies have the same gameplay property which is that if they touch Comic, the enemy is destroyed and Comic suffers two points of shield damage. Once he has picked up a Blastola cola (found at the very start of the game), Comic may shoot at enemies. If he hits an enemy, it is destroyed and points are scored.

The items that are useful or required to recover the treasures are:

Blastola cola - A drink that allows Comic to fire projectiles at his enemies. Each can he drinks permanently increases his abilities. More technically, each can increases the total number of projectiles that can be on the screen at once, up to a maximum of 5.
Shield - Replenishes health to full, or if already full, grants an extra life.
Corkscrew - Causes Comic's projectiles to bounce up and down, allowing him to hit enemies that are normally below his firing line. (Especially, those that roll on the ground).
Door key - Allows Comic to open doors. Comic cannot leave the first area until he has collected the door key.
Boots - Increase Comic's jump height. The boots are required to get over certain obstacles.
Lantern - Allows Comic to see in dark areas. This object is only useful for making it possible to see inside the castle at the end of the game.
Wand - Gives Comic the ability to teleport short distances. When used properly, this lets him reach new places and get away from enemies.

Picking up any item scores 2,000 points, and killing any enemy (requires only one hit) scores 300. If the player recharges shields, there is a bonus of 900 points for each leftover shield unit (thus, a player that has no shield left will score just the 2,000 points for picking up the shield, while a player who has taken only one hit, and has 10 shield units left will get 2,000 for the shield plus a total of 9,000 points from leftover shield units, or 11,000 total). Any player earning an extra life while having the maximum of 5 spare lives receives a full shield charge and a large point bonus (usually between 25,000 and 30,000). Finally, a player who wins the game gets a large point bonus, plus 10,000 points for each spare life left over.

The player gets an extra life for every 50,000 points earned, a bonus still in effect if the player has won the game and has enough extra lives to go over this target.

[edit] Trivia

The theme song for Captain Comic was traditionally a rendition of the United States Marine Corps Hymn. The song was changed in Version 5 (the final version of the game, released in 1991) to an unknown (possibly original) tune.
Omsoc, the planet from which the treasures are stolen, is "cosmo" spelled backwards. Denio used this trick for naming things several times in the series.
Captain Comic is on the default high score list of Monuments of Mars, a computer game published by Apogee Software.
After Scott Miller of Apogee Software saw Captain Comic, he tried hard to recruit Michael Denio, but Michael didn't have faith that shareware games could make money, and so he stayed at his normal job.