 If you're jonesing for a good two player co-op beat em up, Captain Commando is here. So what makes this beat em up stand out from the pack? The sheer amount of variety in the settings and enemy design for one. This game is just all over the place, it's like Final Fight on LSD or Crack or Mushrooms whatever your preference. You're on the streets of a city, you're in a busted up bank, you're in a natural history museum, you're in a circus, an aquarium, a spaceship, I mean jeez you name it, it's here. And you're fighting everything from ninjas to cavemen to, what is that, Danny DeVito? These aren't just cannon fodder enemies either, you can and will get electrocuted, shot at and sliced up. But hey, the game allows you to return the favor with comically sized mallet hammers, ray guns, grenade launchers and assault rifles. You also get to choose from four characters, Captain Commando who's your standard size speed and strength, Ninja Commando who has a sword and ninja stars, Mummy Commando who attacks with knives and Baby Commando who is a baby that controls a powerful jet powered robot. What? Hey, it works for me. As for the gameplay, Captain Commando plays almost exactly like Final Fight, which makes sense since it's Capcom. Hey, wait a minute, Captain Commando? Hmm, but yeah, it's almost like the developer said let's take the basics of Final Fight but to prevent it from becoming another generic beat-em-up let's throw in the weirdest shit we can think of, like this three-eyed mutated incredible Hulk looking boss here or this other crazy looking boss that looks like it ended up inspiring Immortan Joe from Mad Max Fury Road. It's legitimately tough to keep up with the amount of insane stuff here and that's a good thing. And yeah, all the basic stuff I talk about in every beat-em-up review I do is all present. There's good sound design so it feels satisfying to kick the crap out of these weirdos. The hit detection is spot on and it's easy to grab onto enemies and flip them from one side of the screen to the other and that's key to progressing through games like this. Another thing that makes Captain Commando stand out is the pacing. The levels aren't overly long, the boss fights aren't too much of a slog and the weapons are placed at just the right intervals to keep the game interesting. The soundtrack here also helps to add to the action and push the pace. The faster pace and shorter levels mean the game isn't all that long but I don't think many people are clamoring for a beat-em-up to take hours and hours to finish so 30 to 40 minutes is just about right. And as I mentioned at the top of the video this game is to player co-op and that's the primary thing that makes this game worth playing today. One problem though is that if you both choose the same character they look identical so it's easy to get confused as to who's who especially after you've had a few drinks. I should also mention that Captain Commando is an arcade port and a pretty decent one. The only real mechanic that's missing is the ability to ride in mechs. Oh well there's also a lot of blood and gore that got cut out but I don't think that's a big deal. So yeah Captain Commando is a fun time especially with the second player. If you think this is just another generic beat-em-up well I guess in some ways it is but the pacing the music and the sheer amount of weirdness make this game stand out. I mean you can beat up ninjas and Danny DeVito's as an infant baby controlling a mech robot. What else could you possibly want? The Captain Commando cartridge is of course wildly overpriced but check it out with a friend in whichever way you can. It's good, can't be fun.