bionic-commando posts

Bionic Commando Rearmed is easily our favorite remake of all time. It captures that feel of the NES Bionic Commando while modernizing it excellently. The sequel, Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, understandably has us just as excited to take part in the adventures of Rad Spencer, and the trailers and details given out by developer Fatshark have only made us more pumped. The game has finally released on consoles (but not PC, unfortunately), and this trailer commemorates the occasion with tons of gameplay footage. From new weapons to beautiful new environments to cheesy 8-bit styling, it's one of the better launch trailers we've had the pleasure to watch.

Download Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 Launch Trailer
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While Bionic Commando (the reboot) may have been a minor disappointment, Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is still on the way. It's shaping up to be a beauty of a game, especially if this trailer is any indication. Cheesy dialogue, excellent electronic music, and the hallmark Bionic Commando style are in full force here. The target is the Megacopter, a gigantic armor helicopter that looks quite nasty. The trailer shows most of the strategy for defeating it, although it leaves the actual destruction of the thing for the game proper. It may just be a gameplay video of a boss, but it sure does have us excited.

Download HD Bionic Commado Rearmed 2 'Megacopter' Trailer
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Clearly, the 73% plunge in profits last year has Capcom feeling a little timid. As a result, the company will stop commissioning games created by Western developers. Capcom President Haruhiro Tsujimoto is quoted by a newspaper as saying, "As a group, the new titles where development was led from abroad didn't do so well."

Capcom's current strategy will focus more on Japanese created games, but may still outsource sequels of existing franchises to Western developers. Last year's major games included Bionic Commando, developed by the now closed GRIN Studios, which sold 700,000 copies instead of the projected 1.5 million. Despite numerous delays to help separate it from the competition, Airtight's high flying shooter Dark Void sold 520,000 copies, falling far short of the 2 million copies Capcom was hoping for.

[via Shacknews]

The good news? Capcom has indeed confirmed that Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is in the works. The sequel to the downloadable 2.5D side scroller is being developed by Fatshark who just released their first game Lead and Gold: Tales of the Wild West.

The bad news? The game was announced as coming for the Xbox 360 and PS3 but not for the PC, unlike the original which was released back in 2008. We have emailed Capcom to get an official response but keep in mind that the publisher has a history of both announcing and releasing their PC game ports after they appear on consoles
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While the major revival of Bionic Commando wasn't a big financial success, the downloadable remake of the original game as Bionic Commando Rearmed was both a critical and sales success. Now the team responsible for that game has formed their own development studio in Sweden, Might&Delight (or Might and Delight; they seem to go by both monikers).

The team was formerly part of GRIN which shut down operations just after the release of Bionic Commando. While the team isn't talking about their first project under their new organization they seem to hint it will be some kind of downloadable release with a retro bend. Hmmm . . .sounds familiar.

Even with the release of three major games in the space of a few months this year, the Stockholm-based game developer GRIN could not stave off extinction. Today the company's official web site has now admitted it will close its doors after shutting down two of its satellite development teams earlier this year.

In its farewell message, GRIN blamed unarmed publishers it worked with for its demise saying, " . . . many publishers have been delaying their payments, causing an unbearable cashflow situation." It doesn't look like one of those publishers is Capcom; the company's two founders Bo and Ulf Andersson thanked the publisher of their Bionic Commando game "for being honest, a rare gift" in their farewell message. GRIN also had two other games come out this year; Wanted: Weapons of Fate (from Universal's interactive division) and Terminator Salvation (from Evolved Games).

GRIN released a couple of smaller PC games in the early part of this decade; the futuristic racer Ballistics and the post apocalyptic racer Bandits. Later Ubisoft hired GRIN to create the two PC ports for the Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter series before they were signed to multiple console-PC products. In their farewell message, GRIN's founder makes mention of "our unreleased masterpiece that we weren't allowed to finish" indicating they were indeed working on a new game project before their shut down.

It's been a couple of months since rumors started to fly about major issues with game developer GRIN. Despite releasing three games in the space of just a few months earlier this year (Wanted: Weapons of Fate, Bionic Commando and Terminator Salvation) the company reportedly shut down two of its satellite dev studios late in May.

Now Gamasutra is reporting through unnamed sources that GRIN's central office in Stockholm, Sweden could be going under as well. The reports claims that employees of the office were told not to show up for work today and it's possible that the company is preparing to go into bankruptcy or shut down completely. This news comes on the heels of this morning's announcement of Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West. Developed by Stockholm-based Fatshark, the company has GRIN as a stakeholder and used GRIN's engine as the basis for the game.

As we slowly enter the weekend, the retail site GoGamer.com has posted up its PC game sales for the next few days. PC gamers looking to save a litle money can check out their selections which will have prices that last until 3 am ET on Tuesday.

Some of the games on sale have just been released just as Hearts of Iron III for $29.90, Bionic Commando for $32.90, Prototype and East India Company for $34.90 each and even the unreleased Wolfenstein for $39.90. Older games on sale include Call of Duty 4 for $28.90 and X3: Terran Conflict 2.0 for $19.90.

While Capcom announced this week that one of their major Western-developed titles, Dark Void, would have its release pushed back from fall 2009 to the first quarter of 2010, the Japanese game publisher still managed to have a record setting financial quarter. For the quarter that ended June 30 Capcom recorded 19,497 million yen in revenue, a 19.2 percent increase for the same period a year ago. Profit numbers were 3,664 million yen, a 23 percent increase from the same period a year ago.

Resident Evil 5, despite launching in Capcom's previous quarter, continues to sell well on consoles with 600,000 copies sold worldwide during the past three months, adding to the previous quarter's 4.4 million copies. However sales of the console versions of Bionic Commando. which launched last May, have only totaled 500,000 copies worldwide so far.

Capcom's current financial quarter will see three PC versions of their console games being released. Two of them, Street Fighter IV and Bionic Commando, are already out while Resident Evil 5's PC port is due for release in September.

This week's shipment of the PC port of Bionic Commando to stores and also via digital download has had an interesting side-effect. Publisher Capcom has used this week to finally debut last year's downloadable only game Bionic Commando Rearmed on Steam. Some of you may remember that at the last minute Capcom decided not to release the 3D remake of the original game via Steam nearly a year ago because Capcom said they were "unable to reach mutually agreeable terms with Valve".

Apparently those conflicts have been resolved and Steam is now offering Bionic Commando Rearmed for $10. In addition you can download and purchase both Bionic Commando and Bionic Commando Rearmed in a combo pack for $44.99, a savings of $5 if they were purchased separately. If you get the bundle you also get some special Bionic Commando extras, including "the "Retro" Nathan "Rad" Spencer skin, a Prototype Weapon and a secret room in the Fissure level". In a related bit of news, Bionic Commando's soundtrack is now available for purchase via digital download.