Captain America and The Avengers (Arcade) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Data East's 1991 license-based arcade beat 'em up Captain America and The Avengers.

Played through as Captain America on the machine's default difficulty setting.

Red Skull has ambitions to take over the world, and he's gathered a huge crew of notorious villains to aid him in his purpose. The fate of the world hangs in the balance, and it's up to Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Vision to put a stop to the madness.

Avengers assemble!

Data East's Captain America and The Avengers was the first game in their trilogy based on the Marvel license, followed by a different game of the same name on the NES in 1992, and finally, the arcade versus fighter Avengers in Galactic Storm in 1995 (   • Avengers in Galactic Storm (Arcade) P...   ).

It's a belt-scrolling beat em 'up, like Double Dragon or Final Fight, but it also includes a few shmup style sections to break up the flow every so often.

The fighting flows nicely and you're given access to a fair range of attacks. Each character gets a ranged attack, a block, a combo-able set of punches and kicks, a throw, and they can all pick up anything that's not nailed down to use with a satisfying display of comic violence. You can also call on helpers to drop by for special attacks.

The controls are easy to work with, the difficulty level is usually quite fair, and the huge range of characters that show up over the course of the game should keep Marvel fans happy. So should the presentation. The characters are all well detailed and animated, especially given the their small(ish) sprites, the inter-stage cutscenes look straight out of a comic, and the backgrounds look fantastic. They're all digitized images of paintings, much like Sierra used to use in their computer games of the time, and they elevate the graphical polish of the game well above that of most its contemporaries. The sound is great, too - the music is all appropriately energetic and heroic sounding, the copious amounts of digitized voice work is clear and surprisingly well acted, and the sound effects all pack some real oomph. The sound design is cheesy, but it suits the game to a T.

All told, Captain America and The Avengers is a real tribute to the license it's based on, and the original arcade version is by far the best way to play it.

There were, however, several console conversions that were released in the early 90s. The Genesis version is the best of these, but the Game Boy also hosted a very reasonable effort. The less said about the SNES version, however, the better. Here are a few links if you're interesting in checking them out:

SNES version:    • Captain America and the Avengers (SNE...  

Genesis version:    • Captain America and the Avengers (Gen...  

Game Boy version:    • Captain America and the Avengers (Gam...  
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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