Captain America and The Avengers

Captain America and the Avengers[lower-alpha 1] is a beat 'em up arcade game developed and released by Data East in 1991. It features the Avengers team of Marvel Comics characters in a side-scrolling brawling and shooting adventure to defeat the evil Red Skull. The game received ports for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy and Game Gear. A different Data East game was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Captain America and the Avengers
Arcade flyer
Developer(s)
Data East (Arcade & NES)
Publisher(s)
Data East
Director(s)
Iwao Horita
  • Eiichi Nishiyama, Takehiko Ishiro (GEN)
Producer(s)Koji Jinbo
Men Taiko (GEN)
Ken Fukaki, Koichi Ota, Denny Thorley (NES)
Designer(s)
Hidenobu Ito
  • Haruhisa Yajima (hardware w Toshio Kawamoto)
    Eiichi Nishiyama, Hiroaki Iwano (GEN)
    Lennard Feddersen (SNES)
    Steven Ettinger (Game Gear & Game Boy w Cheryl Hamada)
    Ken Fukaki & Eiichi Nishiyama (NES)
Programmer(s)Tac H.
Hiroshi Ōnuki
Tesa Amusement Service/M I
K. Miyazawa
Hisatada Ohta, Kohji Sasamoto, Shuji Ishimaki (NES)
Artist(s)
Masanori Tokoro
  • Sonomi Kiyota
    Wataru Oguri
    Atsushi Takahashi
    Hiroshi Koga
    Touma Arakawa
    Tomoji Kodama
    Yaeko Kodama
    Fumie Nuibe
    Hanaita
    Ayumi Hanimaru
    Yasuyuki Satō
    Surupi
    Takashi Sokabe
    Akihiko Mamashita
  • Takehiko Ishiro, Takumi Sawajiri, Yorokin, H. Sasaki (GEN)
  • Nabeo, A-kun, Mikan, Takashi Watanabe (NES)
Composer(s)
Tatsuya Kiuchi, Tomoyoshi Sato
  • Shogo Sakai, Tomoyoshi Sato, Hitoshi Sakimoto (GEN)
    Eric Swanson (SNES, Game Gear, Game Boy)
    Seiji Momoi, Takafumi Miura (NES)
Platform(s)
Release
October 1991
  • October 1991: Arcade[1]
    Late 1991: NES
    1992: Genesis/Mega Drive
    1993: SNES, Game Gear
    1994: Game Boy
Genre(s)Beat 'em up, platformer, action
Mode(s)Up to 4 players simultaneously

Gameplay

The Red Skull has assembled an army of supervillains and other henchmen in a plot to take over the world. Along with battling generic enemies, players also face Klaw, the Living Laser, Whirlwind, a Sentinel, Wizard, the Grim Reaper, the Mandarin, Juggernaut, Ultron, The Controller, the assassin Crossbones and finally the Red Skull himself.

Players can choose to play as one of four members of the Avengers: Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Vision. Each character can fight hand-to-hand, throw select items when on the ground, and use a ranged special attack, either a projectile weapon (Captain America's shield and Hawkeye's arrows) or an energy beam (Iron Man and Vision), known as that character's "Avenger Attack". During a jump, Captain America and Hawkeye can attack with a flying kick, while Iron Man and Vision instead attack by firing their energy beams at a 45 degree angle. Other Avengers, including the Wasp, Quicksilver, Wonder Man, and Namor the Sub-Mariner, appear when special power-ups are collected, allowing those characters to temporarily assist the players' characters.

Most game levels feature side-scrolling fighting, with free movement as in traditional arcade brawlers. Occasionally, players take flight for side-scrolling flying & shooting sequences; Iron Man and Vision fly on their own, while Captain America and Hawkeye use flying machines.

Versions
Screenshot of the 1991 two-player arcade version.

The original arcade game was sold in two forms. One version allowed four players to play simultaneously, with each player position controlling a specific character. An alternate version featured two-player gameplay, with players able to select from any of the available four characters.

Data East released a home version of the game in North America for the Sega Genesis co-developed with ISCO/Opera House.[2][3] This version was published in Europe by Sega for the Mega Drive. The game was later licensed to Mindscape, who released its own ports of the arcade game for the Super NES, Game Boy and Game Gear. The versions published by Mindscape were developed by Realtime Associates.[4]

Data East also released a different NES game with the same title. The NES version is a side-scrolling action platform game. The only playable characters in this version are Captain America and Hawkeye; their mission is to save the Vision and Iron Man from Mandarin, then defeat the Red Skull. As with the Genesis/Mega Drive port, the NES game was developed in Japan but not released there.

Data East's third and final entry in their Captain America and The Avengers licensed video games was the 1995 Avengers in Galactic Storm, which was an arcade exclusive fighting game that became the first to feature assist characters and duplex desperation moves.

In 2021, Arcade1Up released the game in a special Marvel themed cabinet that also featured Avengers in Galactic Storm and X-Men.[5]

Other appearances in media

An arcade cabinet of the game can be spotted in the 1994 comedy Airheads.

One page of Matt Fraction and David Aja's run of Hawkeye comics directly lifts from the arcade game's artwork.

Reception

Arcade

In the United States, it topped the RePlay arcade earnings chart for upright arcade cabinets in November 1991.[10] In Japan, Game Machine listed Captain America and The Avengers on their January 1, 1992 issue as being the fourth most-successful table arcade unit of the month.[11]

The November 1991 issue of Sinclair User gave it the shared award for "Games Most Likely To Save The Universe" as one of the best superhero games, along with Spider-Man: The Video Game and Captain Commando.[9]

Game Gear

In reviewing the Game Gear version, GamePro called the game "a forgettable scroller" with mediocre animation and sound.[8] Electronic Gaming Monthly said it "fares well on this Game Gear version, even without the Two-player Simultaneous Play Option". [sic][6]

Notes
  1. Japanese: キャプテンアメリカアンドジアベンジャーズ, Hepburn: Kyaputen Amerika ando ji Abenjāzu

References
  1. Akagi, Masumi (October 13, 2006). アーケードTVゲームリスト国内•海外編(1971–2005) [Arcade TV Game List: Domestic • Overseas Edition (1971–2005)] (in Japanese). Japan: Amusement News Agency. pp. 114–5. ISBN 978-4990251215.
  2. http://www.isco-inc.co.jp/Web_izen/game_etc.htm
  3. https://web.archive.org/web/20161220184805/http://opera-house.co.jp/works.html
  4. "Realtime Associates - Past Projects". Archived from the original on 2011-05-25. Retrieved 2011-04-30.
  5. "X-Men Arcade, Killer Instinct, Dragon's Lair, and More Announced by Arcade1Up".
  6. "Review Crew: Captain America". Electronic Gaming Monthly (57). EGM Media, LLC. April 1994. p. 46.
  7. Moon, Billy R. (December 1993). "Captain America and the Avengers". Game Players. No. 35. p. 176. Retrieved July 8, 2021.
  8. "Captain America and the Avengers". GamePro (58). IDG. May 1994. p. 130.
  9. "Coin Ops - Games Most Likely To Save The Universe". Sinclair User. November 1991. pp. 62–63.
  10. "RePlay: The Players' Choice". RePlay. Vol. 17 no. 2. November 1991. p. 4.
  11. "Game Machine's Best Hit Games 25 - テーブル型TVゲーム機 (Table Videos)". Game Machine (in Japanese). No. 418. Amusement Press, Inc. 1 January 1992. p. 37.
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