Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment is an original Amiga fighting game developed in 1996 by clickBOOM Interactive for Amiga AGA models only.

If you're here without knowing this entry, let me ask you a few questions. Are you interested in a game with the most exciting story you will see in any fighting game? Do you want to experience a title with foolproof and perfectly optimized mechanics? Do you want to sit down with your family and show your parents or children a combat adventure that will insert them into the world of video games? If the answer is yes, this game is not for you, and you are far away from home, cowboy. This is Capital Punishment; get ready to see blood, nudity, and aliens.

The game was developed by clickBOOM Interactive in 1996. If this name sounds familiar, they were also in charge of porting Quake for the Amiga.

The story is not exceptional, but it does not try to be that way at all. Basically, you have to choose between four fighters who will go on a journey to defeat an evil wizard called Qwesul. Also, in their journey, the characters will have to fight not only against aliens (suspiciously similar to Ridley Scott's creatures) but also against the heroes you didn't choose, save them and even pick who will accompany you before each fight.

The gameplay is where the entry becomes interesting. Before you start playing it, there is one factor to consider: the difficulty is brutal. The NPCs will not hesitate to destroy you as soon as they see you to the point where you feel you have no chance. Although there are several options to ease the beating, at the end of the day, the only way to win the game is to "git gud."

This title also has different mechanics and physics, so you should not trust yourself just because you know how to play Mortal Kombat, and you do fatalities to your friends without seeing the cheats page. The jumps and movements feel strange at first: the characters' strikes generate an extreme knockback on impact and the action is much more fluid. Besides, the fight can end at any time because there are threats in the environment that in contact with the characters immediately end their life.

Capital Punishment is surrounded by controversies, but one of the biggest is the implementation of Demona, one of its female characters. The fighter is the fantasy of a BDSM lover; her full Latex suit covers almost her entire body, except for what is typically covered. Although she has remembered to bring underwear from the waist down, the same did not happen from the waist up, so she goes through the whole adventure topless. This is very controversial even for these days, even in titles like Mortal Kombat, where a character takes the organs out of the mouth of another (do not see the fatality of Ermac in the MK10 while you are eating), do not dare to make decisions like this, for better or worse. Likewise, there is an option of censorship for those who see their sensibility compromised.

The graphics of the game are exceptional; they have a very industrial and gothic vibe. The saturation is relatively high, but the brightness is very low, so the street and dark theme of the characters is even more accentuated. The arenas have several fascinating themes, so some fights are almost opaque and others, for example, in the fog, only seeing the combatants' shadows.

In summary, Capital Punishment is not a game for everyone. If you don't mind their graphics or controversies, you still have to hit a wall of difficulty that can take away your will to give it a try. If you still want to do it, you will not find only a rewarding challenge but a work of art in terms of design and innovation and, in my opinion, worthy of its title as a cult game.