Released by Visco Corporation as a Neo Geo-based arcade game in 1999, Captain Tomaday is a one or simultaneous two-player shoot ’em up, featuring a cartoon tomato with bionic fists.

Rather than shooting bullets, Captain Tomaday (or his female companion, played by player two), can throw disembodied fists at enemies as he moves over a vertically-scrolling landscape. Each fist is thrown separately, by pressing either the ‘A’ or ‘B’ buttons, which I found to be really annoying (having to hit both buttons at the same time, or – if you want to throw left/right punches – pressing them alternately, I thought was unnecessarily distracting from the serious business of avoiding collisions).

One solution to this horrendous two-button firing is: if you hold down one of the fire buttons instead, and continually launch just a single fist, the opposite hand will build up power and eventually launch as a one ton weight, as a sort of ‘super punch’. The problem with this, though, is that you open yourself up to collisions, because both fists are not always firing.

During play, cans of tomato soup will appear on-screen and fall downward. If punched, they will break open and reveal a power-up. You are then supposed to collect these, but if you punch them again, they will fly back up the screen. If this sounds like the bell-shooting mechanic of Konami‘s classic arcade game, TwinBee, then that’s because it is. Captain Tomaday is essentially a clone of that game.

By collecting certain power-ups, you can transform into one of sixteen different forms, each with its own unique attack style. You can also create a clone of yourself, for double the firepower, by collecting another type of power-up. Pressing the ‘C’ button, when in possession of a clone, changes your formation.

Overall, Captain Tomaday doesn’t do a great deal for me. I really disliked the two-button punch system as it kept distracting me and leading to death, and the only reason I continued playing is because the game offers unlimited continues. If I’d encountered this in an actual arcade, there’s little to no chance I would put more money in to continue.

I also didn’t like how the game stops scrolling at certain points, to make you fight a sub-boss, before continuing. It’s like the developers knew that their game was very short, so they decided to deliberately hold you up to make it feel longer. Overall, Captain Tomaday has two too many annoyances for my liking. Which is a pity because the graphics and sound are excellent. It’s just the gameplay that sucks…

A legally-licensed port of Captain Tomaday was released for the Sega Dreamcast in 2019, and is still available to buy now (at the time of writing).

More: Captain Tomaday on Moby Games