Nerd Mentality

End Boss 2006, Day 24: Captain Blue (Viewtiful Joe)

Posted June 23rd 2006 by Jordan Mammo.

After battling his way through countless goons, traps, and even the classic Boss-Rehash Challenge, Joe finds his girlfriend, Silvia, trapped inside a cage dangling in the air. Standing in the way of Joe's happy ending, however, is none other than his own childhood hero: Captain Blue, the famed Guardian of the World himself. The hero-gone-bad explains his plans to jump out of the movies and take over the world, but the real shocker comes when he reveals that *gasp* he's actually Silvia's father! Whoa.

But what's compelled Captain Blue to turn over to the dark side? Sure, he's disgruntled with being confined to the fleeting world of movies (we humans can be a pesky bunch, enjoying our films for a couple hours and then just tossing them aside), but that can't be the only reason, can it? Unfortunately, he's not quite ready to let that information slip just yet, so Joe will just have to pummel it out of him.

Darting into the sky, Captain Blue transforms into the monstrous King Blue, which to me is what those Kings on a deck of cards would look like if they were transformed into a Power Rangers mechazord. Not to be outdone, Joe gets a similarly rockin' makeover, and the duel begins on top of the Earth.

And what a duel it is! King Blue comes out swinging with eight-hundred bars of health and the ability to make lightning storms strike the globe at whim. Fortunately for Joe, he can dodge most of the lightning simply by standing still, which I must say is a rather clever (or annoying) play on Capcom's part when making a game in which you never stop moving only for it to turn out that it's the best way to avoid the final boss' most dangerous attack. Anyway, once King Blue starts suffering at Joe's hand a bit, he calls in reinforcements in the form of a ship which can shoot missiles and lasers that circle around the Earth. By deftly avoiding these waves of attacks, Joe can take advantage of the downtime to administer punches powerful enough to rock the world, which is only appropriate as he's nearly as big as the world anyway.

After taking out King Blue, Joe and his ex-idol fall back into Movie Land where you'd expect the game to end. Captain Blue's still not ready to call it quits, however, and the fight begins anew. Actually, this fight is basically the same as all of Joe's previous encounters with Blue at the start of his adventure. Blue will try to jump-kick, uppercut, and even try to hit our pink-caped hero with more lightning, but his old tricks are of no use to him anymore, and Joe takes him out easily.

Joe's final punch must have knocked some sense into the old man, as he then reveals the truth in climactic fashion. After fighting his way through the final Star Wars-style level and finally meeting Silvia's father in Star Wars-style fashion, Joe discovers that, twenty years ago, Captain Blue was actually an acclaimed movie director who got sucked into his own movies and lost touch with reality. Oh, hey, sounds like a certain Star Wars-style director.

That's all behind him now, though, and just as the father-daughter reunion begins to warm the audience's hearts, a new threat rears its ugly head. Captain Blue then tells us there'll be two more times when the Earth is in danger and will need a hero, and so Silvia joins Joe and they run off to fight evil again in what can only be assumed to be a Star Wars-style trilogy.

Posted in: Features

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