Taking its inspiration from its 8-bit namesake released on the Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1988, Bionic Commando features Nathan Spencer (voiced by former lead singer of Faith No More, Mike Patton), a government operative who represents the ultimate fusion of man and machine. After distinguishing himself in a fierce conflict against the Imperials, Spencer is betrayed and falsely imprisoned by the very people he unquestioningly served.

Three years later, on the day he is due to be executed for his supposed crimes, an experimental weapon detonates in Ascension City, unleashing an immensely powerful earthquake coupled with a radiation shockwave that leaves the city in ruins, wiping out its populace. Military intelligence suggests that a large terrorist search force has moved in and occupied Ascension City, but as yet their motives remain unclear. With the terrain in ruins and the terrorists in control of Ascension City’s air defences the FSA has only one option open to them – the reactivation of Nathan Spencer.

"Capcom is extremely excited to work with GRIN to bring the world-class franchise of Bionic Commando into the 21st century," said Ben Judd, producer of Bionic Commando at Capcom. "Capcom has also always been strong partners with NVIDIA and with Bionic Commando we are taking things to a new level by adding GPU-accelerated PhysX to increase the title's realism."

"Physics is changing the industry. We evaluated all of the commercial physics systems out there for gaming, and the choice was easy," said Bo Andersson, CEO at GRIN Entertainment. "NVIDIA PhysX runs faster than other solutions and it works across PCs and consoles, which is important to us because Bionic Commando will ship on all major platforms. We believe PhysX will help make the game seem even more lifelike and immersive."

With NVIDIA PhysX, the world literally comes to life: walls can be torn down, trees bend in the wind, and water flows with body and force. PhysX technology harnesses the power of the CPU as well as any CUDA general-purpose parallel computing processor, including any NVIDIA GeForce® 8 Series or higher GPU, to handle 10-20 times more visual complexity than what's possible on today's traditional PC platforms. Unlike competitive solutions which do not offer hardware scaling capability, only PhysX technology can leverage the best of both CPU and GPU architectures to deliver the ultimate, immersive, end user experience.

"The gaming industry and gamers themselves are excited to see the return of Bionic Commando. The addition of physics effects using PhysX technology is going to add a huge amount of extra fun and depth to the game play," said Roy Taylor, vice president of content development at NVIDIA. "We can't wait to see what the talented team at CAPCOM and GRIN can create using the NVIDIA PhysX technology and hands-on support from our developer technology team."

Bionic Commando harnesses the power of the latest generation of hardware to fully exploit the swing mechanic that made the original title so unique. The ruins of Ascension City and its surroundings provide an engaging environment of towering buildings, suspended roadways and monorails, deep canyons and sheer rock faces that allow gamers to traverse each area via multiple routes using swinging, rappeling, climbing and wall-walking techniques.

An expertly trained operative, Spencer is able to target and take out enemies while hanging upside down, climbing a building or even in mid-swing. At close quarters, the bionic arm packs a mean punch, while from a distance, objects such as boulders and cars can be grabbed and launched at enemies.

The development team behind Bionic Commando represents a unique and compelling collaboration of cultures and skills, consisting of an American Producer living in Japan, a Japanese Creative Advisor and highly-rated Swedish developer GRIN providing a European influence. This partnership provides a further example of Capcom’s strategy to work with the best developer talent, whilst maintaining the unique elements of creativity and approach to game design for which Capcom is renowned.

Bionic Commando is in development for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, and is scheduled to launch early 2009.

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