Captain Silver

1987 video game

Captain Silver (キャプテンシルバー) is a side scrolling hack and slash platform game released as an arcade video game by Data East in 1987. Home versions were published for the Master System by Sega and for the NES by Tokuma Shoten.

A young sailor and former first mate named Jim Aykroyd (Jack Avery in US) who goes on a journey to seek the lost treasure of Captain Silver, facing various perils along the way. It is loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island in which a young sailor named Jim Hawkins confront the pirate Long John Silver on a tropical island over his treasure.

The controls consists of an eight way joystick for walking, crouching and climbing ladders and two action buttons for attacking and jumping. The player is armed primarily with a sword slashing horizontally while standing and crouching and vertically while climbing a ladder. The player can also move while crouching. Picking up flying fairies grants the player magic power, shooting projectiles with the sword. The player can increase the magic power by up to six levels, resulting in greater and more powerful projectiles. There are other power ups such as a longsword to destroy enemy projectiles, a pair of boots to walk faster and jump higher, a bottle of potion to take a hit from an enemy, and a stopwatch that temporarily stops the time limit. Both the longsword and the boots can only be used temporarily at first, but if the player acquires a second version of either while still wearing the previous one, they can be kept permanently until the player loses a life. Treasure items can be acquired for points as well. Keys can be acquired which gives the player access to item shops and treasure vaults. The player's own score is used as currency to gain power ups and extra lives at the expense of a lower score. Defeated enemies will drop letter icons that the player can collect for points as well. If the player collects the required letters needed to fill out the "CAPTAIN SILVER" gauge at the bottom of the screen, an extra life is obtained. There are a total of three stages (or scenes): a haunted town at night, a pirate ship, and a treasure island. Each scene features its unique set of enemy characters such as werewolves, witches, pirates, natives, several kinds of animals, man eating plants and other hazards. Scene 3 ends with a final battle against the skeletal being of Captain Silver. After the player complete the game once, there is a second quest consisting of harder versions of the same stages in order to finish the game.