Ahhh, this takes me back:
Without taking too much attention away from the last two posts (which need your attention), I’m just dropping this in to say that this was the title that introduced me to periodic and optional text-driven storytelling in the midst of other, more action-centric gameplay. It’s as good a trick today as it was back then — allow the player to dip into the story to whatever degree suits her, rather than making her wait around for mandatory exposition (ahem, Assassin’s Creed). Some players buzzed through all that monitor text in Bionic Commando and some read it all, then tried to design cool bionic-arm rules for D&D. (You can guess what kind of player I was.) Here’s to Bionic Commando second edition.