Captain Comic

Captain Comic (a.k.a. Captain Comic: The Adventure from the box art, or The Adventures of Captain Comic from the title screen) is a platform game released for MS-DOS in 1988. It is known for being one of the first side-scrolling games made for IBM PC. It was developed entirely by Michael Denio. The PC version of the game was distributed as shareware. Later, a version for the NES was published by Color Dreams as an unlicensed title. An unofficial conversion for the SAM Coupé also exists. It was also cloned as "The Adventures of Pioneer Ksenia" in 1990 by a team of Ukrainian programmers.

In the game, the player takes control of Captain Comic, who is on a mission to the planet Tambi to recover three treasures stolen from the planet Omsoc. Its author, Michael Denio, writes in the introduction to the game's manual:

"The Adventures of Captain Comic started out as an experiment to test the viability of two theories, the first as to whether a real arcade type game can be done on a standard IBM PC with an Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) card, and secondly, given the first can be done, if it is possible to make any money doing it. Well, I've come to a conclusion on the second point, but I'll let you judge the first point for yourself."

Although neither the original, nor its Captain Comic II: Fractured Reality were commercial successes, Captain Comic is best known for its historical significance to classic PC games.

The theme song for Captain Comic was traditionally a rendition of the United States Marine Corps Hymn. The song was changed in Version 5 (the final revision of the game, released in 1991).