Punisher & Nick Fury

The revenge-driven vigilante Punisher and SHIELD agent Nick Fury gear up to take down the criminals that run their city. In 1993, Capcom released a Punisher arcade game, a sidescrolling beat-em-up. But because that type of game works best when there's more than one player, Capcom took inspiration from a cancelled comic to pair him up with Nick Fury. Every bit of that is deeply obscure today, but the game's surprise inclusion in the 2024 Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics compilation has given Hasbro the basis to make this two-pack. Frank is built on a fairly burly body. He gets existing limbs, which have been used for Punishers before, but his torso is new, with pectoral hinges and a balljointed chest, instead of simply a hinged chest and swivel waist. His belt is the same one Walgreens Punisher used, with the teeth of his skull logo built into it. He has a thin harness around his shoulders, to match the game sprites, and while we've seen this leg holster before, Hasbro has cleverly painted the portion of leg it fits around white, to match the single large strap he had in the game. The figure includes two heads. Right out of the tray, he has a face that's generically grumpy, but calm. The second is angrier, showing a bit of teeth. Both have the hair sculpted as a separate piece and glued into the head, which allows the strands that hang messily over his forehead to be separate from the skin and not just be sculpted into place - hardly the most necessary innovation in the world, but welcome. Punisher has a pair of fists, a pair of hands for holding guns, and clutching left hand, and a two-finger-pointing right hand. A pistol fits in the holster on his leg, and there's also an assault rifle, two submachine guns, and a grenade. The game had a unique weapon system, where you could pick up stray items dropped by enemies (a common feature in many beat-em-ups), while also recognizing that Frank Castle is a character who uses guns freely: the weapons you got off the ground only lasted a short time before being discarded, but Frank's own pistol could be used at any time and had infinite ammo! An auto-locking reticle would move around the screen, and you could direct it a bit to hit the enemies you wanted to prioritize. To keep this from being wildly overpowered, though, Capcom smartly made it so he'd only pull his gun out when other enemies on screen also had guns - eliminate them, and he'd go back to using punches and kicks. Like we said, the arcade cabinets could earn more money if multiple people could play at a time; but Punisher tends to work alone, and just doing the same guy in Player 2 colors would have been a cop-out, which is why we get Nick Fury instead. The comic that loosely inspired this pairing had Fury as the ultimate super-spy, the head of SHIELD with all his crazy uniforms and tech, while the game was more down-to-earth, just putting him in street clothes. And since the Punisher was already blue and white (black being hard to animate in sprite form), Nick trades in his usual SHIELD colors for green pants and a tan sweater. Below the waist, this is the same as the last Nick Fury: same boots, same legs, same holster, same belt. The turtleneck he's wearing stretches across his muscles, leaving a lot of horizontal wrinkles, amd he wears a new chest harness that features a holster on the left side, a strap around his ribs, and loops around both shoulders. Nick's head was, like both of Punisher's, sculpted by the guy who spends his nights waging a one-man war on street crime, Paul Harding. Again the hair is done as a separate piece, which is why his eyepatch disappears as soon as it meets the hairline, but the sneering expression is great. Unofficially, Harding revealed that he sculpted it specifically so you could use the tip of a toothpick or something to give him his trademark cigar (which, yes, he did have in the game). Fun fact: those "gun smoke" effects a lot of Legends come with work pretty well, too, if you paint the peg brown. Wonder if that's why this set doesn't include any? You know, to avoid "encouraging" doing just that? They already edited the sprite art on the side of the box to remove any evidence of smoking there. Obviously either of the figures can use any of the weapons, but you can tell Fury's pistol apart from Frank's because it's the same mold the older one had, and because it's painted black instead of dark grey. There's also a second AR in black, and Fury gets all the same hands that Frank did, just in pink instead of white. There's a baseball bat (another one of the weapon pickups), as well as a briefcase full of money and a small orange explosion, which we've seen very recently. Obviously Nick Fury and Punisher had all the same moves and controls in the game, but this toy gets the hinged chest/swivel waist combo instead of a balljoint. Still has pec hinges, though. As far as arcade beat-em-ups go, The Punisher was pretty advanced. The gun system was startlingly clever, there were lots of throw/melee options, and he even had an intricate dodge roll decades before Soulsbornes were even a thing. If this Punisher were black instead of blue, it might be the last one you'd ever need. He still looks good, though, and this version of Nick Fury is a unique addition. -- 07/27/26 What Capcom designs do you want to see Hasbro tackle? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.