Monday, August 11, 2025 at 10:21 pm Comments (0)
You thought you were getting a movie review as a reprieve from two entries of Battletoads content? Surprise! This is actually an extremely contrived continuation of that conversation! Buckle in, suckers!
A couple of dear friends invited me to see Lightyear in cinemas in 2022, and it was a nice time, if largely just enjoying the company of pals I had not seen in two years because of the pandemic. I’ve very little to remark about it that armies of dedicated Disney reviewers haven’t already picked apart.
I thought it was pleasant enough! You can see its themes and character arcs coming a mile away, and its third act feels like it drops the ball in some regard, but it’s just nice to see a CGI animated film that’s a straightforward sci-fi romp. It’s not interrupted by musical numbers, or transforming the cast into animals — you get what you sign up for, more or less.
At least, I got what I expected! Scampy of The Spirochaete Trail discussed the film’s various foibles, from its wishy-washy marketing campaign that made people just expect more Toy Story, to even its text prelude that gives the impression this is setting itself up to be a ’90s throwback.
The latter was a thorn in a lot of people’s sides, apparently; I can understand the internal discussions that might’ve led to its inclusion, but I figured the movie ought to do the talking instead of three lines of intro text.
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Filed under Basic bloggin' Tagged movie, review
Monday, July 14, 2025 at 11:28 am Comments (1)
This is a long one and I haven’t got it in me to do a preamble. I’m still on my Double Dragon kick, and it feels only natural to finally dabble in the Battletoads series as well. I honestly quite liked the look of this reboot based on its cutscenes, even if seeing them next to gameplay did one-eighty my perception, but it’s only fair to give it a swing myself.
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Filed under Basic bloggin' Tagged battletoads, game, review
Monday, July 7, 2025 at 1:30 pm Comments (0)
Now, this one is cheating because I don’t flippin’ have any Action Men left in my collection; they all went to friends with children years and years and years ago… or so I thought until the day before this publishing when one mucky fellow was unearthed from the bowels of who knows where. He looks filthy and I do not want it near me, but I’m grateful to not have to gank images from eBay again.
The toyline was practically inescapable during the ’90s, so it’s always odd to me hearing from folks whose home country never got the things. Action Man is a series of 12-inch poseable dolls that I believe were an off-shoot of the old-school G.I. Joe dolls; I guess where the US favoured the 3¾-inch playset-driven angle of A Real American Hero, the UK and Europe instead leaned into the gimmick-laden roleplay angle of Action Man. Why have a different dude for each specialist duty, when just one man can do everything?
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Filed under Basic bloggin' Tagged tales from storage, toys
Monday, June 30, 2025 at 11:02 am Comments (0)
It was only after writing the last blog post about Earthworm Jim comics that I was able to get my peepers on the two recent hardback endeavours, Launch The Cow and Fight The Fish. Rather than limited-series or one-off comic books, these are proper graphic novels, a good 150 pages each of continuous content made to be read in one gulp.
It truly makes the most of its medium, taking the time to really establish a sense of place to every location and setpiece, and how all these seemingly disparate characters and concepts connect together. Aside from a one-shot starring Evil the Cat, I believe this is the first time we’ve seen Doug draw these characters in more than just promo/concept art and animation layouts, and it’s interesting to see him tackle this world with his own vision, warts and idiosyncrasies and all.
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Filed under Basic bloggin' Tagged comics, earthworm jim, review
Monday, June 23, 2025 at 8:32 am Comments (0)
My dad, not unlike myself, is forever in a state of organisation. Putting things into boxes and databasing them, and then downsizing and putting the stragglers into different boxes to be databased, ad infinitum, until maybe he finally gets around to doing what he wanted with those things in the first place. I’m much the same, except the entire pipeline’s on hold because I just got too lazy. Why work when I can do other things? Such as… I’ll get back to you on that.
I wrote the bones of this post back in October 2021 after the surprise uncovering of the WEB WARRIORS ENKRPYTICONS VIRUS boxed model kit from da’s shed… and it’s taken this long to get to print because I misplaced the fucking toy before I could photograph it. It’s almost like storage and organisation is just a euphemism for voluntarily losing things!
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Filed under Basic bloggin' Tagged tales from storage, toys
Monday, June 16, 2025 at 1:28 pm Comments (0)
While I enjoy a good brawler, I tend to stick to the ones I’m comfortable with, but pal ShaolinTurtle very much keeps up with what’s hip and happening, and had been keeping tabs on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind. Ever since Shredder’s Revenge, there’s been a whole swathe of pixelated beat-em-ups based on retro properties — the Karate Kid, Toxic Crusaders, G.I. Joe, even Jay & Silent Bob… and no doubt more I’m forgetting, there’s so flippin’ many!
What made Rita’s Rewind stand out is that it showed more than just standard brawling — shooting galleries, auto-runner vehicle sequences ala Konami’s G.I. Joe arcade game, and even Punch-Out style Megazord battles. It certainly got my attention!
Full disclosure, I did not purchase this game, I simply took part via Steam Remote Play, and have not been back to the game since. My positivity and defence of it might come from not paying for the experience…! The game’s since announced major updates to remedy quirks and feedback, so what I describe is likely a thing of the past.
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Filed under Basic bloggin' Tagged game, review
Monday, June 9, 2025 at 1:27 pm Comments Off on Some movies I watched in 2024: Space Jam
I’ve mentioned pal ShaolinTurtle before, and bless his heart, he’s a terrible man for exposing himself to obnoxious discussions or terrible opinions, only to rant about it to no one on Discord. One such occasion was an inexplicable comparison between Sonic the Hedgehog‘s Rouge the Bat, and Space Jam‘s Lola Bunny.
Because we are both insufferable dweebs, we had lots of opinions on Rouge and how she’s a far more capable character than she’s often depicted, but were coming up short on defences for Lola. Time to take notes and expose everyone to an impromptu watch party, then!
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Filed under Basic bloggin' Tagged movie, review
Monday, June 2, 2025 at 1:25 pm Comments Off on Some games I played in 2024: Fast Food Rampage
So, uh, playing Maiden Cops might have encouraged me to pick up other games on Steam for the sole purpose of ripping their sprites, whether I enjoyed them or not. I played Fast Food Rampage for less than twenty minutes and my verdict was “criminally unsatisfying.”
I wasn’t aware of its history at the time, but apparently the roots of this game began in an animation for the YouTube channel Mashed, a parody of Hatred — god, remember that? The same self-serious monologue about the inferiority of others, only it’s delivered by a fast food mascot bemoaning the rising popularity of health foods as he weaponises the McDonalds menu to make people explode from overeating.
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Filed under Basic bloggin' Tagged game, review
Monday, May 26, 2025 at 1:24 pm Comments Off on Some movies I watched in 2024: Cool World
I’ve a bad habit of absorbing random information about esoteric subjects, despite never otherwise exposing myself to them. As such, I’ve picked up a buttload of trivia and opinions about Ralph Bakshi productions over the past decades, despite having only seen his Lord of the Rings adaptation and a couple episodes of the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon. I have heard many things about Cool World, few of them positive. So… fuck it. Let’s watch Cool World.
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Filed under Basic bloggin' Tagged movie, review
