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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I continue to be zonked out of my gourd, and the insistence of Northern Ireland sporting unpleasantly hot weather really isn’t helping matters. I would love to be writing or drawing or doing any number of things, but in these circumstances I gravitate towards whatever quick-fix distraction feels even mildly productive… which is a long-winded way of saying the sprites section updated with a bunch of guff:
We’ve got Arvoesine; Bomberman ’93, GB and Quest; Bubble Bobble Double; Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales; Double Dragon Gaiden; Drake & The Wizards 2; Elevator Action Old & New; Fast Food Rampage; The Flintstones (GB); Frogger 2 (XBLA); The Itchy & Scratchy Game; Neutopia II; Rampage (Lynx); Shamisen Brothers; Snoopy Tennis; Street Fighter (PCE); Strikey Sisters; and Toryumon.
Which ties into today’s ramble: a game I picked up for the sole purpose of ripping its sprites, but The Spriters Resource has obliged with a temporary removal on request of its devs until it gets its full release on all platforms. I figure it’s good manners to do the same as well. I’ll then proceed to befoul those good manners by being disparaging towards the game in the ensuing ramble, and for that I apologise!
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I am a dope who’s managed to ignore multiple cinematic classics for decades, but I’ll pick up a random film on a whim on the most idle of notions. I asked myself, “have I seen anything Haley Joel Osment has been in?”, saw this striking title on IMDb and figured, I might as well make this my first…!
Izzy has a mission: to crash a wedding. Only she’s on the wrong side of town and her car is on the fritz, so she winds up pulling every favour she can to get where she wants to go. We don’t know quite why Izzy’s looking to crash this wedding, or whose wedding it even is, but we pick it up as we go.
Izzy is quirky at best — she’s a dreamer, young and wild and full of big ambitions, a stronger believer in love and fate, with a knack for getting people to see things on her wavelength. At worst, she’s a self-absorbed wreck of a human being, mooching and coasting on other people’s couches waiting for the stars to align before she dares to make something of herself.
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