5 weird uses of public domain on gaming at 1:04 PM

Well, how am I gonna go ahead if I don't mention Knights of the Round every few posts?

As my Game jam aproaches, I think more on these stories and characters that so influenced the gaming landscape. Sure, some like Castlevania and God of war do the obvious and pull familiar names and concepts for you to murder.

But that's not always the case. That's why I present you the 5 weirdest use of Public Domain material in games.

Sonic and the Black Knight

Pulling it off is easy.

The Blue Blur realized awhile ago that it was wasting it's time. Sonic has at times been a plumber, a doctor and a hotel manager. Sonic, though let himself get typecast as a hedgehog.

And so, he went off in the search of a new, marketable Identity. Which is how he ended in Camelot for Sonic and the Black Knight.

As a fish out of water in the Arthurian myth times, Sonic must Hack and slash in a world he never knew,in which not only did swords get jammed in rocks to decide who is king, but also the usual characters from lore such as Lancelot were now played by his friends/enemies.

Is this the fan fickiest shit you've ever seen or what?

It seems like a strange choice, I admit. The Sonic Fan in me hates it for not being Sonic 2, but the realist in me loves that isn't Sonic 2.

Dr Jeckyl and MR Hyde

NOT THE HEAD-BITE!

The story of Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde is one that makes sense for a game if you think about it. Drinking something to become an unstoppable monster? That's already an established formula!

The game, though, is not remembered for making sense. The good Doctor must traverse a world full of minor inconveniences, which trigger his rage and make him turn into his evil alter ego.

You just got hustled for a wad of cash, tell me what you gonna do? Act a Fool!

Sadly, the game is even more remembered for  sucking and giving the AVGN material.

Cthulu saves the world

"PART OF YOUR WOOOOOOORLD!"

The works of HP Lovecraft hold a special place in nerddom, especially Octopus Faced Cosmic Monstrocity Cthulu.

Appearing in games from high profile to obscure, there's certainly an interest in using the Great Old One as an antagonist. But one game asked the right question: what if Cthulu was the hero?

"YES, GODDAMNIT, YOU ALREADY SAW THAT EPISODE OF ANCIENT ALIENS!"

So this indie RPG casts you as the nightmare monster, as he, as expected, has to save the world in order to be able to destroy it. You guys can tell me if it's great or no.

Earth Worm Jim 2

What's the russian word for "Groovy!"?

Oh, you don't remember public domain stuff in EWJ2? Well, maybe your ears weren't paying attention. Earthworm Jim uses several songs from the public domain. Funiculi, Funicula for one, is a famous Italian opera I presume  is not an ode to the art of catching puppies.

But perhaps more pointedly, Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture is used in the stage "Jim is now a blind cave salamander" which the titular hero becomes...err, you know.

Well, it could always be worst. This could be Clayfighter.

Besides the obvious asspull that the hero annelid is now a hero reptilian, and how nard crunchingly hard the level could feel, the most memorable part of it was the calm, soothing music, and how much weirder it made the whole thing.

You see, modernly, a lot of folks would have told Tommy Tallarico to just make his own damn music (or, implicitely, to go licence the Tchaikovsky song to whoever owns it). But that's the thing: the maker FELT like this pd song fit this moment, and was empowered to use it.

Mortal Kombat vs DC universe.

"If you hear a lightening, run and be a frightening, because here's a teenager that can tear you in half!"

Oh, you didn't know? There's a public domain character in a Mortal Kombat game! No it's not Santa.

I'm talking about Captain Marvel. NOT Captain Mar-Vell, Monica Rambeaux, or Carol Danvers, the original Big Red Cheese, Captain Marvel.

You see, it's a long story, but before Dc had to rename him Shazam, Cap Marvel was a Fawcett comics character. One day the company went under, not in little part thanks to litigation from DC. Dc swooped in and bought the company...all wrong.

You see, DC bought, or so they say, the physical place Fawcett comics was in, but not the assets. This means that DC had the physical original drawings that made up the first Captain Marvel Comic, but not the rights to the works themselves, which means that Cappy (as well as others that never fought Scorpion, so who cares) and his friends started slowly slipping into the public domain.

They got wise and stopped it just before Black Adam got into the mix, but by then it was too late. That means that Captain Marvel, Billy Batson,  the Shazam family up to and including Freckles Marvel belong to all us.*

YOU CAN'T MAKE YOURS HAVE THE RAGE! WE CAME UP WITH THAT!

Essentially all his traits in MKvsDC come from the PD version, albeit his appearance and moves like holding and Shazaming people come from DC's stories.  Later on Midway died, got revived and bought by WB under a different name, and they made Injustice, Gods Among Us, which included Shazam. He's got a little redesign and they finally gave up on him being Captain Marvel (and I guess Mary Marvel is now Mary Shazam, right?)

This is...actually not your father's Captain Marvel.

Altered Beast

Zack Gilliafanakis Looking fit next to Adrien Brody.

Oh , you remember this one, don't you? Two burly bros from the ancient times have to rise from their graves, to knock the snot out of assorted undeads and monsters, eventually ditching their homoerotic human forms to become homoerotic  anthros.

What's from the public domain? The setup. Athena, Greek Goddess of Wisdom, can't stay out of trouble, and gets captured by a Wizard. Naturally Zeus, Almighty God of Olympus, sends two guys to rescue her. You still get some Goddess on Furry action at the end, though.

 

"I'd rather give my daughter away to this buff werewolf than get off my lazy ass"-Zeus

Sure, you don't need Zeus and Athena into a story like this to get it going. It's basic rescue the princess shit. But it's still somewhat interesting and weird how they got that going on, and made your characters have no emotional attachment to the lady in question.

King of Fighters/Athena

I hope I'm this modest in EVERY future representation of me.

Similarly, you don't need  Greek Myths to explain why a schoolgirl can shoot fire from her mittens in a fighting game. But in this case it's special.

 

Athena, wearing a red bikini and purple hair. Are YOU gonna tell a chick gave birth to herself what she can and can't wear?

 Athena once again shows up, in a little known SNK game of her namesake, where she falls down a hole in Heaven and has to fight badguys.

But as things tend to happen in SNK land, it all came to end in SNK's endless crossover series The King of Fighters. There her descendant, Athena Asimiya(first name/last name?), became a mainstay in it. However, Real Athena did show up a few times.

"You see? There, clothes, boom, sexism is over."

Good or bad, weird or serious, the Public Domain has enrichened videogames since the beggining. Perhaps, soon, we can help videogames return the favor in kind?

*But first someone would have to challenge DC's unfounded claim that it still has ownership of the character. Could it be YOU? Also, Captain Marvel, Billy Batson, and Shazam are trademarked, so avoid using those names in promotion or as the title of your work, if yeh know what's good for y'all.

Scolding Reviews: Immortal at 5:22 PM

Undying haet is what I have.

Expectations are  fairly important in the entertainment business. If your set up a marketing campaign for a movie that makes it look like a  European matrix knockoff because it's 2004, sure, you'll fool a couple of people. But when they hear what it's really about or like, you'll lose them completely. Be hones. Say it's about mutants and aliens and Egyptian gods and rape.  There's an audience.

This movie...God, this movie! I mean, maybe I should have looked up something about it before hitting play.

The movie starts with a message that Eugenics is wrong, as quoted by something called the "Spirit of Nikopol". Ok. I mean, yeah, fuck Eugenics, but why not use the movie to tell it?

We then see a flying truck full of weird people being taken in a space transport, including our protagonist, a woman who let the dandruff take over. I mean, I'm not exactly healthy hair person, but damn.

Our Heroine, called Jill tries to escape, but is quickly subdued, and we see her transport  is an eugenics transport! We know because it says Eugenics outside.

Also, she's Keanu Reeves in drag.

Seriously,  where's the subtlety? The Death Star didn't have "Evil Empire" written outside it. I guess this "Eugenics" people have a total monopoly on it, huh?

And then another movie starts, as a voice narrates something about Egyptian Gods who don't want to miss out on the earth in their alotted time and that they're scared of dying.

Some ugly ass computer models of Anubis, Bast and Horus show up. The look like CG to PS2 cinematics. They talk about something in Egiptian and then Horus phases through a wall. Does this have anything to do with Eugenics? Either way, I hope this movie doesn't heavilly rely on computer models...

2 futurecopters  approach Anubis as he's almost out off his flying pyramid, but he destroys them, clearly setting him up as the villain of the movie.

So our heroine is getting her tears harvested, when she catches the eye of a Scientist woman, who is talking to...some CG dude. Why is he CGI? He's a dude with bad skin. He looks so fake, especially when he's right aside an actual human being!

Visit Uncanny Valley today!

So the Dr takes her in. Then we follow a fully covered guy as he walks into a bar full of weirdos. Uh...cue the music? There is also fully CG news with CG talking heads. It's the future, baby.

Then it becomes entirely CG, as we see a fat politician, and his sexy Asian aide talking. What's going on? Did I accidentally put True Crime on? Do we need CG to make Asians and Fat white guys?

Either way, they say they cant' trust a cop to solve a case, though the Asian woman insists that since the cop had his face chewed off by the Die-ack, all he does its track down this type of case. It seems to have nothing to do with Horus or Dandruff girl. Which means we have 4 stories now and none of them are well developed.

It's not this guy, but close!

However, stories do collide as the CG cop, whose facial repair is more ugly than what we can do TODAY, is investigating a series of strange deaths, that are nothing more than Horus possessing people and their bodies not being able to handle it. The consider it could be a Die-Ack(you'll see), but no, those are extinct. Meanwhile Bast and Anubis play Monopoly. What the fuck?

My sisters doesn't want me to do the "what's wrong with your face?" joke. But I totally would!

The Dr tries to help her remember her dark  mysterious past she can't remember, as well as find out why her organs are not where they should be. well, no duh, she's friends with Ultraman. After that she meets with the mysterious stranger from earlier, and tells her she just found out her organs aren't in the right place. The shady man scoffs and says "According to whose criteria?" Well, no duh, according to the smart lady in the white coat. She is smart.The stranger, called, John, reveals he's dying, and wants to help her before the planet does him in. This guys might be aliens or some shit.


Then a couple suspended animation tanks fall from their flying tank fortress. Cops try and investigate, but the Eugenics people arrive in their eugenics ice cream truck and start killing them. It's the perfect crime... you know, except that they did it during the daytime in their fully labeled truck.

Mommy! Buy me eugenics!

They take away most of the bodies before the cop guy gets there, and he only find a leg of another one. This last one is spirited away to some train tracks by Horus who starts creeping him out with his Nasonex Bee impersonation. Seriously, they're talking body possession, but Horus is totally making this gay. Which wouldn't be so bad if at least it was consensual. This...will become a trend later.

So Anubis fixes the guy and makes him a leg out of a piece of train track, which is...ridiculously functional. Still, who am I to question what Horus can or can't do? Horus can totally crash on this guy's body because he's not genetically manipulated. Take THAT Eugenics!

Meanwhile in videoland, the politician now has some type of clown make up, and is discovering the missing man is Nikopol, who was aparently sent to jail a bunch of years ago for not liking eugenics enough. His words are spread throughout the movie. But if you think the widespread of Eugenics and his own anti-eugenics militancy will play any part of this movie, then I'm sorry to disappoint. He's here to be bossed around by Horus into doing things.

Four more Years.

Meanwhile, Our heroine is doing her job as a guinea pig(Their term, not mine), which involves eating a bunch of weird food. I don't see how testing things on someone with abnormal physiology amounts to anything. But, whatever.

 Senator Clownface is concerned Nikopol knows too much about his father's involvement with Eugenics and his illegal experiments. Er...doesn't the Eugenics  transport say "Eugenics" outside of it?  IS there such things as illegal eugenics? He says Nikopol wasn't executed because that would have made him a martyr.  So NOW they're gonna kill him, by  sending after him a shark dude of sorts.

DJ Pimpshark in the Hooouuse!

Meanwhile, Nikopol is convinced by Horus to search our Lead Female on the weirdo bar. However, our girl is exchanging flirty banter with her Dr that will go nowhere.

Damn.

Eventually, she makes her way into the bar. Nikopol is like "she hot, yo!" and Horus is like "'Course she hot! She the chosen one!" But who says the chosen one has to adhere to our standards of beauty? Especially since later we will see what she's chosen for is reproduction. She could be an elephant seal as long as she's got her ovaries in the right place. Which I'm guessing she doesn't because she's a freak.

At any rate, Nikopol tries and fails to hit on Jill, and he also tries and fails to get her drunk.  It is then than Horus take over Nikopol completely and uses a Jedi Mind trick to convince her she is going to go with him and that they are, in fact, gonna fuck.

Now, you might try and make some kind of Whoopi Goldberg defense as to whether  using mind control to have sex with people is rape.  But once they get on the bed, it becomes all to actual, "trying to escape but being physically restrained" rape.

I don't know what one says.

After some stupid hijinx(which, I say, are great for breaking up the tension of the rape) she finds Nikopol and starts asking him what happened. He mentions they had sexual intercourse, which she asks what means.

Eventually he tries to tell her what really happened, but Horus pulls him back so she gives up and goes away.

Meanwhile Shark face has killed  a detective that was looking into Nikopol and/or Jill, and the detective(the one with the scarred face) is looking at the body in the morgue, his assistant thinks it could be a Die-ack, but our officer says it was a humanized Die-Ack, because they found red epidermis on the scene, signed "eugenics".

Whaaaaaat? NOTHING ripped his skin. He was just sitting in the car! He was just sitting in the car calmly killing a guy. And why the hell would they sign the skin of their illegal experiment?  Fuckin' EUGENICS!

The Hangover  series will be weirder...

Nikopol is debating how much he disliked the "rape" part of the rape that happened, when Horus reminds him that without him, there will be no walking, as his ridiculous metal leg can't be moved without Horus allowing it. Am I the only on who thinks he should take the heroic route and cut it off, or what?

Jill talks to Dr Lesbian about what happened, but she has a little trouble because she doesn't know what "relations" or "penis" are.

Now, pause. Horus is kind of a God, and he probably knows this girl doesn't know shit about sex. So why not just ASK her to help him procreate. Why the rape?

She gets caught on the streets by the Eugenics truck and the Shark guy, but Horus kills them all and "saves" her. You know what I'm talking about, right?

He takes her to Nikopol's hideout, erases her memories and, just to be on the safe side, rapes her again.

Again, if you just told her your an eons old god trying to have kids, you might already have this well and done.

She wakes up outside of "Intrusion Zone" a walled of zone that has been mentioned several times but never actually explained. Meanwhile, Horus, now sounding less like Antonio Banderas and more like Phil Lamarr faces the impotent rage of Nikopol, who pummels his badly rendered CG body to no effect.

The Senator, becoming increasingly desperate, release a Die-Ack, which is essentially a shark that can do anything, to hunt down Jill. Or Nikopol. I am not sure.

He can even imitate dead comedians!

Nikopol meets Jill again, as she's lying in a bathtub filled with her blue tears(!). Apparently at some point, he sort of explained to her that is wasn't HIM doing all the rape. After exchanging flirty banter like "I should have shot you the first time we met" and "is he gone, the rapist inside you?" they have sex.  It's technically consensual, but since the one guy she didn't want ended up being there all along, It's still disturbing.

As the shark approaches through the waterways, we see Kakutou Choujin-politician and his assistant discussing how  she wants him to negotiate with the pyramid. and how she works for eugenics. Wait, I though HE was with them.The shark dude wass in the Eugenics ship...and he sent the shark dude... In either case, she says that they're both pawns, but she's a superior pawn, in a clear misunderstanding of how pawns actually work.

After some more disturbing talk about rape and sex, John crashes through the window on his future-car, and takes Nikopol away from the Super-Shark.  All points start converging as Dr Lesbian and Detective Stupid-face also arrive on the scene  and join a bloated final chase sequence that lands Jill, John and Nikopol right in the middle of Intrusion.

The senator is sucked into the pyramid and promptly also dropped into intrusion like a bag of badly rendered potatoes while John Offers Jill a Red Pill that will finally make her human. It is implied this will also make her forget everything. He dies a Star Wars death. The Super Shark appears, and is defeated in a tension-less battle by Horus.

It's the most...Extreme!

All points resolved, Horus says goodbye to Nikopol by telling him there "would always be a little bit of me inside of you" and by telling Jill he "Will never be farr from you...ever agen!" while going for a touch. How creepy can one guy get?

So Jill forgets everything and Nikopol goes on to take another year in frozen jail. After that, Nikopol apparently became a published author, which I guess is an achievement while being frozen. He asks Dr Lesbian about Jill. Eventually they meet, he get's to know their freaky spawn that can control small blue eagle, and she's conveniently forgotten all about the rape. And everyone lives happily ever after.

You may have noticed this is  a longer review than usual. See, when I first saw this, all the mish-mash of plot elements, scifi and magic, trade between Shitty CGI people and live action was too much for me. I had to rewatch again as I typed because no way I  was gonna piece it all together.

And maybe this movie has a message or central idea of some sort. Maybe I can't see it through the pretentious dialogue and weird ass bullshit. Maybe Nikopol learned that Eugenics aren't so bad when Egyptian idols force it. Maybe Jill learned to Forget about it. I can't find any of that.

My theory for the CGI is that they tried to describe that in this movie, A god forced a man to rape a woman twice, and no one was onboard, so they grabbed a couple of fellow pretentious friends and shot everyone else in CGI.

There's very little actions, the characters aren't likeable and while there are some nice effects, it's always undermined by the CG humans or the poor editig of the thing. So, don't be a fool, like me. You do NOT need to see this.

Scolding Reviews: Immortal at 5:22 PM

Undying haet is what I have.

Expectations are  fairly important in the entertainment business. If your set up a marketing campaign for a movie that makes it look like a  European matrix knockoff because it's 2004, sure, you'll fool a couple of people. But when they hear what it's really about or like, you'll lose them completely. Be hones. Say it's about mutants and aliens and Egyptian gods and rape.  There's an audience.

This movie...God, this movie! I mean, maybe I should have looked up something about it before hitting play.

The movie starts with a message that Eugenics is wrong, as quoted by something called the "Spirit of Nikopol". Ok. I mean, yeah, fuck Eugenics, but why not use the movie to tell it?

We then see a flying truck full of weird people being taken in a space transport, including our protagonist, a woman who let the dandruff take over. I mean, I'm not exactly healthy hair person, but damn.

Our Heroine, called Jill tries to escape, but is quickly subdued, and we see her transport  is an eugenics transport! We know because it says Eugenics outside.

Also, she's Keanu Reeves in drag.

Seriously,  where's the subtlety? The Death Star didn't have "Evil Empire" written outside it. I guess this "Eugenics" people have a total monopoly on it, huh?

And then another movie starts, as a voice narrates something about Egyptian Gods who don't want to miss out on the earth in their alotted time and that they're scared of dying.

Some ugly ass computer models of Anubis, Bast and Horus show up. The look like CG to PS2 cinematics. They talk about something in Egiptian and then Horus phases through a wall. Does this have anything to do with Eugenics? Either way, I hope this movie doesn't heavilly rely on computer models...

2 futurecopters  approach Anubis as he's almost out off his flying pyramid, but he destroys them, clearly setting him up as the villain of the movie.

So our heroine is getting her tears harvested, when she catches the eye of a Scientist woman, who is talking to...some CG dude. Why is he CGI? He's a dude with bad skin. He looks so fake, especially when he's right aside an actual human being!

Visit Uncanny Valley today!

So the Dr takes her in. Then we follow a fully covered guy as he walks into a bar full of weirdos. Uh...cue the music? There is also fully CG news with CG talking heads. It's the future, baby.

Then it becomes entirely CG, as we see a fat politician, and his sexy Asian aide talking. What's going on? Did I accidentally put True Crime on? Do we need CG to make Asians and Fat white guys?

Either way, they say they cant' trust a cop to solve a case, though the Asian woman insists that since the cop had his face chewed off by the Die-ack, all he does its track down this type of case. It seems to have nothing to do with Horus or Dandruff girl. Which means we have 4 stories now and none of them are well developed.

It's not this guy, but close!

However, stories do collide as the CG cop, whose facial repair is more ugly than what we can do TODAY, is investigating a series of strange deaths, that are nothing more than Horus possessing people and their bodies not being able to handle it. The consider it could be a Die-Ack(you'll see), but no, those are extinct. Meanwhile Bast and Anubis play Monopoly. What the fuck?

My sisters doesn't want me to do the "what's wrong with your face?" joke. But I totally would!