So, Sonic's been a topic lately. What, with the whole 2 new Sonic games
announced.
But there's something I noticed on the trailer to Sonic Mania, the
throwbackies of throwbacks who couldn't be more of a throwback if it
actually zapped us into 7 year olds all over again: The cast.
The trailer boasts 3 playable characters: Sonic(yeah, no duh), Tails and
Knuckles. Which, while seemingly an offhand remark about the nature of
this game, I interpret it another way.
You see, for the longest time there's been a consensus among many: That
Sonic sucks because there's just too many characters. Somewhere after
Sonic and Knuckles, Sega went overboard with Sonic's friends and
frenemies, when they should have stuck with Sonic.
To me, this is their way of saying "We learned."
However, I must say that that people, even if they don't realize it, don't
hate Sonic's friends at all.
How did we first play as Tails? Well let's take a look.
Did you notice it? The stage played exactly as the normal Sonic 2 stage,
but now you are Tails. You run from left to right, collect rings and fight
a boss. They later gave Tails the ability to fly.
Tails still collects rings while running from left of the screen to right,
but now has abilities that open different gameplay options.
What about Knuckles? Well, Knuckles is the same.
Knuckles can glide and
climb, but other wise it's still the same gameplay, same speed same
everything. In fact, playing as Sonic felt kind of vanilla, now.
Comparatively, this is the first time you played as Amy in a mainline
Sonic Series. Amy's gameplay is kind of survival horror, but also not any damn good.
Even compared to the 3D Sonic action of the same game...
It's a departure. In a way, you kind of have to admire that Sega tried to
innovate on it's most popular franchise, but it...fucking blew up on their
face several times.
Here's our introduction to Big the Cat.
If such a thing as an opposite to "run really fast, avoid enemies and
collect rings" exists, it's probably "sit still and fish." Big could be played by Robert Downey Junior and you still wouldn't like him after that. Although...
Feel true fear.
So obviously by Sonic Heroes everybody "hated" Sonic's allies, and wanted
to clear them away. Who does the Sonic fandom like from those years,
though?
Meanwhile, in portable land, Sonic's supporting cast had new additions
Eventually, Sega tried to put the thing by making Sonic The Hedgehog, a
reboot that focused exclusively on Sonic.
And...and Shadow, naturally.
And they had some left over telekinesis game engine, so they put in Silver
the Hedgehog from the same alternate dimension Blaze is.
Wow, way to miss the point of rebooting something. That's like if Batman Begins was nothing but Jim Carrey rubbing Batman's bat nipples.
So to recap: It is my belief that the hate for Sonic's friends is a
symptom of Sega's failed gameplay experiments being used on new
characters. If Big The Cat had been playable in Sonic and Knuckles, maybe
they'd be boasting 4 characters instead of 3 in Sonic Mania. The same trouble with failed experimental gameplay also occurred with the older characters and Sonic himself, but nobody blamed the characters because we'd seen them work at some point.
I think Sega SHOULD give these characters a chance again in the future.
Not all of them at the same time, obviously. I'm not even saying they aren't... well, hard to like. Just...if you can make a good
Sonic game and make their gameplay stick closely to...Sonic, I don't care
if you put in Bark The Polar Bear, Sticks the Badger, Rotor the Warlus, or Ray The Flying Squirrel.
Characters need to be reinvented. You can't drop old timey Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes into a world of CSI Miamis and Opium illegality. Society changes, and even in a period piece, our attitudes towards things ever reflect on stories.
But this is not what this list is about. This is a list of people completely missing what things where about. This is a list of people who WANT to work on the material, in the same way a termite works on wood: eating it and shitting it.
6) Hellboy's finger family.
You gotta hand it to them...
Hellboy is a cult classic comic created by Mike Mignola about a demon raised by a human from childhood who fights supernatural threats. It was pretty popular in the 80's with some early 2000's popularity boost by some damn fine movies Guillermo del Toro made. So obviously they made a video about him and his made up satanic family singing a kiddie song as they wander the wrecked remains of Post-Ap Earth (does anyone say Post-Ap? It seems they should).
You see, there is a channel in Youtube whose exclusive domain is making half-hearted animations of popular franchises set to the same recording of the Finger Family song. That's all they do. And honestly it's not that weird. My instinct is to believe these are some foreigners with more grasp of adobe flash than of english, trying to show their kids some english. And if you MUST do that, why not use the Ninja Tortoises and Spider-Man?
But then there's Hell Boy. I mean, "Super Red Boy".
After so much fighting evil, Hellboy grew a stache and settled down with a demoness, and spawned a trio of demon kids, all sporting the long horns he painstainkingly removes to avoid becoming a humanity ending hell terror.
If you think they didn't know that bit of Hellboy canon when designing Mommy Finger and Baby Finger, then why are they standing in a dilapidated city?
5) Breezie's Back, Yo!
People love to complain about Sonic. And you know they do when they complain about things in Sonic they'd be praising anywhere else. "Boo Hoo Sonic has too many characters!" X-Men has too many characters, and nobody complains about THAT.
And it's not like every character comes back every time. When's the last time you saw Ray the Flying Squirrel, or Fang the Sniper, or Breezie the Hedgehog?
It's okay, they're both technically looking at her hair.
My point is, there's no way in hell Breezy's gonna come back. Just kidding. She came back last year, to the Archie comics series. She now looks like this.
Man, even chick heaven has fallen angels.
Now, Archie people, I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but...Isn't this character missing....EVERYTHING that made Breezy? And I'm not just talking about her fun parts. This version of Breezie is not only NOT a Jessica Rabbit send off, but she's also NOT a ROBOT, and not...ANYTHING. I mean, I know I'm complaining about her not being essentially not like a bad character, but how cheap are you to just slap the Breezy name onto some wholesale new green hedgehog? Humph.
4) A TV show pilot inspires elaborate animated porn.
Way to lay it on thick, Nickelodeon.
The Modyfiers only ever had one episode. For whatever reason Nickelodeon didn't feel there was money in a Mod inspired cartoon. Maybe it's cuz it's been nearly 50 years since mod aesthetics where in. I can't say.
However, it must have been something, because it attracted the attention of Zone, an animator known for making animations I can't show you about Teen Titans, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and others being turned into pornography, going so far as to selectively use audio clips to uh, make the experience more immersive.
And, you know, tip of the hat to you, Zone. Every time I see someone do that kind of thing, I wish it where you doing it. If it's bad, I don't know, but you're the best at it. You're the Michael Jordan of making it look like Cartoon Network went crazy and decided Cyborg raping Jinx is an okay thing to make.
This is a screen from the cartoon, por si acaso.
But anyway, Zone made an elaborate animation of that ONE EPISODE, managed to some how cut in the dialogue and...It's crazy! Like, Even if you want to fuck a cartoon, why something so obscure, I can't wrap my head around it.
I also can't SHOW you it, but it makes a quick, relatively safe for work cameo in this vid. So basically there's almost as many minutes of Modyfiers cartoon as there are of Modyfiers Parody Porn.
3) The Super Serious Sexual Escapades of...Billy and Mandy?
Fanfictioners gotta fan, awright? I get it. I'd rather remember I liked Dinosaucers than watch a crudely drawn Allo and Ghengis Rex make out, but uh, I'm not everybody.
With that said I'm a big believer in that, even if you're not doing canon, you should approach the work in as similar a tone as possible. I mean, youre story about Mahoney dieing and Tallbooth avenging him using Soul Edge can be great, but it won't ever be very Police Academy. Or...AT ALL.
But if there's a show known for it's dark humor and zany nonsense, how far would you go to make a spinoff fan comic that completely removes the humor and zany parts? How abut writing a comic for years?
Well, there's a fancomic for that.
Yes, finally the story can be told. Of how Mandy managed to get Grim in the sack and bone him, and they had a kid, and she's a fucking psycho. That fits the tone of the cartoon perfectly.
And if this where a single story, like that stupid fanfiction where Jade from Mortal Kombat wrote to Seung Mina about how it was hard to be in school and be bullied, despite the fact neither of these are at school age, from the same plane of existence, and Jade is known for ripping people apart, I'd understand. But no, this is a long form version of that, with admitedly good effort put on the art of it, to tell a story. This story.
What's the matter, Bleedman? Manga Brad Pitt too tough for you?
NOOOO!
2)Magneto, Old Pest
Magneto is often considered one of the X-Men's greatest villains, if not one of the greatest overall villains. Over the years the character has gone from a pretty cookie cutter world conqueror to a sympathetic character who is just as likely to rip Wolverine's bones out and drown the planet, to a pretty stand up guy who just wants freedom from oppresion and the love of his estranged children.
But this was before most of that. Before he cosplayed as the King of Spain, he was a simpler character. But still, his appearance in the old timey Fantastic 4 cartoon was still pretty out of character. For could you picture the Master of Magnetism...
Terrorizing a gas station because they don't believe his flying car doesn't need gas?
Displaying his power over no parking rules by declaring that the sign offends him, and limply taking it down?
Beating Reed Richards in a fight to become the leader of the Fantastic 4, as part of his scheme to con the Fantastic Four into sort of letting him steal some money?
Being fooled by a wooden gun into thinking he was powerless, then immediately being put into metal cuffs and put into a patrol car?
No. Not even early Magneto would have done that? Who the hell writes this crap? Why didn't Stan Lee step in an intervene?
Expaylscior!
Oh, shit.
1)Blackheart, aspiring My Chemical Romance member
Here's something Batzarro really hates: When you take a character with striking visual design elements, and say: "fuck this, guy in a suit."
I understand you don't always want to blow your budget away on expensive prosthetics and CGI. But if I come to your Ghost Rider movie expecting a guy who looks like THIS
And you just give me this...
That makes the movie worst. I mean...I admit that all I know about Blackheart comes from Marvel vs Capcom 2. I don't know if he's got a great personality. But this is the antagonist of a guy who looks like this.
Is this seriously the best you could conjure up to menace? He doesn't look like a demon, he looks peter parker got bitten by a radioactive Hot Topic.
But Let's not be unfair. Maybe that's just his human form. He does have a final demon form during the climax.
Nope. Don't see it.
And what really bothers me is that, in reviews of people who don't know anything about Blackheart's appearance, they don't find him that great at all. Which means that you threw just about the only thing that could have saved this character and replaced it with NOTHING. Blach.
What would happen if we crossed the zacharine sweetness of The Barney with the kinetism and aggressiveness of the Knuckles? Find out, as I record the sounds that happen when you load a save of a thing into another thing!
(Glitch Music is what happens when you load a save of a game into another game, producing a music or sound that is from neither.)
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 forsucking 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 presumeis not an ode to the art of catching puppies.
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.
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 homoeroticanthros.
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 needGreek 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.
*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.
Saben que? Yo no estoy en contra de una pelicula de Sonic. Y en ese sentido no me puedo decepcionar, porque ya la anunciaron.
Pero tambien anunciaron que sera una mescla entre CG y actores en vivo.
Lo voy a poner bien claro: Sonic es un erizo de caricatura, y funciona mejor en mundos de caricatura. No queremos ver a Sonic corriendo en Nueva York mientras Aaron Taylor lo persigue. Vayanse al carajo.
Believe me, I don’t yearn for the ruination ofpop culture icons. They definitively give me something to write about every once or twice, but in general, I’m not a fan of pissing off fandom. However, in these days the art of ruinage is a lost art.
Back in the late XX Century, It took a lot to really poison the well. Yes, I’m claiming ruining stuff was better in my day. Get the hell off of my lawn, you're not doing it right! We didn’t bat an eyelash when Batman went around killing people like we do now when Superman kills a very bad guy, no sir. We were too busy worrying about how Superman was having original enemies invented to him because God help us if they look at a comic.Having been inspired by classics like Lost in Space and Inspector Gadget, here’s my, probably unrealized forever, plans to ruin your childhood forever.
Dr Doom is Anonymous
I don’t think the upcoming Fantastic 4 Reboot could really do Doom much worse than the last one, what with Doom having the lamest parts of other Supervillains under a Dr Doom shell.
Hell, Corman's was better. And they payed for the movie to not exist!
Or at least I didn’t think so until they announced that they hadn’t exactly locked the main villain’s actual gender.
Now, I don’t thinkA female Victor(ia?) Von Doom would be all that ruinous. Hell, Eva Green is my Femdoom of choice. But I was just thinking, why wouldn’t they have settled on something already?
Then it hit me like a Vibranium ladle: maybe Dr Doom isn’t any one person.
In an attempt to be all relevant and what not, my Doom would be an obvious ripoff of Anonymous.
Doom’s mask? Obvious analogue to those V for Vendetta masks. Doombots? That’s what the members of Anon-doom call themselves. Latveria? It’s about as real as Philosoraptor!
Doom is not impressed by your DRM practices, Ubisoft...
Oh, I can hear the gnawing of teeth and the wailing! I can taste the nerd tears! YOU GUYS ARE LUCK I DON’T WORK AT FOX!
Sonic Adventure 3 starring EVERYONE YOU DON’T LIKE!
Oh, you didn't think I remember?
There hasn’t been an universally agreed upon Sonic game since Sonic CD, if only because we all agreed not to stick consoles on top of other consoles anymore.The children who should be it’s target audience and the manchildren who grew up with it may never really agree on it enough, whether it’s a complete return to the old days, or a sudden turn into unexpected designs.
One thing we can all agree on, though is that who the hell is Mighty the Armadillo.That’s why I’d cover all the angles by making a sequel to Sonic Adventure and fill up the cast with character’s so divisive and obscure that they’ll beg for Big the Cat AND Princess Ellie to come back before long. I’m talking Bunnie Rabbot and Princess Sally(THE LEGAL HURDLES ARE NO MATTER TO ONE SUCH AS I), Ray the Squirrel, that polar Bear from Sonic the fighters…you can’t think it, I can put it there.
WHY IS A DUCK CALLED BEAN!
Naturally, they’d all have different gameplay types. In fact, only Sonic’s would involve running really fast around loops at all! Nyahahahahahahaha!
X-Men: Prof. Xavier is a Jerk
There exist 0 images of an angry Hellen Page.
Proffesor Xavier has always been an old, crazy asshole.Thishas been documented. But I feel Patrick Stewart and James McCavoy haven’t fully tapped into the jerk-well. His key offenses so far have been being a bad flirt(which, having mind control powers, is...kind of noble of him, actually), failing to divulge his full knowledge of Wolverine’s past, perhaps to keep him “in the team” and mentally suppressing Jean’s superpowers. But I think we all mentally suppressed X3, amirite?
But what if he were even more of a jerk? What if he psionically attacked Magneto with Holocaust memories? What if he pretended to die, and was hiding in the basement all along? What if he wiped Batman’s memory of when they gave Dr Light mental retardation after he raped Sue Dibny?
Come on! THIS GUY? Really, Marvel?
And more importantly, when he does these things, he should not show regret but smug, smug satisfaction.
The Matrix is actually magic
I know about the suckage!
Earlier this week I was going to write my revamped sequel/prequel yearly predictions, and thought that this was the year The Matrix was coming back, when out of the blue Latino_Review shows up with some heresay. Ha. You don’t have to believe me, that’s the kicker: If I had only written it down as considered. Alas, Blue Swan kept me busy.
But basically with the Matrix, the problem is the story is done as done gets.The hero dies, the war is over, messiah triumphs over death,and everything is hunky dory. Everything, that is, except for a few questions. How come Neo could control things outside the program? Is the “real world” also a computer program? If so, is basicallyeverything achieved in this movies a waste of time?
Like all good questions, the answer is that a wizard did it. Imagine Neo waking up to a kindly bearded old man. He questions why he is alive, after so obviously having been dead.Why he now has eyes again. The kindly wizard puts his hands on Keanu’s shoulder.
Yes, as it turns out, in the burned out husk that's left of earth there exists magic, which is also the source of The Matrix illusory powers? No more philosophizing about the nature of reality, no suh. Just find the magic Matrix Sword, Neo!
Alien: Bring on the Giga-Aliens!
The Alien franchise has transitioned from tension filled horror to action franchise to whatever the devil Prometheus is in 5 short films. It’s time we ramped it up…to the extreme!
New Aliens are invading earth, but this aren’t your father’s endoparasitic nightmare horrors, oh no! These are massive, T Rex sized aliens, basically grabbing ships form the sky and eating them. Enter Ricall, the daughter of Call(Winona Ryder) and Ripley the Clone(Sigourney Weaver), played by Michelle Rodriguez. Fuck you for questioning how an Xenomorph Human hybrid lady and a Gynoid can have babies. They cloned Ripley out of molen lead and the clone came up half alien. I’m surprised she can’tshoot molten lead, too. Fuck a logic Alien Franchise.
This guy was pretty funny, though.
So basically Ricalldecides to rid the earth of these Aliens once and for all, so she arms up and starts blasting all the Giant Aliens, untilit is revealed Lance Henrikksen’s character of Bishop is reincarnated into the King of the Xenomorphs, and so must Ricall fly to planet Aliens and kick some ass!Get me Michael Bay on the phone!
I’m sure we’ll be discussing the choices made in the new Star Wars OMNIOLOGY (It’s a movie each year, ya guys. It won’t end until Disney owns all the money.) for years. All I can say is I’d be glad they stop fleecing the past.The future is filled with possibilities.
But I will eat all my headwear if at least some of it isn't damn stupid.
If you really want to wreck Star Wars at this point, now that the Force is Germs and Darth Vader became Darth Vader because he was a whiny jerk that really liked a girl, andbuilt C3P0, what’s left. Well, the world. Imagine, three movies (not counting spinoffs. Nobody care about no Bobba Fett movie!) of adventures, the heroes arrive at a peace of sorts. One of them, whichever is the Han Solo, continues to explore the universe with his wifey. He finds a planet, but not like the others we’ve seen. No Womp Rats here, only regular rats. She says the planet is uncharted, and he says he’ll get to name it. He bends down and picks up a fistful of dirt.
.png "You see, this is the kind of thing you can't do thanks to Zoe Quinn.")
