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 Review: Lurking Evil at 10:36 AM

I had this once. In the Scruffydragon Forums mostly.

Being a reviewer is weird now that everybody's a critic. I don't really honestly expect my opinion will actually sway you against watching an affront to all that is good like King of Fighters. In a weird way we've  come around to admiting that this shit is a mite bit personal, and that maybe my advise about Terminator Salvation is pointless if you're, say, a Terminator completist or some kind of Moon Bloodgood whore.

So the question I'm posing is,  Are we giving points for effort? You see, my sister bought one of those DVD packs with a dozen lame movies nobody would have bought on their own, full of bad camera angles and killers who  never show up and those stupid endings where everyone gets killed. 

And among these, they put Lurking Evil.

1994? Holy shit, my first guess put this near the 70s!

Lurking Evil is not like these other films, and I suspect it benefits from being surrounded by these other terrible films. Who puts a low budget 90s movie among  0 budget  2k films? Oh, it's not great. However, it is a movie, which is more more than I can say of many of it's bundle-buddies.

The film starts of with two sisters  having a discussion on  what seems to be  some kind of dilapited castle. You see, one sister, which had a baby recently, really wanted the other one to carry a gun, while the second one was understandably worried about packing a piece near a baby.

For you see, these sisters, aren't in castle Fankenstein by accident, but are instead hiding from some kind of unseen horror.  Eventually said horror  peeks it's scraggly hands through a barricade and uses a wire hanger to  pull the baby's crib out to itself. Trust me, a wire hanger is not strong enough to drag an ANYTHING. My sister leaves her keys in her car a lot, I know what I'm talking about here.

 

Steve Tyler's family reunion.

The Pro-gun sister steps in for the save, but she gets bloodied and dragged away for her trouble. Hey, I know the topic of guns in America is a divisive subject, but nobody disagrees that the one advantage they have over knives is not having to get close enough to your enemies to get folded up like a clean towel.

We get  credits, and  as you'd expect, there aren't any names you know in there except HP Lovecraft. Apparently this movie's plot is based by one of Love-C's short stories. I wouldn't know if this is accurate or now, because I'm holding on  on reading Lovecraft's collected works . It's on my list, under all the Harry Potter movies, Game of Thrones seasons 1-2, and Angel Blade Punish.

 

I'd like to think the animators don't actually know how many penises a woman has.

The we meet our hero, a rough and tumble former criminal accused of a crime he didn't commit, just as he's coming out of of doing time.  He heads to his closest living relative, who runs the funeral home, and has hidden some drugs and money on   corpses  that our hero is to unearth and sell. But unknown to him, some thugs, a boss, a femme fatale, and a big guy, come immediately after he leaves and force the funeral home guy to tell them about the drugs.

Let's put this one in the refrigerator I stuff all my other drugs in.

We also meet the surviving sister from the prologue and some guy who looks like a young Emile Hamilton from Man of Steel. They talk about their plan to kill the ominous things by blowing up a church. Both of them, and a pregnant lady convene in the church, with a reverend who's not fully in favor of destroying  his working place.

I think the pregnant lady is bait, because honestly if she has any other use here we never see. If I were pregnant in a town full of monsters why...well it'd probably be too late if even the men are pregnant. But, you know, I'd take my monster baby and get the hell out.

So the drinking game is you're supposed to take a drink every time the existence of a monster is driving you mad.

They're mostly done wiring up the place to blow when our hero stumbles upon their cemetary, trying to find his drugs.  The sister kidnaps him at gun point.

But then the thugs show u, kidnap our hero AND the church crew. All that they want is to find their drug corpse. Femme Fatale does show an interest in pregnant lady, asking her who her "gone" baby-daddy was so she could kill him. However, she seems  have some emmity with the sister.

I just want to lick your baby's feet as he comes out. Is that so bad?

They finally drag hero out to dig his granma's corpse, which presumably has the drugs. But then not only does it not have the drugs, but the tomb caves in, and  our hero is carried by the monster, which is basically the Cryptkeeper from tales from the  crypt after staring too much at the sun.

Our hero somewhat or somehow escapes through an inner barricade built to keep out the monsters, upon which all of them see the monster, so we don't have to put up with any more minutes of people not believing in a monster the audience knows is real. The muscle exclains it might be  a bear. You know, one of those famous underground, lanky, furless bears we've all seen on TV documentaries.

However, instead of bailing out on the whole thing, our crime boss thinks it's a good idea to keep searching for the gold.  Muscle gets dragged out of  a tinted glass, which, while probably painful, is a lot classier than getting dragged out of a regular  old glass window.

"I'm not a bear, I'ma twink! Learn your gay sub-groups!"

The explosion crew and hero-man  turn the tide on their captors, and soon have them tied up to the walls. The reverend tries to bargain with the monster to kill him and not everyone else, and tells the monster he's gonna get a good parking space in heaven. The monster tells him God is Satan and rips out his heart.

Tim Burton's Les Miserables.

Sister goes out to get a gasoline truck, heroman 's distracted by Femme Fatel long enough for  crime boss to get out, and  Emil Hamilton gets killed, failing to keep Pregnant lady from getting dragged off underground.

Birthmark, or just a bad burn.

It all comes to a head underground, where the monsters are patiently waiting to eat pregnant lady's baby as soon as it plops out. There doesn't seem to be a reason, but I don't see a reason to take the peel off a grape either. They're the experts on baby eating, I'll defer to their judgement.

Crime boss and Hero fall in, and the monsters are all for eating them now. Except Hero's related to them somewhat, thorugh his birthmark, a steak shaped coloration between his shoulder and his arm. He manages to escape by, and you trust me that no one questions it, lighting an severed arm on fire, and he kind of brings along the pregnant lady and the sister. Crime boss sees his sought after drugs and money and gambles to try and stay here.

"I don't know how I knew it was going to work.

The  sister brings with a gas-truck, and blows the whole damn thing off. All the monsters are killed. The end,

So, you see, maybe in another context, I wouldn't give a crap about some 90s  low-budget horror film. Certainly not enough to write about it. But In the context of this one night, where the other horror movie I watched was 70% "People talking about dull stuff in broad daylight" , it is worth considering. Context is everything, and I can't recommend you watch a shitty movie, just so you can make this shitty movie look better.

So if you're interested in a movie that has action and monsters, and some semblance of a plot, Lurking Evil is kind of that, I guess?  But there's certainly better movies with better action and better monsters. So I guess it depends on how much you love monsters and action vs how much you don't love poor editing, obvious sets, bad acting and senseless story. Do whatever you want, I'll go watch Pacific Rim again.