NES Games Reviews #38: Fester and Felix the Cat Drive Ferrari's in the Fantasy Zone.

 

Wow, two posts in one day. This second post is happening for a few reasons. There are high winds around here and that means we might loser power and have no electricity, and I don't really want to be in the middle of a movie or an episode of Sailor Moon when that happens. I also do not want that post below this one to be the one people see. Who knows how long the power/electricity could be out for. I also want to talk about these six video games.  So might as well just blather on about six video games made in the 20th Century and for that let's go. Also I could not find a Faxanadu ad or Faria ad or even a Fantasy Zone ad. Anyway a bunch of really fun NES games.

I get to do my favorite thing here and that's shit on dumb nintendoage jerks who have infested and fucked up NES collecting. These guys were the ones who were all like LOL UNLICENSED DOESN'T NEED TO COUNT AT ALL. They would then give the dumbest and worst fucking argument in that some unlicensed games were bad. Woah! I just reviewed two licensed games that were WORSE than any unlicensed game, well, most of them. I will not ever get the people who refuse to collect unlicensed games. They were released during the NES lifetime and I can remember seeing them at video stores. the Pac-Man Tengen box art will always be seared into my minds eye. Just him yelling and screaming is so weird. Speaking of Tengen, I'm surprised they never decided to buy them because they are actually quite good. Most Tengen games were pretty good. Totally worth the $5 most people wanted for them back then. Strange that so many people are like LOL NO UNLICNESED DOESN'T COUNT BUT I NEED STADIUM EVENTS LOL people yet Unlicensed games are not $5 any more. I will forever miss those days. Anyway,  Fantasy Zone is the Tengen version of the Sega game. I have never played the Sega version but I have played Fantasy Zone and Fantasy Zone II for the Famicom and they are pretty fun shooter games. You have to shoot these big old fat robot guys and make sure there are no more on the screen. Then you fight a giant boss. It's simple and very fun and people who refuse to collect unlicensed games because they are bad are morons who stink.

Faria is a Zelda clone. The NES had a lot of them. Battle of Olympus, StarTropics, StarTropics 2, Crystalis, Willow and a few others I forgot about right now. Faria is probably the worst of these games but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. It's still fun and honestly the only problem with the game is that the leveling up can be grindy but that's a thing for just about any NES game that has leveling up in it. The graphics are fine and the music is pretty great and Faria is still worth a shot. I did enjoy playing this game and should go back to it because I was close to the end in it. Anyway this game might not be the most original but I don't really care as long as it plays well and I feel this game plays well. Woo.

Oh hey another Zelda like game. This one is a bit more like Zelda II than Zelda and is a better game than Faria. This game has some really good graphics, music and all kinds of swords and shit to play around with. I also must take back one thing because I remember this game being pretty good when it comes to the grinding of levels. It was never that hard to get to the next level in this game. Anyway despite the fact I barely have written anything here Faxanadu is a must play. I think it's a part of a series of games that includes Legacy of the Wizard but I could be wrong there. Portnoyd will yell about this becuase I believe he was a big fan of this game. Anyway this game is incredible and very much worth playing.

I'm pretty sure Felix the Cat is the first Cartoon star of sorts and by Star I mean character that appeared in many many shorts. Felix the Cat started out in 1919 and had 190 cartoons within the Golden Age of Animation. Felix the Cat predated Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Woody Woodpecker and a shit load of others. Felix the Cat literally has existed for 100 years and still gets love. He had a 1960s Tv series, a 1990s movie, a 1990s short lived cartoon (two seasons and I thought it was great!) and they made this video game, which might just be the easiest video game of all time. Seriously there are levels you can just fly the fuck over. Still, there's enough entertainment here to enjoy. This is a game worth playing, great graphics, memorable music and all kinds of pretty well designed (except for the ones you can just fly over lol) stages. This game is now not worth the dumb shit price collectors spend now but it is very much worth playing. Apparently they brought this game and some other Felix the Cat games out in a new collection by Konami who bought Hudson Soft. Wild that Felix the Cat is still making money these days. Anyway play this game and stop reading my shitty reviews.

I've said before that most of my favorite NES racing games were ones that were pretty simple. No buying different cars, no buying upgrades, none of that. Most of the ones I like the most are just simple games where you drive around a track. However this is a different beast. I actually really like this one too. You have to pick the right cars and right upgrades to get to the final 17 races. The only problem is that it becomes INCREDIBLY HARD during those last 17 races. It's like someone told the people the game was too easy (and it wasn't). The graphics are pretty great and the music is too. The racing is fast and firece and fun and the Challenge is pretty fair as it gets harder and harder as the game goes on. It just gets TOO hard and that's probably the worst part of the whole game. Still a worthwhile racing game.

Is Addams Family the only license to get two games based on two different iterations? Like Fester's Quest was based on the 1960s movie. You can see John Astin Gomez in the ending scene. However in 1991 they made a movie based on that tv series and in 1992 they made another Addams Family game made based on that movie (which is a great movie and the game is pretty good too despite being made by Ocean). It was just something I wanted to ask because I really don't know. Anyway, Fester's Quest is a game that gets a little bit of flack but I quite like. Yes, it's a weird version of Blaster Master and is not A-Tier Sunsoft, but B-Tier Sunsoft is still really quite good. Yes, this game has some flaws. Having to start over at the beginning in such a long game is a pain in the ass. Yes leveling up your gun/whip is annoying too and having items that unlevel up your gun is a pain in the ass too. Still this game is pretty great. I think it's really fun to play. I enjoyed beating this game. Yes, I beat this game before Blaster Master (which is a game I really need to beat). I also think this is one of the games with First Person Stages that were pretty well put into the game. You go through a bunch of these and they never get too hard to get through. Also this game is really hard but you do get to see the entire Addams Family. They feel like they a part of this game. Anyway, the Addams Family is cool, so sit down watch a few episodes of the 1960s TV show and then play some Fester's Quest. It's a good time.

GOOD GAMES: 107 

BAD GAMES: 80

OKAY GAMES: 28

GAMES YOU MIGHT LIKE IF YOU AREN'T AN IMPATIENT BABY: 3

NES Game Reviews #37: Not so Fantastic Family Feud's in F-117A's. Woo.

 

So it's time yet again for the NES Game Reviews, where I review six NES games and then yell at portnoyd for saying some dumb piece of GARBAGE was actually good. I will do something different than usual as not complain about the main photo for the post. I think I finally got it, I can just use a great comic ad for one of the games within the post. For whatever reason I picked F-117A Stealth for the AD. They had a lot of great game ads back in the day and uh, this isn't one of them. I don't know if you are supposed to actually be able to see anything in the  dark sky or if it's just my dirty ass computer screen. It's very slim pickings for this group of games, we will see if I can do anything with any of these.

This was the first time I played this game, however I will make the argument that if you have played any Top Gun style NES shooter type game you've played them all. You can do a barrel roll and then you either wait forever for guys to come by and shoot your down because it's too hard to shoot them OR you get overwhelmed by like 30 guys at once. Seriously I don't like these games when they are at their best (like say I dunno After Burner) so this cheaper, uglier and shittier controlly version of After Burner really has no chance. Like even if you LOVE After Burner, I'd say go find After Burner II or the arcade version of After Burner. There's no reason to ever play this version. Hell I might say this could be the worst Top Gun style shooter for the NES. 

This game is incredibly jittery. I almost got sick playing the first level. The first level is Top Gun like and then you get 1943 like levels. This game is very slow, ugly and boring. They have okay enough graphics when they aren't being jittery and annoying. I don't even remember the music and I do not care enough to start the emulator up again and I just played this version. I'm really sorry for this post within this series but when you are given lemon after lemon you can try to make lemonade or you can just complain. I choose to complain. So yeah, you can literally not shoot any enemies in the first level if you don't wanna. It's not fun and I don't like it. 

When looking for an image of the box cover which is terribly uninteresting. Like at least the other two above games had nicer looking art. This was just thrown together art, clearly at the last second. I get the feeling they were like FUCK STEVE THE GAME GOES OUT TO BE SOLD IN LIKE 20 MINTUES MAKE SOME SHIT IN MS PAINT FOR US and Steve gave us this. It's strange how this games art is the only one to have action in it yet it's really less interesting than the other ones. Anyway, back to my pointless little story. I found someone selling this game on ebay for almost 2 grand because it was sealed. A part of me hates this person (because they had this game GRADED.) but I also kinda feel bad for them. Just imagine finding a sealed NES game in this day and age and then finding out that no, it isn't Mario 3, or Little Samson, or Bucky O Hare or Startropics or anything. It's not connected to ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY POPULAR OR INTERESTING. Like pick any NES game and it would have more interesting "WOW" Factor. Like I would not even pick up this game sealed, but I gotta admire the spunk someone has to literally buy a copy and then try to resell it. Every NES game is someone's favorite but this one. I don't even believe anyone ever played this game and it pleases me to be the first.  And it fucking sucks. I will literally find and shit in the mouth of whoever buys this game sealed. Seriously just go to the first homeless person you see and give them 2 grand. You do not deserve to have money if you waste it on this.

Is this the first Game Show game I've talked about here? I think so. The only person I ever knew who had a crazy love of Game Shows was a giant weirdo who I did not like. I think portnoyd knows who I am talking about here. I do not know if I somehow talked about a game show game before this one so here is Family Feud it is based on a game show that is OK,I guess. I've never been a big game show guy. I mean I was into Who Wants to be a Millionaire and The Weakest Link way back when (can you believe that was 25 years ago now?) Those were actually pretty exicting and it was fun to watch with my family. I mean I also think Jeopardy is pretty alright too and I actually kind of enjoy those games. This game was made during the time when Ray Combs was on the show (I have never seen an episode of his Family Feud and I still know when he was on the show. What information my brain keeps within it is a wonder and a curse) but he does the kissing thing Richard Dawson did. Was Ray Combs into also kissing ladies when he could? Anyway you are given a question that was asked to 100 people and try to find the answer most people guessed, and this game does that well. I just never really thought Family Feud was all that interesting as a tv show or a game. I do like the way the family members in this game look though. So goofy. Anyway uh, I guess I will say this is a good game if you care about the show in any way but the Jeopardy games are still the best.

I think the Dizzy games are kinda interesting. A weird mix of platformer and point and click kinda thing. You go find one random item that you need to use to open a door or move a elevator or shoot at a plant. I just think this game is just too big. I beat Dizzy the Adventurer today and I think that's the perfect legnth for a game of this size. You can easily remember what to do with each item and be done with the game in 30 minutes. This game according to YouTube videos can be beaten in 1 hour and 30 minutes. You know there's like twice the amount of items to remember what to do with and that's just annoying. Also only getting to hold 3 items is kind of a pain in the ass. I'm sure you could have made an entire menu to put items in at this point in the NES' life cycle. I'm sure they had games with actual menus where you could store tons of shit in by this point. Anyway, I don't hate this game but I do think Dizzy the Adventurer is better. Sometimes bigger is not always better. Portnoyd will yell at the Oliver Twins and Dizzy and probably forget about the three better games to yell at above.

I think the Dizzy games are kinda interesting. A weird mix of platformer and point and click kinda thing. You go find one random item that you need to use to open a door or move a elevator or shoot at a plant. I just think this game is just too big. I beat Dizzy the Adventurer today and I think that's the perfect legnth for a game of this size. You can easily remember what to do with each item and be done with the game in 30 minutes. This game according to YouTube videos can be beaten in 1 hour and 30 minutes. You know there's like twice the amount of items to remember what to do with and that's just annoying. Also only getting to hold 3 items is kind of a pain in the ass. I'm sure you could have made an entire menu to put items in at this point in the NES' life cycle. I'm sure they had games with actual menus where you could store tons of shit in by this point. Anyway, I don't hate this game but I do think Dizzy the Adventurer is better. Sometimes bigger is not always better. Portnoyd will yell at the Oliver Twins and Dizzy and probably forget about the three better games to yell at above. Oh and before you complain about me just copy/pasting the review, Portnoyd is like REVIEW ALL THE GAMES BOY and this game is literally the same as the above game except I think you can get more stars with this version. Woooooooo Just shit my pants thinking about how exiting that is!

Hopefully I won't get saddled with a set of games like this any time soon. Holy hell, it was hard to find anything to say about those first three games. Thankfully the next six games are games I'll have much more to say about.

GOOD GAMES: 101

BAD GAMES: 80

OKAY GAMES: 28

GAMES YOU MIGHT LIKE IF YOU AREN'T AN IMPATIENT BABY-MAN: 3

Comic Review #104: Mockingbird #8 (2016)

 

Well, it's back to the era of WOKE MARVEL COMICS. So let's discuss, it's 2016 and I'm probably at home happily reading, I dunno, DC Comics Presents #67 (thats the one where Superman teams up with Santa Claus to stop the Toyman) from like the mid-1980s. I don't have any idea what new comics are like or anything. I sign on to YouTube to see a video about new Marvel Comics and how they are so political these days and so left wing and terrible. I end up getting weirdly hooked on this guys very stupid videos about new comics. I go out and actually pick up new comics and find myself enjoying them and finding out that he left a lot of stuff out of the reviews that I just felt was not fair. I end up arguing with these people who now call themselves comicsgate for way too long. Now, I don't care if you like or dislike these comics. I don't even care if you think they are too conservative. No, I was bothered because of how shitty they treated the people who just wrote comics they didn't like. They would call them pedophiles and trannies and even send death threats. All over comic books. The saddest thing of it all was that so many of these guys didn't even read comics before hand. It was just a single nudge towards left wing politics that caused an insane culture war that is still going on through the internet these days. I don't argue any more on twitter but I spend too much time just watching what's happening. It's wild because they are now tearing themselves a part. It only took ten years for it to finally go away. Now if we could just get rid of their weird offspring of YouTubers yelling about woke movies because a woman shows up or something.

Anyway I was always curious about this comic. I mentioned before that I enjoyed several comics they got all in a tizzy about. Like The Unstoppable Wasp, or Ms. Marvel or Lady Thor (Lady Thor is probably the third best era or run for the Character. At least I think so). So because I ended up liking these comics more than say something that Rob Liefeld ever made people would call me a fake fan. Gatekeeping is really stupid especially when it comes to comics, are you going to come to my house and smack a Brave and the Bold comic written by Bob Haney out of my hand? Really weird unhinged people in that group. I hope they never find this blog. I like being able to smack talk them without having to argue about anything. I really should look to see if there was even a way to block people on blogger but I'm just hoping no one actually finds this blog because they haven't in 5 years and I've written almost 500 posts about crap I'm sure someone would google. Anyway, I felt like this was the time to finally sit down and read this Mockingbird comic and hoo boy, it's a big ol' turd. I'm not going to yell at the woman who wrote it or send death threats but I'm not going to lie and say that this was one of the SJW WOKE MARVEL comics that I enjoyed reading. Because I didn't.

This story starts out weirdly confusing and ends with zombies. It's told in a weird manner only comics could but it's not much fun to read. One part tells stuff that happened earlier but whatever. Mockingbird has some illness or some shit. I just read it and the entire damn first seven issues just floated out of my head. I can remember comics I have not read since I was a damn child but like 20 minutes after reading these I can't remember shit. That's not good. Also I just know Howard the Duck was in it and the comedy fell flat. The person who wrote this tried way way too hard in every aspect of the story. It's also overtly political, talking about feminism. It's just so on the nose that it's really not well done. The character of Mockingbird (one of the lesser known heroes that I always liked) did not feel like the same character from those older 1980s stories and I'm not a big fan of that. The worst part is that it's really really boring.

However the issue that caused everyone in that little group of weirdos to shit their pants was this one. Mockingbird #8. They retconned an older story and I'm somewhere in the middle on retcons. I mean they range from pretty good to awful horse shit. Bucky dying at the end of World War II was a retcon because Stan Lee thought kid sidekicks were stupid as fuck. I would say that did a world of good for the character of Captain America. The retcon here was that she willingly cheated on Hawkeye with Lincoln Slade (a man who later on died because she didn't save him from falling, IIRC, It's hard to keep up with whats a retcon and what actually happened in the original issue and I'm too lazy to pull that comic out of wherever it is in my house at the moment). It uh, makes her out to be really bad because in the original issues he sexually assaulted her and you could probably be like "yeah I can see why she didn't save him after that". Her just cheating on Hawkeye with this guy and then not saving her makes her look like a fuckin crazy woman. Unpleasant to say the least. Yeah. Something about Mercorgis saving her and ghost pirates that end up being feminists somehow. This lady's comedy is so try hard she'd be fucking perfect for the new Deadpool writer. She could try to do Lobo too because he also fucking sucks. Yeah, I said it and I won't take it back. 

FINAL THOUGHTS: a dumb series of stories with a dumb retcon that just makes the character worse off. A waste of time and money. I will never read this again. I think I will try to find my copy of DC Comics Presents #67. I might show it to my nieces. Anyway have fun and if you are comicsgate piss off back to twitter, shithead.

The Final Episode #136: Inspector Gadget (Redo)

 

You know how I said it would be mixing it up with other things, well I decided against that until I get bored of redoing stuff. You might see something else before I'm done with the eight posts I just feel need to be redone. If I literally had no commenters I would probably have deleted those original posts I just do not like them. But I'm keeping them if only for historical context. I mean the people who find this earth after we destroyed it will want to know about Inspector Gadget and I'll be the last website that mentions it! Or at least the last website that goes into great detail about it. I want those people to know that I liked Inspector Gadget enough to write about it twice. To make sure they got all the information they could about it. I don't know where I'm going with this post but I also don't care. I just feel like talking about Inspector Gadget.

So, Inspector Gadget. First we have to talk about DiC, yet again. Quick version. They were an animation company that started in 1971. It was ran by a man named Jean Chalopin. Inspector Gadget was one of their first cartoons that people saw. I mean people who didn't live in France saw. Anyway the two prior were Ulysses 31 and Mysterious Cities of Gold. These two shows were made with help from Tokyo Movie Shinsha. They wanted to work together for a third time. TMS was making a anime based on the Lupin III manga. They decided they wanted to make Lupin the 8th (I don't know that in Roman Numerals and I do not want to look it up. I'm lazy, piss off) but they did not realize that the people who created original Arsenie Lupin books weren't too keen on them using the character. I dunno if they could stop Japan from doing it but when they brought them to France and maybe other places they were like "no way bro" and TMS and DiC then had to figure out what to do. They bring in Andy Heyward from Hanna Barbera and they come up with the idea of Inspector Gadget.

Inspector Gadget is the story of a Police Inspector with all kinds of gadgets that tries to stop the evil crime organization of M.A.D. His niece, Penny and her dog Brain pretty much have to keep on eye on him because he's a complete and utter moron. That's where the comedy comes from. The people of France, Japan, Canada (hey!) and America all came together to bring this cartoon to you. It's a very worldly cartoon. It's pretty much a weird and wild amalgamation of Mission Impossible, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, The Pink Panther and Dino Mutt from Hanna Barbera. It was a pretty big hit really. It started in 1983 and was a big enough hit for DiC to get all kinds of other cartoons off the ground. 

It had two seasons of 86 episodes, a Christmas special in 1992, a kid-ified version of the show in Gadget Boy, a weird let's travel the world with Inspector Gadget show, a let's learn about History from the kid-ified Gadget Boy, several video games, and a sequel series in Gadget and the Gadgetinis. Oh and when Disney owned DiC and Inspector Gadget they made two live action movies. Neither of them are very good but the second one is probably closer to the show than the first. Oh and they made several animated movies. One of them being one of the worst things I've ever seen. It was terrible. I do not want to remember it. YOU WOULD KNOW THIS IF YOU WATCHED MY BEAUTIFUL YOUTUBE VIDEO ON THE SHOW.

So, what did I think of Inspector Gadget. Well you see it was partially animated in Canada and except for Frank Welker and Don Adams the entire rest of the cast were Canadian voice actors, such as Dan Hennessey and Cree Summer. Yes that's right Cree Summer was born in Canada. Her dad is the Sherrif character in My Bloody Valentine. I felt you all needed to know that. So with this in hand, that meant that Inspector Gadget counted as Canadian Content. Broadcasters in Canada have to have a certain amount of Canadian Content, so they would pull out stuff from the 1980s and other decades and just put it on. Just about every Canadian channel that needed some content for kids used Inspector Gadget. It wouldn't surprise me if some Canadian channel is showing this show right now. It didn't bother me because I found this show to be incredibly entertaining and really funny. It's definitely not a bingable show. It's very repetitive but watching an episode a day was a great way to see it. It was totally one of my "watch before school" even though at that point I was like a teenager and probably should be watching something more adult. Who cares, I like Inspector Gadget. He's a goof but he still tries his best.

The other thing that happened is that we in Canada would ONLY get the first season, as Nelvana did NOT work on the second season. I mean it wouldn't get reran. I don't know if it aired in 1986 because I was a little baby of a child. That was done in house at the American branch of DiC. When I heard about his from the website Jump the Shark (which literally had a page for like every tv show ever where tyou could read about where other people thought the show stopped being good.) That's where I learned about the second season and it blew my damn mind. It took another 25 years for me to finally sit down and watch them and finally meet the character Corporal Capeman. I don't know what they were thinking of with this character as Inspector Gadget was already the goofy comedic relief. Corporal Capeman was just annoying and I hated him. Jump the Shark website no longer exists and it's remake site Bone the Fish is up but does not work as a website. Isn't it great how whats left of Internet 1.0 is just rotting away. I love it. Anyway the 12 episodes without Corporal Capeman are pretty good. However The Final Episode of this show has him in it.

I must be honest and say that this episode has been sitting in the queue as a draft for like days now. I think it was like December 4th when I first wrote the first few paragraphs of this. This will be the third time I watch this episode and the last two times I wasn't in love with it. I know it's weird and corny and cheesy and lame to complain about a cartoon character as much as I complain about Corporal Capeman but he really is completely useless. He's really bad comedic relief when Inspector Gadget was already the comedic relief. Corporal Capeman is up there with the comedic relief in the Michael Bay Transformers movies. Spike Witwhickys goofy parents getting high or an autobot pissing or shitting on John Tutturo. You know what was cool the fact that for a little while we were getting pretty good Transformers movies (like Bumblebee and Rise of the Beast or whatever the hell the second one was called) but now Michael Bay is coming back again. Wonderful. I hope they don't try to shoehorn in G.I. Joe, I'm sorry movie studios but the time of the CINEMATIC UNIVERSE is kinda over. I don't know why I typed all this.

Anyway the Final Episode of this show was called "Gadget and the Red Rose" and was aired for the first time on November 13th, 1985. I was only a few months old at this time. Just a wee baby. It was written by Jack Hanaran (who wrote for Get Smart, Laugh In and like 2894 DiC cartoons)  and Eleanor Burian-Mohr who wrote for DuckTales and 2895 DiC Cartoons. Just one more than Jack. Anyway the episode opens with Corporal Capeman or as Gadget calls him Capman. Do you think Don Adams thought the characters name was Capeman and was like fuck off when DiC told him to come back to re-record. I hope so because that's funnier than anything in this episode. He is putting Acid Sour Cream into a Gadzooka. and just randomly firing it everywhere. I know Gadget was a complete doofy dipshit from Day one but I think he'd at least tell Capeman to shoot at a target and not a fucking telephone pole. He is told to finally hit a target but his dumb ass shoots poor old Brain's dog house. Then Gadget is like a few more fixes and no MAD weapon will ever stop it. 

We then change scenes to Dr. Claw and MAD Cat. MAD Cat is just hitting the button on the MAD Computer until The Red Rose shows up. The unstoppable weapon. It's owner was Spuds Malone. I don't really like how the second season made MAD goofier. Yeah they could be silly but they still had some menace to them. They make them a lot more comedic and it doesn't work as well. Anyway if you  couldn't tell from Sour Cream and Spuds stuff well, the Red Rose is a machine gun that shoots mashed potatoes at you. He calls Les Reknown or whatever this characters name is and he's old and deaf and thinks Dr. Claw is actually calling asking for Dr. Claw. This bit is just really tired.  Les goes to get Spuds Malone and Spuds Malone is like No dice! Les tells him to cut the Charles Bronson bit and that Gadget was the only witness to the St. Patrick Day's Massacre, as he was the baby that somehow saw Spuds Malone kill people with Mashed Potatoes. I do  like how this scene is done make it it look like an old timey photograph from 1902 or whatever.

Spuds Malone is in. He doesn't want Gadget to send him to jail. So he gets his henchmen Tater and Fingers to help him find Red Rose. They join up and then w e go back to Gadget and Capeman. It's time for Chief Quimby to show up. Chief Quimby's voice actor in Season 1 was much better. Nothing but love to Maurice LaMarche but I just liked Dan Hennessy better in this role. He blows up and then says one of the few comments in this episode that made me laugh. He goes "It needs chives, Gadget" You see the Gadzooka was powered by Acid Sour Cream! He just sounds so defeated when he says it too. It did legit make me laugh. Gadget was given a place to go to find Spuds Malone and he goes right to there. I guess the Police force never bothered to pick him up ever before this. Gadget goes to Spuds house right as Spud and his men boobytrapped the house with tons of potatoes. You know in the first season when they wanted to kill Gadget they used a bomb.  Gadget goes into the house but Brain jumps in front of him and gets crushed by the potatoes. Gadget also said Spud which was the codeword to get Corporal Capeman to shoot acid all over Spuds house and I sit here wondering why I ever chose to do this with my precious God given time.

Spuds and Gadget met up again in their cars. I didn't mention it but I am now. Spuds was going to Heck's Kitchen to find his old slum house and it turned out that his slums were turned into Condos! Oh no! Spuds then decides to go to his old reformatory school to find the Red Rose. Brain as a rose bush runs by after Gadget literally has Capeman shoot tons of acid sour cream on a building destroying it. A building people lived in. They chase them to the reformatory school which is now a Rose garden. The bad guys get into the sewer and everyone does a chase. Spuds Malone gets one of his henchmen to open up the water vane in the sewer oh no. You can tell I'm very invested in this. Spuds remembers where the Red Rose is but Penny also found it and changed it around. Her computer book ends up jamming the Red Rose which stops the bad guys and Chief Quimby says Gadget did a good job and Dr. Claw flies off screaming ILL GET YOU NEXT TIME GADGET and I'm just happy I don't have to watch this episode ever again.

FINAL THOUGHTS: This show clearly ran out of steam with the second season but here's the real thing. I'm pretty sure if I had seen these episodes as a kid I would not have liked them and any time they came on I would have probably gone "Oh it's one of the dumb episodes", changed the channel and found something better. I'm glad I finally gave it the post it deserves but I think I'll wait another decade or two before I talk about Inspector Gadget again.

NES Game Reviews #36: All of the E's At Once, Baby (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learnt to Love Elevator Action)

 

Remember when the NES Classic came out. In 2016. I do. I thought it was neat but I did not buy it as I already had a NES and access to those games. Portnoyd probably bought sixteen as portnoyd is a giant whore for Nintendo. If any person at Nintendo asked him to open up his asshole he would. He would let them all fuck him in the booty. Portnoyd please stop simping so hard for Nintendo. STOP BUYING 82030 AMIBOS NO ONE NEEDS THEM. YOU KNOW YOU DON'T NEED THEM. STOP IT. STOPITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. Uh, yeah, I figured since for whatever reason I don't want to talk about the next Final Episode (seriously in my queue half way finished just sitting there) I figured let's talk about all six games that start with E on the NES. Yep, only six games started with the letter E on the NES, which is pretty weird but hey at least you can talk about them all in one go! Neat-o!

Toshi Takahari, the Micronics man is my nemesis. I hate him and all the games he made. I also had to make up his name because no one knows who he is. I want to find out so I can punch his 70 year old face in. I hate the games he made. So bad. Worse thing is they could be good games if some better company had made them. The worst thing is when he comes out and makes something that isn't complete horse shit. Yes, I'm going to say something that I will never forgive myself for. Toshi did a good job with this game. It's very dated even by 1987 standards (because it originally came out two years prior in 1987) yet this is a pretty enjoyable arcade like game. Maybe that's where he should have stayed. Anything more than shoot dude, grab thing and escape was too much for ol' Toshi to handle, however Portnoyd will go SONSON IS AMAZING AND I LOVE IT and I don't think that games too much fun. Maybe someone else made the game and he took the credit for it. I'm going to go with that. Fuck you, Toshi.

Racing games were pretty interesting on the NES. They were either pretty enjoyable or just not. It's weird but I like the simpler racing games (like Rad Racer) and I would consider this one of the simpler racing games. You race in some nice looking levels that gets harder and harder. This is a pretty fair challenge in the end though. It's just a racing game, this time with boats. I do like the goofy cartoony graphics for all the people you go up against. Each and every one of them look like they would be a lot to deal with. I just think the racing part works well here, it controls well and again the levels just look nice. Anyway, I have to say one thing here and this might be the WORST box art I've seen on the NES. Holy shit it's so garish and ugly to look at. Just all kinds of colors that just do not look nice together and a random boat in the middle. Just so ugly. Also every copy of the game the word Eliminator is misspelt on the top label. Good jobs, goobers. Still this is a simple but fun racing game and one of my favorites for the NES. 

I think I have mentioned it before on this blog but I am not really a big fan of Star Wars. I really enjoy the original trilogy because it felt special but besides that the only thing I like from the franchise are the kinda janky as hell games for the NES and the SNES. That's it. I do enjoy getting to play as Luke Skywalker and using all these force powers. The graphics are on par with the original NES game but I might like them a bit more. The music/sound is good. It seems to be a pretty faithful recreation of the movie, not that I really care very much because it's more important to be a fun game than feel like you are playing the movie. The only problem this game really has is that the jumping is weird and annoying. It takes a lot to just do a simple jump correctly. Which is really annoying in a game where you have to do a lot of jumping. Still I can't say I hate this game. I would probably still have played the Return of the Jedi NES game. Still a downgrade from the original NES game.

Oh hey another NES sports game, but this time is about Tennis. I think they made two Tennis games for the NES. I really do not know. Again I do not know how to play Tennis. I really don't know. I'm sorry. I do like the fact you can play with three other people, which is pretty rare for NES games. I like that Asmik made it. I have a weird thing with their little dinosaur mascot guy. I had his Gameboy game as a kid, I guess because I liked the Dino guy and my GOD that game was impossible to me as a child and I could not get past even the second stage. I do kinda want to go back and play it again though. Anyway Until just now this was one of the few games that I had never played before, I played some of it and was completely confused as what I had to do. I'm going to go ahead and put it in the good games section because I get the feeling that if you know Tennis this will be a fun Tennis video game. I'm the worst person to be reviewing Sports games. Seriously.

Sometimes going for broke is admirable. Just putting every single thing you can think of into a video game. Give the player a lot of things to do. However sometimes the exact opposite is also good. Sometimes that works perfectly. Excitebike is a black box game. It is VERY SIMPLE, like well every Black Box game that wasn't Super Mario Brothers. This is a simple game, yet it is incredibly fun. You drive a bike up and down hills trying to break a score for how fast you can do it. However you will end up spending so much time learning the eccentrics of this very simple little game. It actually gets quite hard near the end is pretty amazing. There's really nothing too much to say about this game. It's simple but you'll get hooked, which is pretty amazing for what a forty two year old video game?

This game was made by Wisdom Tree. The bible game people. It was taken from Crystal Mines and fiddled around with. I think they fix up the game and change levels so that it's a bit better than Crystal Mines. However is it weird for me to think the levels in this game are like too big? and having to shoot things to uncover things you need to get the exit to appear is kind of annoying. Anyway it's a decent enough game that I will beat one day. The best Color Dream/Wisdom Tree/Bunch Games games are the ones where you do not have to jump. The jumping controls in all of those games are so, so bad.

GOOD GAMES: 98

BAD GAMES: 77

OKAY GAMES: 28 

GAMES YOU MIGHT LIKE IF YOU AREN'T IMPATIENT: 3

NES Game Reviews #35: Ducks, Dudes and Dynos.

 
                                               

Here is the Quickshot Joystick. It wasn't the controller I was thinking of but once I saw an image of it while looking through the images for me to get a picture to intro this post and went HOLY POOP I REMEMBER THIS THING. I had it and barely used it. I think I got it for free and now people want more than anyone should pay for it ($35 is what the site was asking.) It just reminds me of the day when you could get this stuff for super cheap or people going "Oh good you want to remove this stuff from my house! Excellent!". It was just the joy of rediscovering old games that you loved and finding new ones to fall in love with. It wasn't about rarity or any of that it was just going Wooo this Mighty Final Fight game is cool! not THIS MIGHTY FINAL FIGHT GAME IS WORTH 25302049209 DOLLARS. Anyway you know the drill by now. It's six more NES games to be reviewed! We end off the D's today and get to the 200th game!

DuckTales, like all of the Capcom Disney games on the NES (and even SNES) are pretty great. Okay yeah I wasn't in love with Disney's Adventures in the Magic Kingdom but hey people really seem to like that game and I can't really take it away from them. Anyway, this was a game I rented a lot because well it was based on a popular cartoon that I watched. It was a game that I even remember buying from the Video Store. Like from the store you'd rent movies and games. It was in some kind of case being sold for weirdly cheap. I do not know why they just decided to sell DuckTales for the NES, I mean they would probably made more money renting it because but it was there up for sale and I got it. According to Wikipedia the Mega Man guy, Kenji something or other made this one too. Or was the director of it all. I gotta say he did one hell of a job. It really does feel like you are playing an episode of the cartoon. The graphics are great, the characters look very good, the music is iconic, the play control is great and tight and all that shit. It's just so much fun to run through the stages trying to beat it as quick as possible (I think I could do it in 9 or so minutes at one point) or just take your time and try to get as much money as possible. It's an incredible game that's worth a look.

Yes, you know what I'm going to do before I get to this games actual review. I am going to bitch and moan about being pushed out of a hobby I enjoyed very much. This game is considered super rare and a grail of sorts for people. I do not believe it's that rare. According to Price Charting people want $250 for a loose copy and 750 for a complete copy and about 8 or so people have sealed copies up there right now (one person is asking 22k for his copy. If there is a collector who has that kind of money to spend well they should be beaten and have all of their money and games and stuff taken away. Sorry, not sorry) and I'm just like, I swear to Jesus all these people who are hoping to retire off this stuff better hope I never find a magic Genie or something because I'd wish everything back to it's 1998 "Get this shit out of my fucking house" era, from Video Games to Toys to comics to any kind of goofy shit I'm into. The fact that this game goes for more than $50 is sickening. I'm sorry this game is $50 rare. You will not convince me other wise, and I still felt like a gross loser for paying that $50. I guess I can now get on with the actual review and this game is honestly just as good as the first but it's missing the special something that made the first game iconic. Still you get some new things like two different endings. Yep. If you get the LOST TREASURE where you need to go to different areas in different stages. bringing in some replay value to this game. Everything is just as good as it was in the first game and is or would be a great addition to your collection if they didn't want an arm and a fucking leg for an old ass NES game. No, I will always bitch and moan about this. 

Dudes with Attitude, seriously is there a more "beat em up" game title ever. You'd pick up this game and go "I guess I'm going to be beating up some weirdly 1990s circles today" and buy the game. You turn it on hoping to play as some kind of Arnie lookalike beating up Circles in some weird unlicensed game. You do not get a beat em up but you get a weird puzzle game. I weirdly respect most unlicensed games than actually enjoy playing them. They were games made by like one or two people who just wanted to make some money on the NES. I would love to chat with some of these people. I think the unlicensed games are just a pretty interesting part of the whole NES set because I can't think of many other game systems that had such a large number of unlicensed games. It's sad that people just treat them completely like dirt and don't even collect them and pretend that they somehow have a complete collection with out them (which you do not, I'm sorry). With all that said, Dudes With Attitude really should have just been a beat em up platformer. It probably would have worked better that way. You play as a circle man and you change colors and destroy things that are the same color as you. Sounds simple but my God your character is just to fast and so many times you hit a different color and you're like FUCK I WANTED TO GET THOSE GREEN PIECES but you can't because you are now red. Also the progression of this game is not well done. Like let's for example say Kickle Cubicle, levels get harder and harder as you go but they start off pretty fair. This game gives you like two levels before they are like WELL HAVE FUN WITH THIS IMPOSSIBLE PUZZLE because you'll be HITTING THE GREEN SWITCH WHEN YOU WANT TO HIT  THE RED ONE. I do not like this game very much but man i love how 1990s they made the cover. The two smaller Circles are so 1990s to me. Anyway, I'm done talking about Dudes with Attitude.

I feel I'm not being completely fair to the First Person Style games for the NES. I really want to try and enjoy these games. I feel they really do have something to them. There's more too these games then I'm letting on, however whenever I turn on most of them (weirdly how the better First Person games on the NES used them as a part of the game instead of the whole game and you just powered through the First Person segments to get back to the better part of the game) I go "Yeah I'm finally gonna give this game a fair chance" just to get lost so easily and quickly and scream FUCK THIS and then just turn on I dunno Bubble Bobble II or something instead. I just don't think it's fair for me to really review this game. I mean it's Taito so I really think there's something here once you can get past the getting stuck in the maze type levels here, I mean the last time I played this I played it for longer than I ever have before and actually got the sword. Then I didn't know how to equip the sword and also got lost and went FUCK THIS and played something else. I think I'm going to have to put these games under the IMPATIENT label. 

Speaking of not really feeling fair, I don't know what to do with Sports games. I'm a man who talks about the Final Episodes of Teddy Ruxpin and Veronica's Closet. I've never been into sports. I never watched them, I never played them, I just don't get them. I remember the boys in my school would read these sports novels and I would be reading Tintin or Charlie in the Chocolate Factory (weirdly how either of those would make Mr. Kelly mad. I really don't think I could do anything right with that goober fuck anyway). I don't know how to actually score any points in these games most of the time and if I somehow can get any points the other team gets more. I just do not know what I'm doing wrong. I can't call this poorly made because the game is clearly well made for what it is. You get a good amount of characters to pick from. You get decent music, the characters can catch the ball and even get to the ball quickly (this is BIG in a damn baseball game, some baseball guys just go so slowly) it doesn't have that stupid shit Bases Loaded does where you are looking at the catcher. It is a well done Baseball (or Softball, do not ask me the differences I do not know. I'm currently re-watching Sailor Moon, I am not a jock). I don't really care for this game but it clearly had effort put into it.

Our 200th Game is.....very okay. This game has pretty decent graphics and pretty decent music. It's biggest problem is I have not seen a game that is SO eager for you to have it beat it. It's very easy. You get a giant life bar, can get hit by spikes. You get so many different weapons that can literally keep every enemy away from you. The level design could be way better, but this is not a bad game by any means really. It's worth a look really. Or maybe it just reminds me of the early days of collecting because around here this was a game you would see A LOT. I mean I can see why it would be bought for children. It's about Robot Dinosaurs! Who the hell could say no to that? It's just that this game is missing a certain something to make it REALLY great. It's a shame too because it's definitely a step up for Bandai. Holy hannah. Compare this game to Chubby Cherub and it's fucking amazing. It's just I really think the levels needed a boost in something. They are all very same-y. Still Robotic Dinosaurs! That's gotta be worth at least a look!

GOOD GAMES: 93

BAD GAMES: 77

OKAY GAMES/AGED POORLY: 27

PROBABLY MIGHT BE GOOD IF I WASN'T IMPATIENT: 3

NES Games Reviews #34: Dragons Fighting Warriors in Lairs while watching Ducks Getting Hunted.

This above is the NES Advantage. I don't believe ever getting to try it. I did get  NES Max which sucked but I made this the image of this post of NES Game Reviews because I used the NES Max for another. It felt right. I would love to find a image of the weirdo cheapo controller I had that I felt was so great. Maybe I'll search google later, or I'll probably forget and watch Teddy Ruxpin instead. Or something equally awesome. 

Can I tell you a story about this game? It was a game that got so much discussion on the NES forums back in the day. NESesscity or whowever that shit was spelt. Everyone except like two people were talking about how great it was. I never had played this game but I thought the cover was cool and you could get a free copy via Nintendo Power's first issue! Now would Nitnendo give away a shitty game? I thought No! They wouldn't. So I go on a vacation to Lewisporte, a town in Newfoundland that we would go to every year. It was pretty awesome in its own way. Anyway in one of the stores there I found a copy of this game for 10.99, along with Three Stooges for the same price and I wanted both. I chose this and I'm still, 25 years later pissed at myself for that. I ended up feeling the way those two random people felt (I want to say one of them was MuscleSprout) and man this game is fucking boring as hell. I cannot pretend I like it. I can't. I really do not like the first Dragon Warrior game. The biggest problem behind it just being boring is that it takes FOREVER to level up or even buy a weapon. FOR-EV-ER. I'm going to be as fair as I can and put this in the dated category because I figure that the people who played this after getting it from Nintendo Power had tons of fun with it, but I did not have tons of fun with it a decade later. That sounds like dated as hell to me.

I didn't want to make this post because I didn't want to talk about four Dragon Warrior games in a row. I have to be honest and say that I'm not really big on any of these games. However I must admit this is an improvement on the original game. You get more people to fight with so it's less likely you'll die. The game is bigger but I still find the whole spend 952 hours to get to level 5 and buy a 500 coin sword to actually do anything with very annoying. I beat this game (and the original somehow) but I really am not a fan of them personally. I'll give this game a Good because it doesn't irritate me like the original but I'm never going to play it again. Ths music is pretty good and the graphics are too. That kinda rhymes right? I'm going to say this paragraph is long enough for Dragon Warrior II and go to the third game.

Dragon Warrior III is yet again an improvement over the second game. This game has a new setup where you can choose your party and their jobs like Wizard or Ditchdigger or whatever the fuck. They get different stats, like Wizard is good at magic and Ditchdigger is strong. Or whatever. I'm sure they made this game even bigger than the last one, it's just the problem I have with the other two games is that it seems like 920 years pass before you level up when you level up past level 5. It's so not fun to me. I know people are going to yell and scream over this post but I just can't sit here and say I love these games. I'll fully put Parts 2, 3 and 4 in the good games section because they are well made and the leveling up thing was its worst in the first game. Anyway the music is great in these games really and the graphics are all Akira Toriyama lookin. That dude was boss even if I'm not in love with these games. Let's get to the Final game of Dragon Warriors for the NES.

This one I actually kind of actually like. It has four or is it five? chapters were you play as different characters. It feels like you don't have to get the characters up to high in levels either, but I get the feeling the game is hoodwiking me and I'll need to spend six lifetimes trying to get the characters up to the right level to fight the Final boss, but I enjoyed what I played of this game. The music as usual is really great. The graphics are the best they can be for this sort of game. The different characters you get to play as are all unique enough that it feels good to play as them. This is clearly the best Dragon Warrior game for the Nintendo, even if it gets the shortest paragraph about it.

This is one of the Top Ten worst NES games ever made. Period. This is a useless, worthless awful little game. Dragon's Lair was an arcade game that I never played but I love the work of Don Bluth (and wish the Dragon's Lair movie was not bought up by Ryan Reynolds so he could make another movie kissing his butt. He's gonna play Dirk the Daring in the real world and OH MY GOD WE'VE SEEN THAT FUCKING JESUS PLOT MORE TIMES THAN ANYTHING EVER. I want a crazy ass Don Bluth animated movie with these characters not Ryan Reynolds being Ryan Reynolds (which admittedly is usually somewhat enjoyable). Anyway this game uh has Dirk the Daring have to fight some Dragon to save a sexy Don Bluth lady. Seriously if you want to find out if someone's gay or not then show them a picture of a sexy Don Bluth woman and if they turn away without feeling anything in their loins then you got yourself a homosexual. Or a heterosexual woman. Or you could like let people live their lives and not do weird things to find out if they are gay or not. You tricky devil. Uh, where the hell was I?  Oh yeah, this game. The graphics have this weird dirty look to them. I don't like it. The music is just forgetable as shit and the biggest problem is this character moves so slowly (and is a huge fucking target) and just about everything in this game kills your stupid ass in one fucking hit. You know what the worst part of this is. I forget if it's Japan or Europe but they got a copy where the guy moves at a respectable level not slower than my grandparents, all who have been dead for several decades now. The American version of this game however is so bad that I really do not want to try any other version. Fuck this game in the nose.

This game recently appeared on some Normie Magazine's Top 25 NES games. and Some guys were pissed and I can't get behind that. Duck Hunt instantly brings me back to those days in the early 1990s when I'd play it to amuse my very young little sister. It really does have that power. I think it kinda deserves a top spot for NORMIE MAGAZINE. They aren't putting Little Samson or something there. They are putting it there for old ass people who still buy magazines so they can go OH I REMEMBER LITTLE ROBBY PLAYING THIS GAME. Duck Hunt is iconic. Seriously. The other thing is that it's good. This is a simple but incredibly fun Zapper game. All of the Zapper games from the Black Box days are the best. A lot of the later ones just seemed to get to big and try to hard. I dunno. I like Duck Hunt and still hear the dog laughing at me. HE NEVER STOPS. Oh god, please stop doggie...please.

GOOD GAMES: 90

BAD GAMES: 76

OKAY OR AGED POORLY: 26

PROBABLY MIGHT BE GOOD IF I WEREN'T AN IMPATIENT BABY: 2

The Comic Review #103: Amazing Spider Man: Skating on Thin Ice #1

 

I was originally going to talk about a cartoon that was made by France. And Germany. And British.. And yes, Canada. On a Belgian comic book from the 1980s. (If I somehow got incredibly rich I would bring over so many comic books that didn't have English translations. I really want to read the comic this show was based on AND Cybersix. Why do countries have so much cool shit I can't get too.) I was actually kinda excited to watch it but I cannot. I wanted to do something related to CANADA, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND GREATEST COUNTRY OF ALL TIME, so I figured, hey what about that series of comics where Spider-Man goes to Canada! So let's get into this Public Service Announcement comic book five parter (although I'm only talking about the first part today. I will get to the rest of the story another time.) 

This was a comic book that I remember fondly because as a PSA, it was given out to schools and it was in one of the class rooms in my school. Somehow never confiscated from any kid or put away. Just sitting on a shelf. Of course, yours truly would read it all the time. During class. I don't even remember it getting confiscated or put away. I also don't remember any other kids reading it. I guess they wanted to learn. I didn't care because the other kids were mean to me, some of the stuff we had to learn was always hard for me (which caused me to go to SPECIAL ED, yes claw was a SPED as a child. don't really act surprised.)  and I always felt the teacher Mr. Kelly who I seemed to have for SEVERAL GRADES was just mean to me for no reason. I really did not like Mr. Kelly at all.  I'm pretty sure at one point the comic mistakenly fell into my book back. MISTAKENLY and I went home. with it. Mistakenly. And it stayed in my house. Mistakenly. Until it got ruined in a flood. But I loved it. Loved it enough to MISTAKENLY take it home and cherish it.

This was a PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT comic, there are actually a lot of them from the 1980s and I plan to discuss as many of them as possible because I like to talk about the weird and the wild when I talk comic books. This comic was written because some Canadian group wanted it. Marvel got Todd McFarlande to draw the cover. Alex Saviuk to draw the actual comic and Dwayne McDuffie (RIP) to write the first three parts. I never read past the first part as a child and I still have to read parts 3, 4 or 5. I even have them somewhere in this house. Just gathering dust around in my basement. I really should read them but I don't even know where they are. I am so cool aren't I? Anyway I'm glad to get to write this because I finally get to re-read this comic.

We start right in the middle of the Fight between Spider-Man and Electro. I love Electro, even with his crazy costume. He was always fun. Anyway he and Spider-Man are bantering away and Spider-Man gets him on his ass and one of his goons show up and Spider-Man looks at him just long enough for Electro to shoot a lighting bolt at his ass. Electro and the Goon leave while Spider-Man is just unconscious. He wakes up and finds out that Electro is sending Hockey Pucks to........WINNIPEG CANADA??? So he gets J. Jonah Jameson to actually give him money for planet tickets. Spider-Man is going to Canada!

We then go to a community center and we see a black man named Herb Carnegie. I'm pretty sure he is a hockey coach of some kind but I don't want that bit of information to push out a bit of information in my brain about say.......The Snorks or something else. I have mentioned before that I do not care one iota about sports of any kind. I am glad that people get enjoyment out of them, wouldn't take that away from them but I just do not care. Anyway the kid Spider-Man came to interview, Beth, is not very good at Hockey, just fell on her ass. Anyway the main kid of the team, Alan is slacking off. The practice is ended and we see the kids..........SMOKING. OH NO. You see kids you should be like your ol' pal Michael, I never smoked or did any drugs or alcohol like ever! You totally want to be like a man who probably has autism and is going to one day post 2,000 words about the Final Episode of the Snorks. Yeah, actually I'm pretty sure I do have autism. Unlike all the cool shit drug dealers get to do. Be lame like me!!!

Anyway, Spider-Man sees this and is like HELL NO CHILDREN STAY AWAY FROM THAT SHIT. Well no he actually just watches until one kid opens up a hockey puck to find DRUGS in it. Not a bad place to stash drugs actually, Electro's thinkin pretty smart. Anyway the kid gets Alan to take the drugs for free and that's when Spider-Man gets involved swinging away with Alan. To show him something. He shows him his "friend" Ben moving drugs around and selling them. Making money and bringing it back to the main warehouse. Spider-Man tells Alan to stay outside and goes in to take a look. He finds the Hockey Pucks and well Electro! Oh shit while Electro yells at Spider-Man how he left America for Canada to get away from Super heroes. Poor Alpha Flight get no respect from Electro. Anyway Electro's SECRET Partner, Ben and some other kids come out with switch blades to tackle Alan and the other kids.

Electro gets his ass knocked out but his SECRET Partner has the kids and he's not letting them go. He throws knives at Spider-Man after throwing Beth on the ground. Spider-Man webs up all the bad kids in one go because he's a superhero and they are all like weak ass thirteen year olds. The SECRET Partner yells MISSED ME as he jaunts his way out the door. Spider-Man rushes out but only sees a little old lady. He does not listen to his Spider-Sense but we get a great look of a panel that has been seared into my mind. Of an old lady with a giant evil grin on her face. It turns out Electro's SECRET Partner was the Chameleon all along! He gets away as they finally web up Ben the bad kid but Electro has awakened and is ready to fight Spider-Man again, however Alan knocks a puck right in his head so Spider-Man webs him up.  Electro was pretty smart to get out of America but not smart enough to not use something with rubber that like totally messes with his whole power set. Alas.

Alan tells Spider-Man thanks for telling him about substance abuse. Spider-Man then says he won't be here to help the next time so remember what he said. He says this to all the kids but he never took them on a ride around seeing drug related shit like he did with Alan. Anyway Peter Parker watches the kids win the game and then telephones J. Jonah Jameson to say he's going to the BIG SCIENCE FAIR in FREDRICTION, NEW BRUNSWICK (near where I live in Atlantic Canada!) with Beth to write about her and the Big Science Fair. The Daily Bugle is not the most exicting newspaper it turns out. He says that he doesn't think he's done with the MYSTERIOUS MAN who was working with Electro but he if he tries anything to hurt Beth then he's gonna beat his ass. Don't hurt the kids when Spider-Man is around!

FINAL THOUGHTS: Not the most amazing comic. I mean I get the feeling this was kind of a detention assighment kinda thing for everyone involved. Not something they were squirming and rushing to do. Still it is a well told story, Pretty simple but it keeps moving at a good pace. The PSA stuff is done pretty well, comes in naturally as in randomly forced in at the end. Not as amazing as I thought when I would read it in the classroom but holy hot moly was it a lot better than having to listen to Mr. Kelly. Mr Kelly SUCKED.

The Comic Review #102: Spider Man By Zebulon Wells

 

So I was finally interested enough for two reasons. 1.) I'm coming back to trying to review newer comics because I'm kinda over the internet going OH MARVEL IS ALL 100% POOP GARBAGE NOW I HATE IT! Which is exactly why I picked what is considered the worst Spider-Man comics of all time. People HATE this run of Spider-Man with an insane passion divided by 1,000 suns. I get curious when everyone seems to come together and decide to shit all over something. Is it really that bad? Let me put it this way. I'm not exactly jumping in to shitting all over this without saying anything positive but it's mostly not very good. The writer a ZEBULON WELLS did not get deserve to get shit for it, including I believe death threats. I don't know if there's anything worthy of a death threat but I know writing a Spider-Man comic people didn't like is not it. Anyway, I powered through 60 issues and these are mostly my thoughts on them.

1.) The biggest problem is that Marvel editorial is like NO WE WILL NOT HAVE MARY JANE WATSON AND PETER PARKER GET BACK TOGETHER IN ANY WAY. First off that One More Day story, which I still have not read just the whole concept is the dumbest fucking story idea for ANY superhero ever. I know in the Golden Age of Comics they probably had a comic where a man dressed as a Bunny and threw carrots at the bad guys and yes even that is a better story than One More Day. I know Marvel Editorial seems to really want Spider-Man to stay as a weirdo Manbaby but I grew up in that TWENTY YEAR PERIOD where he was Married to MJ and seemed to be getting his life on track. Yeah, I love the stuff before hand but let's let the man be happy finally at least in one area of his life. I love those two together and I really miss that marriage. 

They decided to put her up with Paul, people hate Paul and I can see why but I can't. This character is literally has less personality and charm than one off weirdos from the 1970s like Tapping Tommy, a Tap dancer that worked for Hydra that somehow stopped the Defenders. Yes it's an insane story but it's STILL BETTER THAN HAVING ANY FUCKING HERO (OR THEIR WIFE) MAKE A FUCKING DEAL WITH SATAN WHICH MEPHISTO BASICALLY IS. Getting angry at Paul is like getting angry at a bottle of hand soap. It's fucking pointless. Still they shove in  MJ getting some kids (that lol just disappear) and try to make us care. It really is the worst part of the entire thing. I would tell Marvel Editorial just to stop using the character if all they are going to do is rub salt in the faces of the people who liked the marriage.

One final point is stop having him date anyone. We now know where the story will end totally which is the same, he will not stay with this person. First off because I don't think any of these new characters will ever stack up to Mary Jane Watson and secondly because if he does somehow marry another woman you'll just have Mephisto take away that marriage. I mean it's totally fine just to do it once why not again. Doing that at all just makes any OH NO PETER'S HAVING RELATIONSHIP TROUBLE story boring as hell. We already know the ending. They break up!

2.) Norman Osborn being a good guy is dumb. Real dumb and I liked it a lot when The Sandman became a good guy. Yeah, they have him be a good guy because his sins were taken away by the brought back to life Sin-Eater. Yeah, comic books are goofy but sometimes they are just too damn goofy. Sorry but there's no way I'm buying that Peter Parker is going to willingly ever do anything with Norman Osborn. I know later on they say he did it to keep an eye on him but that just feels like a shitty ass pull. I hear they even have him pretending to be Spider-Man while Peter Parker is in Space somehow. The man killed Gwen Stacy, they will never have any kind of relationship that makes sense. It is fucking stupid and you need to change it back. It feels hollow because you skipped over the most interesting part of a redemption story which is the bad guy realizing THEY ACTUALLY DID WRONG like I dunno THE SANDMAN DID. Rubbish. All of the Goblin sins shit in this book was just rubbish.

3.) Ben Reiley  the Spider-Man clone is now somehow back after being turned into literally dust way back in like 1996? I think so, in October. Look I am someone hwo kinda likes parts of the Clone Saga. It was a pretty interesting way to shake things up in the 1990s. It didn't all work but again is a better story than One More Day. Now he's evil! Or not! OR EVIL! Or not! It's like you didn't have any ideas for this character but you brought him back because there are fans (like me) who like the character, right? I'd rather he just stay in COMIC BOOK LIMBO forever if no one has any ideas what to do with him. That's just me though. This stuff was also dumb.

4.) speaking of Limbo EVIL BEN REILEY teams up with THE GOBLIN QUEEN (not to be confused with new Green Goblin adjacent character The Queen Goblin) and they do Inferno Part II. A not very good sequel of the 1980s X-Men event. This story brings in the new character of Rek-Rap. A big dumb version of Spider-Man who is now my least favorite super hero character ever.  Yes, Deadpool has been overthrown, port. He is no longer my least favorite. Every single time this character showed up AFTER this story I just sighed and was felt really bad.

5.) The Queen Goblin is apparently Dr. Ashley Kafka who died in some comic but came back as a clone who became evil. I don't even really want to explain any more why that's stupid and I'd spend hours defending the Hypno Hustler.

6.) Now we get to the one thing I really, really quite liked. The ongoing Tombstone story with the Gangsters, like Hammerhead, Crime Master and MADAME MASQUE???? The Iron Man villain. Okay, I like her. This stuff is clearly what the writer wanted to write. The story has all kinds of neat twists and turns. Seeing Tombstone fool Spider-Man is actually pretty great. They end up having an uneasy alliance during a Gang War storyline. It's the best stuff and I really enjoyed it. 

7.) Let's go out on a negative note and say the whole trying to make Kamala Khan and Spider-Man friends just felt hollow. And her death in issue 26 was just out of nowhere and it's weirdly hilarious how she stayed dead literally long enough for Marvel to pump out two comics where they mourn her. Then she comes back as a mutant. I hate this because I am one of the few fans of the Inhumans and thought it was neat she was a part of them. They say she's now mutant and Inhuman and I'm like man you really can't help but mess up the best character you've created in 30 years Marvel, can you? I'm really starting to think that I could run this company better. Oh and it feels like they are trying to do this shit for MCU SYNERGY!!!! keep the movies and the comics away from each other KEVIN JERKIFE.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Uh, read the Gang War storyline. It's pretty fun. Everything else can pretty much be avoided. It did make me want to read the comic event Judgement Day so expect a blog post on that maybe sometime soon. Maybe.