Hey all, I disappeared from this blog for another year, didn’t I? A lot has happened since January of 2025. I moved into a really nice brand new apartment, I was best man at my friend’s wedding, my sister had yet another kid, and I had been focusing on writing short stories and other things on the side. I was focused more on commission work and slacking off on the blog side.
And I honestly think that needs to be fixed. This was how I got back into writing after giving it up for a few years there after high school. This was my reprieve, where I could write anything I wanted and improve my craft. So, we’re getting back to this: A couple short posts a week with an occasional big post. As for what themes can be expected, it’s just gonna be on whatever as usual.
I do wanna tackle some obscure anime topics I find fascinating though, along with music videos and games. I DEFINITELY wanna do a deep dive into my favorite game of all time: Kingdoms of Amalur. Eventually though, I want to try to transition into doing YouTube videos finally so some of these will serve as scripts for those potentially. Glad to be back and I’ll keep y’all posted! Also, if you wanna support my work please consider tipping me on the Ko-Fi embedded in my “About Me” page. Thank you!
I feel like horroI feel like horror is one of the harder genres to write, don’t you? A lot of that comes down to horror being entirely subjective, as what scares one person doesn’t always scare the other. To me, I have this issue getting into horror because I don’t really like gore or jump-scares. Some people really get into stuff like Backrooms or Obsession, but those aren’t really my thing.
What kind of horror do I like? Well, I call it “cozy horror”. It’s horror where it’s unsettling in a more subtle way. In fact, it can sometimes be so subtle you don’t even realize scary stuff is happening until you REALLY look into it. And this is where Fake Documentary Q comes in.
What is Fake Documentary Q?
This is a Japanese horror live action series on YouTube, often presented as if it was an actual documentary. This includes interviews with historians or seemingly average people, random recorded footage, or other such material that fakes the user into thinking what they’re seeing might be real… At least not at first. However, every episode always takes a turn for the surreal and supernatural. A big example of this is Take100:
This episode starts with an old man explaining the history of the film reel in a very accurate way, before going on to talk about corrupted footage from a hundred years ago. The footage is one hundred takes of the same scene, where seemingly nothing of note happens… Well, apart from the strange shadow creature that seems to be corrupting and controlling the footage itself.
Shadows play a big part in the series, as shadowy figures are often seen in videos where something bad happens. They represent ghosts or spirits and they’re always a precursor to tragedy. Regardless, apart from the creepy distortion of the footage, nothing really bad seemingly happens in this episode. It’s never said if the actors died or went missing, it’s more just to mess with the audience.
The same can not be said for “FILM INFERNO”, the show’s special episode and the closest thing it has to a movie of sorts. It’s the longest episode at 37 minutes and revolves around a man showing tapes of a couple going missing while spelunking in a cave. The cave itself warps around them, as if it’s alive and the woman ends up being seemingly possessed. The pair end up seemingly disappearing into the cave itself, though this aspect is kept purposefully vague.
I won’t spoil the whole thing, but it is pretty intense. Out of the episodes, it’s one of the most action heavy ones. In a lot of these, it feels like nothing happens at all or at least until the end. One where this is the case is HOUSE OF MIRRORS, where a man is hired to film all the mirrors in a house and ends up seeing footage of a lady trapped within said mirrors. When he’s filming the mirrors, nothing really happens apart from a door randomly opening and the lazy being visible in the glass’ surface.
The series’ strength lies in the fact that it doesn’t rely on gore or cheap jump-scares to frighten the viewer, but instead it gives them a distorted look at Japanese culture. There’s no glitz or glamor of bustling Tokyo streets here, just seemingly real people dealing with the supernatural and otherworldly.
I’m a simple man, I love me some classic Shonen anime! The idea of hot-blooded protagonists fighting it out with cool powers is just an awesome concept to me. And no Shonen does that better than the ones they made to sell all manners of toys. Marbles, trading cards, and tops may not seem cool on their own, but when adapted into over-the-top anime, they can be quite great! It’s why Bakugan, Yugioh, and Beyblade were all top-tier shows!
Of course, not every toy commercial anime is a winner. That’s where today’s subject comes in: Super Yo-Yo. For those who don’t know, Yo-Yos were big for a little bit in the 90s. Doing sick Yo-Yo tricks at school would’ve gotten you at least 5 minutes worth of street cred on the playground way back then.
Unfortunately, time has moved on and so has any interest in this toy. However, Super Yo-Yo was made back in the late 90s when Yo-Yos hadn’t been completely phased out yet. As such, we got the manga and anime series: Super Yo-Yo. I first heard about this not long ago when it popped up in my YouTube recommendation. I saw the above opening and I gotta say, it is so damn catchy!
The song is a banger, the animation is quite good and manages to perfectly replicate how the Yo-Yo tricks work, and the most important part of any toy anime: It makes the toy LOOK cool! Keep that last part in mind for later as we continue on. Regardless, I wanted to see if the show lived up to the hype.
Unfortunately, this is where I hit a bit of an impasse: There are no subs for this show. There is an alternative, but it’s not a very good one. There is an English dub for this show, but it’s a low effort one from Singapore with terrible voice acting and bad video quality. Sadly, this was my only option to watch the show in a way where I could fully understand it! I decided I’d at least watch the first episode and then decide if I should continue with it from there.
Regardless, how was that first episode? Pretty painful, honestly. The show revolves around your typical Shonen protag: Shunichi Dokoto. Shunichi is a pro at any sport he tries, basically leaving him without any kind of actual challenge in anything. One day, his classmates come up to him and harass and gaslight him into trying Yo-Yos. Why? Because some random kid got his Yo-Yo stolen after losing in a “Yo-Yo Duel”, a showdown of tricks between two “Spinners”, who are people who do tricks with Yo-Yos.
After being bullied by his class into getting involved with something that he has no stake in, Shunichi decides to learn how to do Yo-Yo tricks. This results in him SKIPPING SCHOOL FOR THREE DAYS so he can go over the tricks in the beginner’s manual. Regardless, he finally shows up after three days so he can go teach the Yo-Yo thief a lesson. So he goes over to meet with the bully, some kid named “Benkei”.
Now this is where the show just loses me: The Yo-Yo duels. A big focus on other toy-related anime is making the toy look cool, even if it involves making stuff up or throwing in supernatural elements. The Beyblade anime was cooler than it had any right to be, due to its focus on spirits possessing the Beyblades and the constant raising of stakes, including dealing with ancient prophecies and evil high-tech villains.
Another example is Yugioh, which mixed Egyptian mythology and mysticism with its silly card-game aspect. Taking these over-the-top elements and combining them with the toys really sold people on these franchises. Unfortunately, Super Yo-Yo missed the memo.
Yo-Yo duels are just people doing tricks until someone screws up and loses, that’s the whole thing. There’s no battle for the world, no mystical elements, no actual stakes that would make these battles interesting. As such, the battle between Shunichi and Benkei ends up being a slog as it’s just a bunch of random Yo-Yo tricks.
Regardless, Shunichi easily beats Benkei and then decides to brag about how good he is around actual professionals. A guy named Seito basically destroys Shunichi easily in a Yo-Yo duel, resulting in Shunichi swearing he’ll get better at the toy and become a pro. That’s how the first episode ends and it really did not make me want to watch more.
The fact that it’s just Yo-Yos being spun with no twists or flavor just makes it boring to watch. It’s too grounded for being such an insane concept for a show, that being a Shonen battle series about Yo-Yos. And again, it’s not helped by the lack of accessibility. If I wanted to watch this show, I’d have to sit through it with a terrible English dub or pay someone to subtitle the show.
Since neither option is really that palatable, I’m good with calling it quits after the first episode. Before we end off, I have to bring up the fact that this show SOMEHOW got 22 episodes. 6 or 13 episodes seems understandable for this kind of series, but making 22 episodes around such a bare bones concept is kind of insane.
What’s even more insane is the air dates for the show. When looking into this show, I noticed that it aired over the course of 10 months, as opposed to 6 months which is common for a weekly anime of this length. This is because the show would often take near month-long breaks for seemingly no reason.
Was it because the Yo-Yo scenes were so hard to animate they needed extra time? Was the studio in some kind of crisis that they had to put the show on constant hiatus? Honestly, I’m not really sure why and that info is probably lost to time.
Regardless, this is where my journey into this weird and forgotten anime ends for now. While the opening made the show look cool, it actually lacked a lot in terms of “coolness factor” in the series itself. Again, it’s that fear of going crazy with the concept that holds it back. A typical Shonen formula with Yo-Yo tricks on its own is just a nothing concept, though I could be wrong.
Maybe it gets better as it goes along, I’ll just never know. The only way I’m watching this show is if an HD version becomes available with subs. And the likelihood of that happening is absolutely zero. On the rare chance that changes, I’ll come back to this series and give it a more faithful look-through then. Until then, have a fantastic day, you spectacular Spinners!
Author’s Note: I wrote this for a newsletter at Canadian Mental Health Association’s Saskatoon branch last year!
In fear that my articles may be lacking in “educational value”, I thought I’d bring attention to a long-running franchise of games that use world history to its advantage! Of course, not every part of this franchise focuses on real world history and the ones that do embellish it QUITE A LOT. But regardless, I feel there’s a lot of value in what these games are and what the represent!
But before that, you may be asking: What’s a Warriors game?
It’s a third-person action game with slight RPG (Role-Playing Game) elements, where you take on hoards of peons and enemy officers in your quest to dominate the battlefield. That’s the general gist of the games, and while most of them play near identical to each other, each sub-franchise of the series is different in some ways. Let’s start off with the one that started it all:
Dynasty Warriors!
Based off the old Chinese novel, “Romance of The Three Kingdoms”, Dynasty Warriors combines the book’s events with real historical accounts. As a result, we have something that mixes both fiction and non-fiction together. The games revolve around the warring empires of “Wu”, “Wei”, and “Shu”.
Each army is led by a powerful warlord with dreams of conquest. An example of this is Wei, lead by the strong and enigmatic Cao Cao. Each game has you pick one of these factions and play through their storyline, each one trying to follow the events depicted in the Three Kingdoms book. Of course, Dynasty Warriors isn’t simply boring cut and dry historical events. There’s flashy anime moves, over the top designs and personalities, and a general sense of fun that you don’t get in many “educational games”.
The real fun of Dynasty Warriors comes from its combat, which has you as a lone officer going up against an army. There are other soldiers and officers on your team, but 90% of the time they’re useless and don’t help you in the slightest. As the games went on, they became easier as an attempt to better sell that “power fantasy” of you being the coolest guy on the battlefield. The game even features a kill count of how many peons and officers you’ve taken out. It’s pretty nutty but it works!
Now, Dynasty Warriors was a HUGE success. It was so big in fact that there are NINE mainline games in the series, all of which have their own expansion packs. There’s the “Xtreme Legends” expansions, which are just the base game with some extras like new characters and modes. There’s also the “Empires” expansions, which are essentially their own games with more of an emphasis on strategy and creating your own characters! There are also TONS of spinoff franchises, like…
Samurai Warriors!
The Samurai Warriors games are very similar to Dynasty Warriors, though set in the Sengoku period of Japan as opposed to ancient China. The games follows various officers from that period, like the hot-blooded warrior in red armor “Sanada Yukimura”, or the vicious demon king “Oda Nobunaga”. Samurai Warriors games started off very similar to Dynasty Warriors, but became more colorful and chaotic as they went along.
The combat got very fast and energetic as the series continued, ESPECIALLY during the fourth installment where dash attacks became a huge focus. While Dynasty Warriors was often condemned for telling the same story in EVERY game, Samurai Warriors usually set itself apart by focusing on different parts of Japanese history in each game. For example, Spirit of Sanada focused on the Sanada family throughout the ages. It showed these officers growing and changing as the battles they fought in went on, as well as aging them up as the years pass by.
Samurai Warriors 5 is vastly different from the others, choosing to focus primarily on a younger Oda Nobunaga. While 5 was pretty good, it’s focus on a couple of characters over the ensemble cast that these games usually focus on divided a lot of people. Regardless, I feel like Samurai Warriors has grown a lot as a series and has become something of a separate thing from the series that has inspired it. That’s not to say they’ve NEVER been interconnected before, such as in…
Warriors Orochi!
Picture this: The warriors of both Chinese and Japanese empires meeting each other, fighting each other, and having to contend with an army of ACTUAL invading demons all at the same time. Pretty nutty, huh? Warriors Orochi throws away any context of being based off historical fiction and changes things up by turning this into a MASSIVE crossover between not only the Warriors games, but pretty much any other game Koei-Tecmo owns. Even Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden and the Dead Or Alive ninja girls show up here!
Now, I’m mainly talking about the third game in the series. This is not just because it’s the cheapest one, but also the best one in the series. Orochi 4 is okay, but nothing beats that “collect ’em all” aspect that Orochi 3 had. Yeah, the Orochi games are known for having A LOT of characters. The third game had over 160, which is just nuts!
Warriors Orochi is also known for its namesake: The titular Orochi, who started off as the villain of the franchise. Over time, he became an anti-hero and then something of a protagonist. He was originally the boss of all these demons, but then it turns out things aren’t as cut and dry as they same. Now, let’s move onto one of my favorite Warriors games…
Hyrule Warriors!
The Legend of Zelda is one of the most prolific video-game franchises ever made. It has had TONS of games, merchandise, and even a short-lived animated series in the 80s! We… We don’t talk about that last one. It also had a “crossover” of sorts with Dynasty Warriors. And by crossover, I mean they just took the combat and general gameplay of a Warriors game and slapped Zelda characters over top of it and called it “Hyrule Warriors”.
Okay, that’s a bit unfair! Hyrule Warriors is actually a pretty good mixing of the two franchises. The third-person 1v100 combat really fits the Zelda setting, making you feel like a true warrior facing down armies of goons. The game revolves around the hero of time, Link, getting roped into an epic war against a team of classic Zelda villains. A new threat is attempting to resurrect the villainous Ganondorf, so Link and a TON of classic Zelda characters have to team up to take him down.
The game bolsters nearly 30 playable characters, including a TON of great of characters from across the series’ history! While not as substantial as other Warriors games, it’s still a good variety of characters from across such a massive franchise. You have mainstays like Link and Zelda, but also less seen characters like Midna and Tingle! I’ve only ever really played the first Hyrule Warriors game, due to it featuring characters from across the Zelda franchise. I never got into its followup, “Age of Calamity”, as I’m not a big fan of the game it spun off from. However, Hyrule Warriors isn’t the ONLY Nintendo franchise to get its own Warriors game…
Fire Emblem Warriors!
Fire Emblem Warriors is certainly one of the more interesting attempts at a Warriors spinoff. The Fire Emblem games are famous for their strategic combat and planning, something most modern Warriors games aren’t really the best at. The two Fire Emblem Warriors games (the original and Three Hopes) both focus more on strategy, making the player assign different party members to different parts of the map to accomplish goals.
While other Warriors games also do this, the AI in those games tend to be so awful that you STILL end up doing everything yourself. Fire Emblem Warriors thankfully has smarter AI teammates, along with more RPG elements than you can shake a stick at!
The second game, Three Hopes, is definitely one that has almost TOO MANY of these elements in it. You can spend hours wrapping your mind around every single mechanic and doing every last thing in camp, just to guarantee your party is ready for the battles ahead. It’s honestly kind of overkill, in my opinion. Three Hopes is still fantastic though, as is the first game. Speaking of playing Warriors games based off RPGs though…
Dragon Quest Heroes!
The Dragon Quest games are some of the finest RPGs Japan has ever created. They mixed the delightful art style of Akira Toriyama (who created the Dragon Ball series) with some classic JRPG turn-based combat for a truly unforgettable experience. Dragon Quest Heroes is yet another mixing of a classic game series with Warriors gameplay, but with a twist: It’s FAR more focused on RPG aspects than any other Warriors sub-franchise, apart from Fire Emblem Warriors.
The first Heroes game is a mix of RPG and tower defense, often requiring the player to place monsters on specific parts of the map in order to guard objectives while you’re off doing other things and fighting bosses. Honestly, the tower defense stuff can get a BIT annoying. That’s why I prefer the sequel, due to it breaking away from the repetitive formula of the first game and being a more traditional RPG.
The Heroes games (much like the first Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors games) has a crossover aspect to it, bringing in tons of guest party members from across the franchise. Unfortunately, for the first game it is quite selective and only brings in characters from a handful of games. It’s still pretty cool regardless, especially if you’re like me and grew up on the Dragon Quest VIII game for PS2!
With all that said, it’s time for the wrap up!
There are A LOT of Warriors games that I didn’t go over. I’m talking Fist of The North: Ken’s Rage, Touken Ranbu Warriors, One Piece: Pirate Warriors, etc. Thing is I’ve never played all the Warriors games, due solely to the fact that there are so many of them spread across multiple consoles. And honestly, I could write a book about how many of these games are out there. I won’t, but I definitely could!
Regardless, the Warriors games are pretty amazing. They’re simple third-person hack-and-slash games, but the general formula for them is so easy to copy and paste over other things that it comes off as a very flexible genre. The whole appeal of beating up armies with an overpowered officer or warrior is the kind of power fantasy only video-games can accurately provide.
To me, it all comes down to the fun aspect. While a lot of Warriors games are too similar to each other and mindless at times, they’re still quite a lot of fun. That’s why I recommend a person at least tries one of them, since they’re pretty much on any console under the sun and fairly easy to get a hold of.
Wow, been a while since I updated this blog! So what happened? Well, I think I lost interest in this particular kind of writing for a while. The past few years I’ve been submitting my stuff to newsletters or publications and I’ve had a bit of success with that. I write for a quarterly newsletter now and even starred in a documentary.
I started going to nerd conventions again with my friends, I’ve gained new friends and I’ve been living my life better trying to get back into a better shape mentally and physically. And I feel what happened with this blog is that I guess thought my opinions didn’t matter, that I would never find success through this kind of writing. And as such, I let this blog rot for 2 years without typing a single word on it.
However, that changed recently. My uncle, who had been the biggest fan of my writing on this blog suffered a blood clot in his brain that rendered him in a semi-vegetative state. He needs 24 hour care or else he’ll die and that just hit me super hard. It also made me realize something: This blog means more to me than just money or success.
I never started writing to become famous, have everyone agree with my opinions, or have everyone love me. I just wrote what I wanted to write, the things I liked, the things I disliked. And my uncle loved everything I wrote even if he didn’t get all the terminology. I think it’s time to return to this blog and get back in touch with what I love doing.
My goal? Write about the things I love, share it with whoever reads and whoever enjoys those things. I’m not giving up again, I will update once a week from now on. Thanks to those who continue to read my stuff, who dig through the archives of this dead blog to find those scraps of wordy morsels to devour. I shall bring that upon you all once more!
Hey everyone, I’m back! Did ya miss me? I figured I’d celebrate my return by revisiting a post that riled up controversy a few years ago, with at least 1 person. Ages ago, I made a rant about Monster By Mistake. To be fair, I had not seen that show in ages. And when I made the rant, I mainly stuck to the first 2 seasons.
However, I decided to do a deep dive this time and watch most of the third season as well. It’s still bad, but it did surprise me in some ways. Before we get into that, allow me to explain what this cartoon is. Monster By Mistake was a semi-popular (at least at the time it came out) Canadian cartoon on YTV.
It came out in 1999, when cartoons made in CG were all the rage. The story revolved around a young boy named Warren who was accidentally hit by a magical spell, causing him to transform into this giant blue furry Frankenstein every time he sneezes. His sister and novice spell-caster, Tracy, spends most episodes trying to fix her brother (or pretty much any problem they come across) with magic.
All the while, an evil wizard trapped in a ball named Gorgool is after them, helped by his nameless henchman known only as “The Servant”. Also, there’s a ghost that lives in the attic named “Johnny” that helps the siblings out on their various adventures. On paper, a show like that could work. The problem is that Monster By Mistake devolved into episodic garbage right away. Most episodes are just Warren and Tracy dealing with a relatively minor problem, they use magic to try and fix it, Johnny warns them not to do it, the magic makes everything worse, Johnny waves his finger at them, they fix the problem, and then everybody laughs before the credits roll.
While that formula is indictive of the era the show came out in, something that elevates it into a whole different realm of horrible-ness is the animation. The show looks incredibly dated, more so than other shows of that era. I’m pretty sure they just reused CG models from the pilot episode, released 3 years prior to the show’s release.
They didn’t bother to touch up these designs initially either, so they ended up looking pretty bland when the show was released in 1999. And then, season 3 happened. Most people don’t talk about season 3, because I don’t think many people actually watched it.
I’m pretty sure after season 2 of Monster By Mistake, interest completely waned in the series. I think that explains why season 3 tried to mix things up. First off, there’s the character design changes. Almost every characters looks phenomenally worse than they did in the first 2 seasons. They tried to give the faces a more detailed look, but it made them look much worse as a result.
What about the show’s general plot and setup? Well, the most this show has for plot is the eternal quest to change Warren back to normal. While this season doesn’t change that, it does add a bit more to it. You see, the jewel they use to cast spells is called the “Jewel of Fenrath”.
Season 3 is very heavily focused on travelling to Fenrath, the dimension where the jewel originated from. This changes the setting from suburbia to a fantasy setting, allowing for more distinct and varied backgrounds. In Fenrath, our heroes have to contend with Gorgool’s previously unmentioned brother, Morgool.
You’d think that this change of setting and villain would allow the show to evolve or grow, but it doesn’t really do that. The formula remains the same: The kids screw up with magic, things go wrong, they fix it, everybody laughs, the end. The change in setting doesn’t change much about the show, aside from adding in more fantastical elements from time to time.
Whenever something about Fenrath shows up that is actually interesting, it’s usually only around for an episode or two and then forgotten about. A big example of this is time slowing down in Fenrath, along with it being connected to the town the siblings live in. The spend an entire episode using Fenrath to jump back and forth from earth to get somewhere in time, which was honestly the most creative use of the setting in the entire show’s run.
I imagine the shoehorning in of Fenrath was due to the fantasy obsession at the time. You had films and games like Lord of The Rings and Morrowind coming out, bringing fantasy-based projects back into the limelight. However, I just don’t feel like Monster By Mistake was a good choice for this kind of setting.
While the show had fantastical elements, its severe lack of actual stakes or engaging characters made these fantasy realm adventures rather dull and bland. Now, you may think I’m being hard on this kids show. To be fair though, I grew up with the show and was in the target demographic at the time I watched it. Even back when I did watch it back then, I rarely enjoyed it.
I only watched it when stuff like ReBoot or Beast Wars wasn’t on, because I was obsessed with CG animation at the time and would watch anything in that animation style. Monster By Mistake was my biggest regret when it came to my passion for CG animation and I would often be reminded of the show every time I saw a film or show with bad CG. It stuck around in my head long after I had stop watching it, despite its terrible-ness.
Going back to it now and seeing that third season finally, I have to say that my opinions have not changed. It’s as bad as it was back then, even if the third season did try to change things up a bit. I’m sure people have fond memories of this show, and I respect that. Please keep in mind that these posts are just my personal opinion.
If there’s something I love, it’s old movies. Sure, a lot of old films don’t age well, but they have a certain nostalgic value that is unmatched by most modern cinema. The biggest example of this are “Kaiju/Giant Monster Movies”. Kaiju films often revolve around giant monsters destroying the world, or destroying other monsters.
The genre started with older films, like Godzilla and King Kong. To this day, giant monster movies are still around and getting made. Despite the updated technology newer films in the genre use, the movies have roughly stayed the same over the years. With a genre that doesn’t tend to innovate very often, it’s a wonder people still come back for these films year after year!
However, there’s a ton of really big reasons why “Kaiju Fascination” is so prevalent and never truly goes away. The biggest reason is that giant monster movies often show a lot of destruction. It’s rare to see a film that shows as much collateral damage as a Kaiju movie. Going to a film and seeing Godzilla destroy an entire city is something that never really gets old.
Mass destruction on a scale such as this is horrifying in real-life, but ends up being a ton of fun in a fictitious space. This is because film (and most forms of media) are “escapist” entertainment, which means they let us escape from reality. They let us see a fictitious account of what would otherwise be a dangerous scenario in real-life. It’s why “Disaster Movies” tend to be so big, people come to see them mostly for the explosions and destructive spectacles.
Another reason people like Kaiju are because of the designs. For example, Godzilla looks like a cross between a dragon and a T-Rex. His design is simple, which is why it’s remained mostly consistent over the years. It just works, and is often considered one of the most iconic giant monster designs of all time.
Characters like King Kong and Mothra are easily recognizable, while being landmarks of the genre in their own right. Another big pull when it comes to Kaiju are the scenarios it presents. Seeing 2 or more giant monsters duke it out in a city is an enticing premise, one that you don’t see too often in film.
I think this is also the pull of something like Ultraman or Power Rangers, which is just seeing these behemoths duking it out in all their glory. And with Kaiju movies, you just can’t get that kind of experience anywhere else. Be it CG or guys in rubber suits, giant monsters are always cool!
This probably isn’t the first time you’ve seen the words “4Kids” and “mistake” in the same sentence, yet here we are. Ultraman Tiga is considered the “holy grail” of the Ultraman franchise, so to speak. It’s a series with over 50 episodes, a movie, 3 sequel shows, and crossover movies with said shows. And of course, with any big series there must come attempts to bring it over to other countries.
While the series was big in Japan, the initial attempt to bring it to North America was not. Let’s talk about the infamous 4Kids dub of Ultraman Tiga! Airing in the early 2000s on the Fox-Box, Tiga followed a man named Daigo as he worked for an elite earth defense team called “GUTS”. Of course, when 4Kids bought the rights to dub the show, they didn’t exactly know what they were getting.
For one thing, Tiga had quite a bit of violence in it, along with references to older Ultraman shows that Americans wouldn’t get. Hell, there was an entire episode where Tiga met the original Ultraman and the series creator, Eiji Tsuburaya. If that episode had been dubbed and aired over here, most American kids would’ve been totally lost. It doesn’t help that 4Kids ended up toning the dub down considerably. While death got referenced here or there, the darker themes of the source material were given the standard 4Kids censorship.
On top of this, we had lines like the infamous “she looks like my yoga instructor” added to the mix. Suffice to say, the dub is terrible. However, I do have quite a bit of nostalgia for it. I think a lot of that comes down to it being my introduction to Ultraman as a series, since I had never heard of it before this. Plus, the English theme song (as linked above) is surprisingly catchy.
The show gave off this “poorly dubbed Godzilla movie” vibes in my eyes, which I dug. One of my favorite movies as a kid was that absolute garbage dub of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. Naturally, I ended up really vibing with 4Kids’ god awful dub in my younger years. Going back to it now, I can say that it hasn’t aged well at all and doesn’t really hold up.
It’s pretty clear 4Kids was trying to make Tiga the next Power Rangers or Big Bad Beetleborgs. And while they failed at it, I can at least give them props for trying to dub something that isn’t an anime for once. It was definitely a failed experiment and one of the few shows on the Fox-Box to bomb so poorly that it was never fully dubbed. Maybe that’s for the best, since I don’t think 4Kids could’ve handled later episodes that well. Regardless, it did pave the way for the cheesy-as-hell Ultraman dubs we’d get later, so there’s that.
Gosh, it’s been a hot minute since I talked about anything Monster Hunter related! So, let’s talk about the first generation of Monster Hunter, specifically the handheld spinoff: Monster Hunter Freedom. First, let’s travel back to the year 2005. The first Monster Hunter had been out for over a year and a half at this point, so it was only natural for Capcom to try and cash in more on the concept. And thus, Capcom took both Monster Hunter and Monster Hunter G (an expansion for the first game) and converted it haphazardly into a PSP game.
And the results were… Mixed. Look, I’m not going to beat around the overly pixelated bush with you, this game stinks. This was my first introduction to Monster Hunter and it was just really bad. Between the long loading screens, the unforgiving difficulty, and the lack of any real narrative, I found myself getting bored real fast.
The whole setup for the game is that you are a rookie Monster Hunter sent to the village of Kokoto to hunt monsters. That’s pretty much the whole game, you just hunt monsters, gather items, forge new gear, etc. While later titles would make this a more fun affair with a larger array of weapons, styles, special moves, and even animal sidekicks to take along with you, Freedom is lacking in those areas.
Now, Monster Hunter is definitely a game that shines in its multiplayer. The problem? Getting people to play any of the Monster Hunter games on PSP with you! Yes, the PSP wasn’t as much of a big seller in America as it was in Japan. So, when I played this game as a teenager, I had no one to play the game with. No one had a PSP or had even heard of Monster Hunter at the time, so I was stuck playing this game alone and getting frustrated at how long it took to load and how annoying bosses could be.
Freedom Unite and Portable 3rd (the successors to the first game) had more options and things to do, even if they still didn’t have online multiplayer. Kokoto Village felt pretty bare in this game, not helped by the fact that it lacks the big online towns that the console games had. It feels absolutely miniscule compared to villages we get later.
Going back to this game after a decade feels like going back to my first pair of shoes: It’s uncomfortable, doesn’t fit, and makes me want to just slide my favorite sneakers back on. The game’s NPCs are bland and not fun to talk to at all, along with Kokoto itself just not being as interesting as later villages like Yakumo or Pokke.
To be fair, Monster Hunter Freedom does play like your average Monster Hunter game. You go out and hunt monsters, gain new weapons and items, and give into that sweet dopamine rush. I can also forgive some of its limitations due to it being a new venture for the franchise. After all, Capcom was working with new hardware and a handheld Monster Hunter game was a foreign concept at the time.
Nowadays, Monster Hunter practically lives on handheld. Outside of games like Monster Hunter World, you’ll often find most modern Monster Hunter games on handheld devices. In a sense, Monster Hunter Freedom was paving the way for the future of the franchise.
Sadly though, it was a rocky first entry in this series of handheld adaptations. The lack of a lock-on feature and a rather awkward camera makes this game a chore to play at times, yet it still sold over 1 million copies in Japan. A lot of that comes down to Japanese players being able to find other people with PSPs and copies of the games, giving them more access to multiplayer options.
This would grow and evolve, resulting in Monster Hunter Freedom 2 being pumped out not long after. And while I do have grievances with this game overall, it did introduce things like the food buff system and the farm. These features would become mainstays in the series, with Capcom still putting them in modern games today.
Even though I don’t like this game, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t important. It’s the first Monster Hunter game to do gangbusters in Japan and introduced the world to the idea of a handheld monster-hunting action RPG. To me, that’s an impressive feat in spite of its quality.
Yep, I’m talking about City of Heroes again! I last talked about the game 2 years ago, back when the private servers surfaced. Today, I want to do a full-on review of my favorite game! City of Heroes is one of the games that allowed me to nurture my creativity, while also providing me with one of the best superhero video-games I’ve ever played. Today, I will fully review this game and look at what made the original release back in 2004 so great.
First, some backstory: City of Heroes was a game that was announced in the early 2000s. It was advertised as a “Superhero MMORPG”, one that would allow you to fully create your own superhero and venture into a massive open city with it. You’d do battle with super-villains, establish your own super-team, and gain new powers and abilities along the way.
The game was advertised heavily in gaming magazines in the years leading up to its release, before eventually coming out in 2004 to glowing reviews and praise. City of Heroes was and still is a game like no other, due in large part to the fact that it had no real competition for the longest time.
Champions Online and DC Universe Online cropped up later, but only after City of Heroes had been out for a few years. City of Heroes was a truly masterful superhero MMO, but was unfortunately shut down back in 2012. With no real reason given for the shutdown and no way feasible way to play it, the fan-base became disgruntled.
NCSoft, who is City of Heroes’ publisher, dealt with a ton of backlash as a result. The backlash was so massive that the fan-base never truly forgave them for the closure. Almost 7 years after the shutdown, City of Heroes returned in the form of private servers! So, what makes this game so great?
For one thing, the character creator is amazing! You can customize your superhero’s costume, size, and even the look of his/her superpowers! The game provides thousands of different clothing options, along with many different sliders for each part of the body. This gives the game one of the most extensive character creation systems ever!
Before creating your character, the game makes you choose an “Origin”. You choose your origin from one of 5 different paths: Magic, Natural, Science, Mutation and Technology. Your origin defines what enhancements you can get for your character. Then you dive into the INSANE amount of powersets and abilities you can give your character.
You have stuff like claws, martial arts skills, the ability to shoot lasers, super strength, gadgets, and even radioactive powers! Of course, because of the insane amount of servers, there are many different powers divided between them. A lot of content is restricted between servers, depending on who owns them. Of course, they all have the base game powers.
The combat is pretty basic, nothing too special. You press different number keys to activate your abilities, use them on your enemies and try not to die. It’s often quite repetitive, but the large amount of abilities and powers on display here do make up for it.
Of course, the big thing about this game is its lore and characters. From the heroic Freedom Phalanx to the villainous Arachnos, there are tons of super-powered organizations and characters on display here. Your hero, villain, or anti-hero exists within one of the game’s various cities and takes on missions within. A lot of these missions are part of story arcs, some of which are pretty awesome.
One of my favorite was a sort of fantasy-based story that a trio of magical floating books sent me into. From there, I saved a random farm from an army of robots and it was great! Then there was a tournament I did on the villains side, where I fought other villains and eventually teamed up with all of them to defeat an even greater threat.
Stuff like this is what makes City of Heroes great. Couple that with an intensive upgrade system that doesn’t rely on randomly dropped weapons or armor, along with a vast open world filled with colorful characters and you have a recipe for success. And successful it was, for nearly a decade. Even after the official servers shut down, people are STILL coming back to play it on private servers and I think that’s great.
However, having grown up with the game and playing it now in modern day, I can tell that there are parts of it that have not aged well. While the dated graphics do have their charm, it can sometimes hamper the whole “create a character” experience. You can make a custom character look nearly identical to a copyrighted character, but they’ll only ever look like a PS2 version of said character. That doesn’t change how extensive and awesome the system is, but the lacking visuals does leave a bit to be desired.
Also, there’s the combat system I brought up earlier. It’s one of the reasons that I often quit the game and wouldn’t come back to it for months, it came down to how repetitive it was. It doesn’t help that 90% of the areas you go to in the game look identical. There’s little that differentiates one warehouse interior from another. So when you couple a dated combat system together with a multitude of areas that are all identical to each other, you get a rather same-y feeling after a while.
City of Heroes is still a good game, even in 2021. Sure, it’s not pretty and its dated systems would probably turn a lot of people off. Still, it’s character creator is second-to-none and the amount of super powers you can get in this game is insane. I have yet to see a superhero game that tops this one, aside from maybe Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Once more I recommend this awesome game to those who haven’t played it. There are tons of great private servers now, way more since the last time I talked about this game. Give this classic a shot sometime!
Syrup With A Side Of Writing 