If you haven’t heard of it, shame on you. Find it somewhere. Watch it. Oh my Jesus, please watch this film. You can buy it here, and holy my ass, it is more than worth the 9 bucks.  First off, let’s take a look at this cover:

What the holy Hell is that? Well, for starters, that horrifyingly ugly man is Tommy Wiseau, the film’s star, writer, director, producer, and executive producer. Why the cover is just a close-up of his hideous face is anyone’s guess, and the cheap, MSPaint-esque effect done to the title is pretty fantastic, as well.

If you’re wondering why the film is called “The Room,” then I don’t know what to tell you.  I guess since the vast majority takes place in the guy’s living room, that’s one possible explanation, but it’s pretty clear that this is the result of a lack of funding, and has nothing to do with any sort of drama.

I’m losing track of my point, which is not that this is a god awful pile of my dick.  This is seriously the worst fucking movie I’ve ever seen, but I’m not writing this post about a movie.  I’m writing this article about the Internet.  As I sat and watched this film, I pondered the possibility that some dedicated fan might have made some companion media to go along with it. If I were lucky, maybe even a flash game.

Well, folks, it has to be said: The Internet won, and remains undefeated.

I came across this masterpiece. Whoever is responsible for this, you deserve a gold star on your chart. I’m amazed. A fully developed, Leisure Suit Larry-style adventure game based on this hilariously bad cinematic turd? Sign me the fuck up. Let’s start with a look at the graphics:

Totally solid, mid-90s level PC game graphics, and the character models are amazing.  Look at Johnny’s face.  It looks like it’s melting.  I don’t think it could possibly be any better.

The gameplay is totally solid, occasionally straying from the point-and-click style adventure in favor of some RPG-style turn based combat, football-tossing minigames, a sandwich-making mechanic, and even a track race.  The only thing missing is the super-unerotic sex scenes, sadly replaced with an image of Johnny sleeping peacefully.  However, the designers made up for it with some super-unerotic nudity of both Johnny and Lisa.

The story is sensational, as it’s almost entirely lifted from the film, including a huge quantity of the film’s dialogue directly transcribed into the game.  The best, of course, is the video of Johnny’s most memorable line, ramping up the drama massively.

Beyond the normal story, there are several delicious easter eggs, including an explanation for this:

The game also attempts to explain Johnny’s bizarre behavior and mannerisms in the end, with an explanation that is, honestly, as plausible as anything else in the film.

Overall, the game is a ton of fun, and it’s twice as fun because it fits in so snugly with the film.  Definitely play through it at least once, and try to find as many spoons as you can.  It’s worth it.

Grade: 9.0/10

If you’re between 25 and 35, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about, and it’s not “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.”  That’s right, it’s Disney cartoon theme songs from the 80’s and 90’s!  Your favorite!

For those of you that remember, cartoons used to be awesome.  Now they’re shit.  You can thank a lot of people for that, from the FCC to the asshole that came up with ReBoot.  Once upon a time, cartoons didn’t have to worry about violence or educational content, they just had to worry about selling toys, and that was the fucking way we liked it.

Now, Disney classed it up a bit, but let’s not pretend that a lot of these weren’t money-grabs.  Regardless, the difference between Disney and the more conventional studios like DIC, Ruby-Spears, or Filmation was that Disney made absolutely fucking flawless theme songs.  Let’s take a look, in roughly chronological order.

We start off with a classic that everyone remembers, Gummi Bears:

The lyrics are clever and informative, and the hook is unfuckwithable.  I dare you, the next time you’re hanging out with friends, just start singing “guuuuuuuuumi beeeeeeeears,” and there’s a 90% chance that people will start singing with you.  There’s a 10% chance that you’ll get your ass kicked, so be warned.  In either case, this was a classic show that was on the air for years, thanks in no small part to an awesome theme song.

A little less well-known show, The Wuzzles, was actually produced and released at the same time as Gummi Bears, but it was fucking ridiculous, so people didn’t watch it.

But that song kicks fucking ass, am I right?  As fucked up as this premise is, this song is amazing.  This song sounds like it was written by Chicago or something.  It’s pretty epic.  The show sucks, though.  It’s really bad.  The implied inter-species breeding is a little creepy, too.

We move onto the gold standard.  You all know this one:

Amazing.  Incredible.  Flawless.  I mean, that synth-brass that comes in under that chorus is mind-blowing.  Whoever sang this song needs to come to my birthday this year.  It can’t be touched.  I think we can all agree that music, as an art form, peaked in the form of the Ducktales theme song.  If this song had a vagina, I would have sex with it.  In fact, if it had an anus, I would have gay sex with it.

Moving on, a classic character gets a hip,  new update:

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have much stronger memories of watching that freaky-ass live action Winnie the Pooh show with everybody in crazy costumes and whatnot, but this song definitely burrows into your brain.  And you have to be careful, because if you get caught whistling the Winnie the Pooh theme while out with your friends, you’re getting made fun of for the rest of your life.

Here’s another one you’ll all recognize:

Man, that one gets really high at the end.  Not that… I’m trying to sing along.  I’m just noting.  It’s really the subtle things that make these great.  I don’t know what that weird synth percussion is at the into, but it really adds a lot.  Way to go, guys.

And now we move into the 90s:

A major style change, here.  TaleSpin was, as you know, based on The Jungle Book, so the theme has a “jungle” sound to it.  It’s still very well-written, but it doesn’t have the same magical feel to it that the earlier theme songs did.  Things changed in the 90s, and they were never the same.

Speaking of the 90s:

Classic series, classic theme song.  However, we still haven’t gotten back to that epic power pop style that carried all of the 80s theme songs.  This one sounds kind of like a Michael Jackson song.  That’s not a bad thing; it’s just different.  Youngsters were getting more “hip” and “edgy,” so our theme songs needed more edge to them.  Disney brings you Darkwing Duck.

Here is where things start to go downhill:

I don’t even know what’s going on here.  In some ways, they’re going back to the pop-heavy feel.  That hook is very poppy.  But then you’ve got this very corporate rap thing going on with the weird deep voice and awkward turntable stuff.  And what is it with the kid dancing with his shoes untied?  Was that a fad that I forgot about?  Goof Troop gets an F- from me, and things didn’t really get better from there.

Disney wanted to make an animated show based on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and after some changes, ended up with this:

This song is all over the place.  It’s loud, it’s “in your face,” and it’s obnoxious.  It’s fun, but it doesn’t have the kind of staying power that you get from a Gummi Bears or Ducktales theme.

Then things get really ugly:

What the fuck is this?  Which out of work, 80s hair-metal band did they hire to write this pile of shit?  It sounds like The Final Countdown being raped in the ass by Pour Some Sugar on Me.  And that’s not even examining the immense shittiness of the concept.  We’re going to adapt a movie series about underdog youth hockey players, and the TV show will be about duckfaced aliens who fight crime and play hockey on the side.  Whoever came up with this abortion of a show should be raped in the ass by Pour Some Sugar on Me.

I entered high school in 1997, and stopped following cartoons as much.  As I look back, most of them turned out to be pretty shitty, so I guess I didn’t miss much.  In conclusion, Ducktales is awesome.

Some games, on the other hand, need – and deserve – more help. Super Dodge Ball is one of those games.

Super Dodge Ball is brought to us by Technos Japan Corporation, an offshoot of the better-known Data East.  Despite an impressive lineup, Technos Japan never got the same kind of praise that was lavished upon bigger companies like Capcom, Konami, or Tecmo.  They do boast a number of impressive games, such as Double Dragon, Super Spike V’Ball, the epic River City Ransom, and Super Dodge Ball.

Those of us who loved playing dodge ball in gym class and who miss pegging slow and/or fat kids with rubber balls only have video games to fall back on these days.  Fortunately, this dodge ball video game is incredibly satisfying.

For the main game, Technos has invented their own version of dodge ball.  I’d explain it, but it’s easier just to show you:

So the point of this version of dodge ball, which is played on an international level, is to drill the people on the other team until they die.  That’s pretty awesome.  I’d love to be a part of the governing body of the International Dodge Ball Federation, just to hang out with the kind of badasses who come up with rules like that.  I’m guessing that the IDBF Board is made up of Charles Bronson, Samuel L. Jackson, General George Patton, and Dutch Schaefer.

So in the main game, you play death ball against a poorly named “All-Star” team from New York, followed by the national teams of England, India, Iceland (who plays on a frozen pond), China, Kenya (who obnoxiously plays on loose dirt), Japan, and the Soviet Union.  Then, if you’re really awesome, you get to play against your own evil shadows, which doesn’t seem like it would be sanctioned by the IDBF, but those motherfuckers are crazy, so who knows?

The best part of Super Dodge Ball is the power throws.  If you sprint and then time your throw right, your player will throw the ball in some crazy way that makes is change shape and/or direction, making it harder to avoid and more likely to do higher damage.  The ball flashes and looks like a frisbee or a football or more than one ball or a tiny ball or something equally weird, but it sometimes fucks people so hard that they fly around the world, which is totally awesome.

Being an awesome sports game, Super Dodge Ball obviously includes a two-player option, wherein each player selects any of the teams from “World Cup” play, and they play a match on some random grass stadium.  It’s exactly what you’d think it would be, and I will kick your ass in it if you’d like, because I’m awesome.

There’s also a third mode, Bean Ball, that can be one- or two-player.  Bean Ball is complete fucking pandemonium, a no-holds barred, every-man-for-himself death-fest in which every player on regular Team USA is trying to kill every other player with a dodge ball.  Check it:

Totally awesome.  This mode is quite a bit harder than the regular mode because you’re so often out of good defensive position, but the craziness makes it a lot of fun.

So, with two completely different game modes, two multiplayer modes, and lots of team, this is a pretty robust NES title with a lot of replay value.  If you haven’t played it yet, you’re a jerk.  You Should Have.

Score: 9.4/10

It didn’t.

Another adaptation “created” by F.X. Nine, Metal Gear made a lot of mistakes.  For starters, there’s the cover.  For whatever reason, World of Power had a policy against showing weapons on the covers of their books.  I mean, I get that it’s for children, but there has to have been a better way than this:

How stupid does this look?  By editing out Snake’s gun, they’ve got him awkwardly holding his clenched fists up like he’s throttling an invisible giraffe.  Or holding an invisible gun, I guess, but it’s stupid either way.  I mean, you’ve got Solid Snake, one of the greatest bad-asses in video game history, named after a classic Kurt Russell character, modeled after a classic Michael Biehn character, holding someone’s invisible penis up to his face.  Terrible.

But, as they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover.  You can, but let’s give this one a shot anyway.  The book starts off as follows:

Justin Halley strode purposefully through the underground hallways of Fox Hound Command.  At age twenty, he was the youngest captain ever to serve in the U.S. Marines Special Forces antiterrorist squad known as the Snake Men.  His code name — Solid Snake.

Wait, what?  What the fuck?  Solid Snake’s name is Solid Snake.  You don’t need to give him a new name.  You certainly don’t need to give him a pussy name like Justin Halley.  Justin Halley is a guy whose girlfriend cheats on him with an entire soccer team, and who always forgives her because he’s a bitch.  He’s not an elite supercommando who fucks up enemy soldiers and dogs like they’re nothing.

And the “Snake Men?” Really?  You can’t call the group the Snake Men if you call their youngest hotshot Solid Snake.  None of the other Snake Men have snake-related code names.  Though, I guess there’s a similar issue in the game with Gray Fox being a member of FOXHOUND, but that’s not quite as blatant.  In the book, none of this shit makes any sense.  Not to mention how fucking awful the “Snake Men” is as a name for a top-secret paramilitary unit.  Actually, I’ll mention it.  That shit is terrible.

The story is a total mess.  First of all, apparently this dipshit is the best of the (sigh) Snake Men, so his superior officers have decided to send him in to stop a terrorist plot that might otherwise end the world.  Oh wait, that’s not it at all!  They’ve decided to send him deliberately into a guaranteed suicide mission that won’t directly affect the terrorist plot at all, and just to make sure he doesn’t accidentally accomplish anything, they’re going to feed him false information the whole time!  All this while admitting that he’s their best soldier!  Good use of resources, gentlemen!

WTF moment: Snake finds the cigarettes, which he doesn’t take, because they might be poisoned. Because terrorists often leave poison cigarettes lying about on the off-chance that an enemy spy might pick them up and smoke them.  And, just because it’s a book for kids, he points out that, even if the cigarettes aren’t poisoned, “they’re deadly enough on their own.”  What a bitch.

Furthermore, the book ruins the story by cutting out the huge  plot twist that comes at the end of the game.  In fact, Big Boss isn’t in the book at all, and the villain is referred to as CaTaffy the entire time.  That name never appeared in the game, and was a product of the localization in the instruction manual.  It’s pretty stupid.

Another feature of Worlds of Power books is the useless game hints they include, like “You can often defeat the Shotgunner if you hit him ten times.”  First of all, often?  Sometimes it’s enough, but sometimes not?  And second of all, how does this affect my strategy?  I feel like “hit the bad guy” is a pretty standard practice in video games.

In conclusion, this was embarrassing.  It’s one thing to throw some stupid shit into a story about Blaster Master, which had a story that was, at best, incomprehensible, and at worst, completely fucking awful.  Metal Gear had a cool story, and this book takes out the best parts and replaces them with whining and Public Service Announcements.  Fuck you.

Score: 0.0/5

The first of these books, dubbed “Worlds of Power” by some assuredly slick-haired douchebag, was Blaster Master, a book “created” by F.X. Nine.  As to the difference between authoring a book and creating it, your guess is as good as mine.

The back of this masterpiece of American literature contains the following text:

Follow Jason into a mysterious underground cavern full of strange alien beings.  Soon he’s locked in battle with a gang of radioactive mutants — fighting to save the earth from destruction!

Now, I don’t know about you, but for the seven-year-old version of me, that sounds fucking awesome.  Twenty years later, it seems pretty goddamn stupid.

The limitations for writing a book based on Blaster Master are pretty obvious.  For starters, and this has been discussed extensively in the past, the “story” behind Blaster Master is absolutely fucking ridiculous.  This is as much story as Sunsoft elected to provide us with in 1988:

So let’s see if we’ve got this: This kid’s pet frog escapes, wanders off behind the house, jumps on an apparently leaky container of radioactive waste, grows 500%, and jumps down some enormously deep hole.  Then the kid jumps down after the frog (honestly, who cares this much about a frog), inexplicably suffers no injuries, and finds some sort of space-tank with an accompanying space suit at the bottom.  Then he starts driving around whatever-the-fuck and blows up robots and shit.  I swear, these guys weren’t even trying back then.

So, with this source material, F.X. Nine decides to “create” a book.  He names the heretofore unnamed hero “Jason Frudnick,” which is about as awful a name as I can imagine.  He keeps the flawless back story of the frog turning itself into a mutant with some carelessly discarded toxic waste, and also keeps the nonsense about the kid diving into a dark pit after his frog.  He makes the interesting choice to add a human-looking alien chick for the hero to not bone, and concludes that the disappearing frog is part of some sort of alien monster plot to kidnap random disgusting pets and turn them into mutants. I mean, I get that this is for kids, but I don’t remember ever being dumb enough to accept this nonsense.

The one thing that really struck me is that the Creator of the book actually breaks it up into “areas” like in the game, but gets bored halfway through and starts skipping areas.  It’s probably all for the best, since I was long-since bored by that point.

Blaster Master is, idiotic story aside, a totally awesome game.  In fact, while it isn’t remembered as an NES classic along the lines of Super Mario Brothers or The Legend of Zelda, it was a very popular game at the time, and probably suffered in the long-term from not being followed by quality sequels.  I’m not really sure what F.X. Nine’s goal was, but he turned a really fun and exciting game into a terrible and boring book.

Score 0.0/5