This is a research compilation. Each link holds a lot of entertainment I’ve found related to Action 52 and Active Enterprises.

Okay fine, maybe it isn’t the worst game ever but it’s definitely on the list.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about the Game Master. I’m talking about the Cheetah Men. I’m talking about music so awesomely bad, that Japanese people are remixing it. That is never a good sign.

So what did the public do to deserve Action 52? I can tell you that not a single person thought it was any good. Maybe the programmer was traumatized as a child and wanted to torture the parents who seem to have a talent for choosing the worst games around the holiday season.

More likely, it was a pair of guys that had no idea what they were getting into. They formed Active Enterprises (in the Bahamas, me thinks tax dodging) and duped a bunch of investors into their “$4 per game” spiel when it came to Action 52. And they released it. One huge multicart + a comic book + the promise of future merchandise. The release thankfully went mostly unnoticed by gamers. Let’s face it, Action 52 has become popular in the new century, but before it was really an unknown.

Did poor sales and poor quality stop Active? Well, eventually. But not before they could release a sequel to Cheetahmen! Wow, they really wanted to start that up. Apparently they trademarked the name, hoping to make these cheetah guys as popular as TMNT. Fat chance. Still, you have to admire their ambition.

Cheetahmen 2 didn’t even make it out of the warehouse (thanks Sean Roche) before Active started promising Cheetahmen 3 on their new vaporware: The Action Game Master. Finally, God saw fit to smite them and save us from future headache. They were bought out, Vince Perri left the company, and that was the end of it.
Well okay, no. They did outsource Action 52 for the Genesis to another company that is still going strong today. Even they couldn’t save the idea, but they did a much better job. And yes, I know the Genesis version looks like it sucks. Aren’t you happy I’m not linking you the rom for the NES version? Consider that generosity my Christmas gift to you.

Want to learn more? Here’s where to go!

Yoomp!

Well, you guys should know by now the sorts of activities I get up to in the wee hours. I suffered a concussion which meant bed rest. At my computer. It was nice; I got a chance to ‘flip’ through the latest RGCD. They’re up to volume 4 now, although I’m not sure how much longer they’ll be able to keep it up. Everyone has picked out the Pen Pen Olympics, but I found something of far greater interest that no one mentioned. RGCD turned me onto this competition that happened on the other side of the planet, handled by ABBUC.

The idea was to make a game using an old Atari XL/XE. Now I’m not expecting you to know what the hell that is. Let’s just say that it’s not an Atari 2600 and it was kinda like a computer (released before the 5200 obviously). Regardless, it’s pretty limited hardware. So the fact that the competition received entries as beautiful as Crownland and Yoomp really says something about the programmers. Crownland was an okay platformer, but nothing truly special other than the tremendous execution (don’t worry, it’s included in the download anyway).

Yoomp!, on the other hand, was a total delight. It felt like Skyroads, but in a tube. Okay, more like Trailblazer I guess. Hell, I really don’t know. All I know is that the music is damn catchy and the level design is seriously spot-on. It gets tough, but not overwhelming, and it knows not to stick around too long.

Go kill an hour with this game; it could be the best Atari game you’ve never played.

Mondo Agency

For those of you with your ear to the ground, Tigsource held a B-game competition. It all started with Sexy Hiking and Derek’s slipping grasp of production values when it came to his reviews (don’t believe me? What about his addiction to Ikiki?). Then this brilliantly bad idea struck him: Let’s have a competition where the point is to make fun but absolutely terrible games!

The funny thing is, a lot of great ideas arose out of this. One of the major hits (and there were at least a dozen, seriously check out the whole list) was Mondo Medicals. A very quirky game that defies explanation.

Well, now there’s a sequel and it’s name is Mondo Agency. Some stuff was added in; mostly it’s a creepier and screwier version of Medicals. A very worthy addition that builds upon the original premise. If you need a decent scare, this is the best you’ll find. Oh the Swedes; they make such interesting indy games don’t they?

Very very cool, a huge thanks to AresBrutus for posting it to Youtube. Hopefully it will last long enough on there for you to watch it, before it gets taken down.

I thought you might be interested in this little mini-series documentary done by Discovery. I’m pretty impressed to say the least. It’s an hour per, for five episodes. Instead of covering every milestone chronologically, it instead divides it up into five fairly interesting topics. Honestly, I hope they keep making them, because I’d like to see what else they could talk about. There’s a lot about video games that can still be discussed. Although the series is made for the casual viewer, even hardcore gamers might be surprised and can learn quite a lot about the industry just from these few episodes. I don’t agree with everything said and covered, but overall it’s a decent attempt to try and “make sense” of the rapid success of the gamer mentality.

Rise of Video Game (Youtube posts)

1. Level 1 talks about how the very medium of video games has evolved, beginning with Tennis For Two on the oscilloscope and evolving into arcade and home consoles. It discusses the evolution from 2D to 3D graphics and talks about where we’re going; all in all a good introductory episode. It’s fun to watch, but ultimately you won’t learn much if you’re into gaming already.

2. Level 2 is probably the most interesting, at least to me. It talks about how games evolved from being a set of tasks or activities (blow up those missiles, figure out these controls, etc.) into being a form of narrative with characters, stories, and emotions. I was very impressed with the way they handled this episode and I recommend it highly.

3. Level 3 kinda lost my interest. It’s actually a very good episode, discussing the nature of shooters, how military simulations became popular, and how the military and the gaming industry are working together now. The problem is I knew everything in this episode already; seeing shots of the first Microsoft Flight Simulator was giggle-worthy. Also the first twenty minutes talked about Doom and similar games, which makes me happy.

4. Level 4 was hella cool. It talked about modding and machinima (covering Red vs. Blue in particular). I was pretty interested in it; it features extensive interviews with Sid Meier, Will Wright, and Peter Molyneux. It talked about God games (Sim City, Populous, etc) and the nature of creating extensions to games and how communities are based around this. It sadly left out the popular modding community surrounding Valve, or the old Doom mods, but it did cover the Sims. You can’t have everything I suppose, but they did a decent job nonetheless.

5. Level 5 talked about online play, moved into MMOs, discussed selling virtual currency/items for real currency. It was pretty interesting and a debate that’s been on and off throughout many online gaming communities. I didn’t realize that WoW gold was actually worth more than Russia’s or China’s GDP. That’s depressing, but now I see why they deal in virtual money.

Very cool series, and you seriously should watch it. Forget watching It’s a Wonderful Life this year, Jimmy deserves the break. Learn about video games instead; if you aren’t into it, maybe this series will show you why we are.

Winter’s Heart

Don’t be fooled by the Bitpimp logo, this is Darthlupi at it again! Yeah, his website has been down for like a million years. Will we ever get to play the final version of Velella? Look those two links I gave you can keep you busy for days. If you haven’t played Seiklus or The Cleaner, what the hell is wrong with you?

So anyway, Darthlupi has decided to make a spiritual sequel to Magecraft. The difference is, this one doesn’t suck (man, that sounded harsh.) In fact it super does not suck; the very creation of The Cleaner has put Darthlupi on my short radar next to Nifflas and Pixel, and this cements him in that…uh…trilogy of… yeah I don’t know where I’m going with that either.

No joke. Benjamin Pages pulls some nifty a la chiptunes out of his hat and Lupinex gives us graphics and gameplay we haven’t seen from him before. This game is overhead and you make snowballs and whack baddies with them using your staff. The freeze meter is a great idea and Score doubles as XP. It’s a simple action puzzle game, but with a very cool RPG feel.

So if you come into my store today and notice that I’m a bit too busy to help you, you’ll probably see this game when you look over my shoulder. And Paul Eres, thanks for the heads-up. If it wasn’t for you guys, I dunno how I’d find this stuff out. If you ever read this, I’ve mirrored the download on my site; feel free to use it.

So how long have you been a gamer? Some people say since Final Fantasy X (darn kids). Some people go back to the early days of Nintendo (and these gamers love to talk about it). Okay, so we all got our start in video games somewhere. Even those of us born after 81  have slavishly gone through what the Odyssey, Atari 2600, Intellivision, and Fairchild have to offer.

But technically, we could go back further. Really, pinball tables have been around for longer. Are pinball tables a form of electronic gaming? Should we consider each it’s own console, as we would those old Tiger toys or Game & Watch? I promise to avoid the debate.  Let’s focus on what matters! I do know that pinball is a lot of fun, but trying to find a real pinball machine these days is near impossible. Oh sure, pinball as a genre became really interesting with Pinball Quest, Jaki Crush (as you may remember me posting), and especially the Epic Pinball series (as epic as it sounds). There have been a lot of video games that use pinball mechanics, blurring the line between what pinball tables had to offer and what our imagination brings us. So we can at least agree that pinball feels right at home; but what about those tables? Those real tables that have to rely on real physics?

I dunno.  I do know this though, Randy Davis has taken the line between pinball and video games and has completely destroyed it (thankfully.) This program is an emulator (technically), taking screenshots/sounds/physics from nearly 200 tables over the past half a century. Really quite impressive, even if it is a hefty download. You need to grab VPinMame and Visual Pinball from their main site. You have to sign up for an account (which sucks), then wait for the download (which sucks), then set up the program (which sucks), and then you get to play the game (a few weeks of awesome for pinball nerds).

Get ye to Visual Pinball!

I hope you aren’t expecting a screenshot. Realms of Despair is a great game, born of Canada. I know we’ve certainly been playing it a lot over the years. Hell, there are still guys in Kitimat and Terrace that play that I know of. Don’t think it’s kept to us though; it has a decent player base in Australia and England. Okay, to be fair there’s usually only 300 people logged on and it’s more of a chatroom than anything else nowadays.

But there was a time when it was something spectacular. Sure it’s a text-based MMO (or a MUD as we oldies call it), but that doesn’t stop it from being fun. Trust me, you’ve never seen so many class/race combinations and gear actually affects your leveling so you want the best for your level at all times. It makes it interesting (and those buffbots sure make it a lot easier for newbies today). It started over 10 years ago and I’ve been off and on since it first came out. Hell I even did some work on it myself as an Imm. The SMAUG engine spawned a lot of copycats and some interesting ideas; I think the server list on ZMud is still updated and it’s going pretty strong. All and all, a very interesting subculture and one I can highly recommend. Friendly players, lots of documentation that puts Thottbot to shame, and very interesting quests and areas that will appeal to any fantasy book nerd’s nostalgiac little heart.

If you like reading fantasy, you seriously owe it to yourself to run through this game. Might I suggest half-elf vampire?

ZMud
RoD Wiki
Realms of Despair Main Page