Lesser Known Heroes From Comics & Gaming - Vol. 1

I originally had the idea to spread this theme out over the course of a week over on Facebook, but due to technical difficulties and miscellaneous errors on their end of processed bullshit, I have decided to do this theme (along with others in the future) entirely on here. What started as what was going to be a theme over the course of a few days, I have confined to this theme to a singular post. That being said, I shall return to this theme in the future as I think it's something that I could always return back to and enlighten my readers about lesser known heroes from both of these mediums.

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Lesser Known Heroes From Comics & Gaming #1 - Cybergenic Ranger

Right off the bat, I know what you're thinking. No, he's not an obscure member of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I know there’s a ton of people going, “Where in the blue hell did you dig up this game from?” when they see this crap. I have to peg that credit to the folks at Games Done Quick as I caught one of their “mystery game” competitive speedruns as someone thought this would have been a great joke to troll the players in the bracket.

Who is the Cybergenic Ranger, you ask? He was launched out of a spacecraft by his parents to save him from certain death by renegade robots when he was an infant, and saved when someone gave him cybergenic enhancements. The character thus becomes the Cybergenic Ranger, to battle the renegade robots that killed his parents.

One of the many oddities that the Ranger faces as bosses in this game.

As for the game where the Cybergenic Ranger originated from, Cybergenic Ranger: Secret of the Seventh Planet… I’m not even going to sugarcoat it. It’s fucking awful, but it’s pretty cool that the beautiful hand-drawn backgrounds scroll with the player’s movement in the 2D environment. I’ll give this game that much. The controls ruin just about everything good that this game provides, with there being a talk function that most players wouldn’t even know about if they didn’t read the instruction manual. That turned into one hell of a cruel joke about a quarter of the game as you will run into a boss that will completely one-shot you at every turn unless you actually TALK to him instead of attacking him. Outside of that, poor hitboxes, spotty movement, general performance issues, and even randomized platforms plague this game from anyone truly enjoying it. Still, if you want to experience this for yourself, there’s still copies of it floating around on the internet to download for MS-DOS.

The instruction manual included a pretty neat comic book detailing the Cybergenic Ranger's origin.

It’s sad too as the art accompanying this game is pretty good. Too bad that we probably won’t ever see the Cybergenic Ranger return in another gaming appearance again. Then again, maybe that's a GOOD thing. Sadly, I wasn't able to find any good scans of the artwork from the game nor the manual's comic book pictured above.

There's VERY little gameplay of this game floating around on the Internet, but if you must see this game for yourself. There's a little sampler platter if you will at the link below.

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Lesser Known Heroes From Comics & Gaming #2 - Velta

Unless you’re one of my readers originating from South America, it’s extremely unlikely that you’ve heard of this character period, if at all. Velta was created by Emir Ribeiro, a former artist, inker, and penciler for both Image and Maximum Press in the ‘90s as his work shows clear influences to his fondness of Marvel Comics as well. Ribeiro's previous work includes work on Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Jade Warriors, Lady Death, Purgatori, Glory, and few misc. issues for both DC and Marvel Comics.

Emir Ribeiro celebrating 30 years of Velta comics at a local convention.

Velta’s origin is as follows. Katia Maria Lins is a Brazillian student who comes across a dying alien that zaps her with a strange ray. It grants her the ability to transform at will into a seven foot high super-strong blonde Amazon who can shoot lasers and occasionally lightning from her fingertips.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with having your own homegrown heroes for your native country.

Velta seems to be never with the same look consistently throughout her comic book run as from the little that I have been able to dig up about her on the Google Machine, she’s sporting a different look from book to book, usually something red and green. At first glance, you would think that she's cosplaying as Street Fighter's Cammy White.

That being said, she's got one hell of a following in her native country, but too bad that never translated into any global popularity nor recognition. Ribeiro has to be doing something right though as from what I can tell, her adventures have been going on for 45 years in her native country as of 2013.

I'm going to see if someone has some comics scanned online for reading as I can barely find jack shit about this character as I'm simply intrigued to learn more about her comics history. She reminds me a lot of John Byrne's Sensational She-Hulk run that I adored reading when I was younger.

I have to credit one of my friends from DeviantArt for informing me about this character though as it was totally over my head. Always a pleasure to learn something new in the realm of comics that I wasn’t aware of.

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Lesser Known Heroes From Comics & Gaming #3 - Maui Mallard / Cold Shadow

Why we haven’t heard of Maui Mallard / Cold Shadow since this game? Simply put: Because he was essentially Donald Duck. For the US release of this game, all references to Donald Duck were removed, but in international markets those references were left intact, so there’s a bit of questionable moments on why Disney never brought this back up again. I mean c’mon, even the current DuckTales reboot makes references to Donald’s past bad-assery that’s rarely shown, so this would have been pretty cool to have in their back pocket.

See, here's the thing. Back in the '90s during the height of Disney Afternoon's popularity, Disney had this strange fascination with Donald Duck and giving him a ton of various action games on various platforms. Mickey Mouse would receive this treatment too, but not in the same capacity that Donald Duck would have in terms of alter egos and "alternate versions" of this character.

The game itself wasn’t bad to say it was a PC title sporting some lower quality graphics for it’s time, but this is a title that was pretty hard to track down at the time since this was at the very tail end of both the SNES and Sega Genesis' console lives while retailers were looking to push more PlayStation and Sega Saturn units rather than hoard more older consoles. I remember seeing it once at the flea market but disregarded it as I didn’t know absolutely what the fuck it was at the time.

Game Boy release.

The game was originally released for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in 1995 (never saw a US release on this platform), but to release again two years later in 1997 to the SNES (funny how the box art says ONLY for Nintendo) and Gameboy , only to end up on GOG and even Steam years later as of May 2019. If you want a copy of the Gameboy version of the game, I have seen that go as high as $600 on ebay. IMHO, I don’t think it’s worth that much in terms of it’s gameplay. The game is worth a look, but not worth forking over that much cash.

Besides typical platform game gameplay (running around, jumping from platform to platform), one of the game's most distinctive gameplay features is allowing to switch the player character's form to suit one's needs. The player begins the game as Maui, whose only means of self-defence is an insect-launching pistol that can launch several forms of bugs, some of them combined for greater effect. However, once the player reaches the second level, Maui transforms into Cold Shadow, his ninja alter ego, who defends himself with short-range attacks using a bo staff. Cold Shadow's staff is also primarily used to explore the level further, such as climbing a narrow tunnel. After the second level, the player can switch back and forth between Maui and Cold Shadow at will, provided he has enough ninja tokens for the transformation. The amount of ninja tokens Maui or Cold Shadow holds determines Cold Shadow's strength – who can then chain more and more attacks as his skill improves – when played as him in the SNES version. On Genesis, however, Maui needs to collect red ninja tokens instead, the amount of white tokens being useful for metamorphosis alone. Some levels of the game, however, prevent Maui from transforming at all, as Cold Shadow cannot bungee jump on vines, for example, which forces the player to use Maui throughout the level.

You Better Duck. 

I’m surprised that Square Enix didn’t pull from this when they were looking for some references to draw from in the Kingdom Hearts series for Donald Duck instead of pegging him as a wizard in that game. It would have been a lot cooler to have a Donald taking up this persona as a kick-ass martial artist. If Mickey Mouse can be a keyblade wielding Jedi Master within the Kingdom Hearts mythos then Disney could have left this history in their Donald’s repertoire too. I think Square Enix didn’t dig deep enough when fishing through Disney properties to use for their Final Fantasy/Disney collaboration. Oh what could have been. (Shrugs) Their loss, I guess.

Disney actually had plans for a sequel to this game, along with an animated series, but this game didn't do well at all in terms of sales and overall interest, so those plans were dropped completely. Sucks that happened as it would have been pretty cool to see Cold Shadow team up with the likes of Ducktales' Gizmoduck or Darkwing Duck in some capacity. You know it would have happened too because Darkwing Duck was part of his own psuedo-Justice League by the time his series ended.

This character would go down as one of the first of many alter-egos/aliases that Donald Duck would don then would be later forgotten over the years, including his persona as Paperinik (Duck Avenger in the US) in the multi-platform title PK: Out of the Shadows. That is something to come back to talk to another day though...

Boy, I wonder if anyone remembers that game and/or character too...

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Lesser Known Heroes From Comics & Gaming #4 - Zen: Intergalactic Ninja

Zen the Intergalactic Ninja is a fictional character created in 1987 by Steve Stern and Dan Cote, and initially published under their Zen Comics imprint. In the early nineties Zen was licensed to Archie Comics, and then to Entity Comics.

Zen has been depicted by many well-known comics artists, including Paul Pelletier, Mike Mignola, and Sam Keith, as well as silver age legends Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. Other artists who have drawn Zen include Jae Lee, Frank Brunner, and Bill Maus. Maus has been credited with redesigning the character's classic look from the late '80s to the popular version seen today, of a taller, more muscular character who is bit rough around the edges. The first appearance of Zen's new look was in Entity Comic's Zen #0, published in 1993.

Alien Hero is a collection of novellas and short stories about Zen, written by Steve Stern. Zen has also appeared in magazines as varied as Mixx, published by Tokyopop, and Heavy metal.

In 2008, a new series of Zen trade paperbacks was to be launched by publisher Devil's Due. In addition, Devil's Due has announced an all-new continuing Zen comic-book series, written by fan favorite Joe Casey and illustrated by Joe Abraham. Devil's Due published only the first book in limited amounts. When the creators refused to surrender shares in their IP, Devil's Due discontinued the project. First Comics stepped up in 2010 publishing a full immersion 3D comic. Artist/creator Dan Cote retro-fitted his Earth day annual original pen and ink book into anaglyph 3D (red/blue, readable only with anaglyph red/blue glasses). First comics published "The best of Zen" in 2012.

In terms of powers and abilities, Zen is a skilled martial artist, trained in the ways of the Masters of Om. He is a master fighter, and knowledgeable in all forms of hand-to-hand combat. He speaks via telepathy, directly to one’s mind. So that explains how he’s able to communicate without a mouth.

Video Game: Zen: Intergalactic Ninja (NES)

The comic was adapted into a video game that was released in 1993 by Konami for both the Nintendo Entertainment System and Gameboy. The music for the NES game was composed by Kôzô Nakamura, Junichiro Kaneda, Yuichi Sakakura, Ayako Nishigaki and Tomoya Tomita and has been played on the Swedish radio-channel P3's programme Syntax Error.

Either you saw me stream this game back when I had Mystery Game Night weekly streams archived on YouTube or the livestream back on Twitch a few years ago. Good luck finding a physical copy of this game as you’ll easily pay well over $100 for it, but I personally consider it among some of the best among “must-have” titles on the NES. Just don't go breaking the bank trying to acquire a copy of this game.

Zen’s adventure on the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy saw him taking on the forces of Lord Contaminous, who along with an entourage of henchmen - Sulfura, Oil Slick, Garbageman, and Smogger, sought out to destroy the Earth by spreading their pollution across the planet. If I were to speculate, I think this game sought out to capitalize on the eco-friendly message that the Captain Planet cartoon popularized at the time. Think about it, this game released in 1993. Captain Planet first premiered back in 1990. That definitely couldn't have been a coincidence.

Toyline:

To my surprise while researching data on this hero, I found out that he had a short-lived toyline like everything else in the ‘90s.

The toyline consisted of merely six figures (as seen below) by the Just Toys company.

Other licensed products include posters from the Starmakers company, phone cards from Patco, chromium cards from Maxx, and a vinyl model kit from Inteleg International.

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Lesser Known Heroes From Comics & Gaming #5 - Lastman

Lastman is the name of a very popular French comic book series made in the style of Japanese anime in terms of how it’s action is stylized and from how it’s narrative layout is presented.

The synopsis of the comic book's narrative is as follows. In the "Valley of Kings", a world where magic is acknowledged as reality, an annual grand tournament sponsored by the King and Queen is being prepared. Young Adrian Velba works all year in the combat school of Master Jansen to participate. Sadly, Adrian’s partner suddenly falls ill and deserts. Since it is a duo tournament, the young boy is forced to give up his dream… until Richard Aldana, a "hunk with bearish manners" (as he's described in the books) comes out of nowhere to unexpectedly ally himself with Adrian.

The series was initially pre-published on delitoon.com, a free website for the publication of comic books on the web. It is depicted as a "French-style manga", by Bastien Vivès : " We use the format and some codes of the manga but we’re not playing at imitating Japanese culture". Vivès also mentions as other influences Disney movies and blockbusters from the 80’s and 90’s (some of them by Steven Spielberg).

Adult Animated Series: Last Man (Mondo Media VRV)

Richard Aldana is the protagonist of the animated series that serves as a prequel to the comics of the same name.

The adult animated prequel to the comic book was produced thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign in the summer of 2016. The episodes were all aired on France 4, on Tuesday evenings from November 22 to December 14, 2016. The show was made available for streaming on the Mondo Media VRV channel in the United States and Netflix in France in 2018. It is currently airing on Saturdays as part of the El Rey Network's Mondo Animation Hour.

About a week or two ago, I shared the trailer (along with the link to the first episode) for the adult animated prequel to this comic book and got nothing but crickets in terms of a response over on Facebook. Once again, I’m going to ask this question. WHY THE HELL AREN’T MORE PEOPLE AREN'T TALKING ABOUT THIS SHOW???

I'm going to repeat the same thing that I did over on Facebook and share both the trailer and first episode on here in hopes that maybe this show gets some more exposure that it rightfully deserves.

I discovered it as part of the Mondo Animation Hour on El Rey Network on Saturdays at midnight (for two hours) earlier this year. I have been absolutely blown away by the animated series. The series was originally funded by a Kickstarter but managed to produce all 23 episodes. It follows Richard Aldana as he gets into all sorts of trouble trying to care for his deceased mentor’s boxing gym and estranged daughter, who has some sort of mysterious powers that attracts shady individuals from all corners of the globe. I doubt that will be a turn off for some, but the series falls heavily into adult/mature territory as there’s uncensored violence, nudity, and obscene language across the board.

I think the lack of exposure and/or awareness to Lastman stems from the medium being limited to Mondo Media VRV's subscription service. Mondo recently made the move to make the series available on Netflix and now on satellite for those who have the El Rey Network, but that’s not really helping on that front much either. Not everyone has the El Rey Network on their cable/satellite packages, so one can’t count nor rely on new viewers becoming aware of the series from that medium. It was cool of them to provide the first few episodes on YouTube along with several more on their VRV site without requiring viewers to sign-up/register to the site until they hit a quarter ways into the season to see if Lastman would be something they would like to check out in its entirety. VRV isn’t a popular streaming service like Crunchyroll nor Netflix, so it’s a stretch that only the die-hard fans would invest into paying for a subscription to check this out. If that's not bad enough, you can't subscribe to the service outside of the US, so that limits the series' reach even further.


There's a few sellers on eBay selling complete series blu-ray sets with both French and English audio/voice acting, but buy at your own risk.

For me personally, I’m content with viewing the episodes weekly on the Mondo Animation Hour block.

Video Game: Lastfight (Steam/PC)

To my surprise, there’s a video game adaptation of Last Man available on Steam, called Lastfight. The video game was developed by the independent publisher Piranaking,  and came out on September, 20th 2016.

As of this posting, I haven’t had the chance to check out both the comic book series nor the video game on Steam, but if they are anywhere as awesome as the animated series is then I’m sure I’m going to enjoy them both the same.To my surprise, there’s a video game adaptation of Last Man available on Steam, called Lastfight. As of this posting, I haven’t had the chance to check out both the comic book series nor the video game on Steam, but if they are anywhere as awesome as the animated series is then I’m sure I’m going to enjoy them both the same.

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Lesser Known Heroes From Comics & Gaming #6 - Gen 13

You probably heard of this throughout the early 2000s, where comics went into that "extreme" everything phase and it seemed like every comic book label under the sun had that teen/college-aged group of super-powered misfits. Jim Lee and Brandon Choi were definitely inspired by the original X-Men line-up and the follow-up New Mutants in terms of the team layout.

The series takes place in Jim Lee's Wildstorm Universe, and Gen¹³'s stories and history intertwine with those from his own works, such as Wildcats and Team 7 (in fact, each of the main characters in Gen¹³ is the child of a Team 7 member).

The setup of the series is that a group of teens ( Originally consisting of Caitlin Fairchild, Roxy Spaulding, Grunge, Burnout, and Threshold in disguise. They were later joined by Sarah Rainmaker.) are invited to take part in a government project, which is in actuality a prison-like testing ground on "gen-active" teens. The teens make their escape, but not before they manifest superhuman powers, and are labelled dangerous fugitives. They rely on each other to fight their foes and unveil the personal secrets that linked them to Team 7 and International Operations.

Cover for Gen13's initial run.

After their initial run, the comic saw a revolving door of creative changes behind the scenes, which saw illustrator J. Scott Campbell leave the book to start his own comic, Danger Girl (which I'm sure we'll talk about in another edition of this featurette at some point) and various different writers and artists were brought on to help handle the book, including even Chris Claremont at one point. Hell, they even went as far as killing off majority of the team with a 6-megaton bomb to serve as a justification for a reboot to the title, with Fairchild serving as the new team's mentor. (Laughs) That's one hell of a way to start over from scratch... 

Despite all of these changes, fans of the original run weren't too keen of all of these changes left and right to the vibe of the comic that got them hooked to it to begin with. I'm sure many of you have seen art from this comic over the years, but never knew where it originated from as majority of the marketing for this comic was with the various women from the comic dressed in barely nothing at all or there being some random excuse to be clad in nothing but bikinis. The first issue sees Fairchild's powers manifest and reduce her clothing to mere scraps barely concealing her modesty after her "transformation" and things like this didn't stop after the book went into full swing. Brandon Choi and J. Scott Campbell pretty much got a reputation for their depictions of their "sexy" women in the comics, even to this day, from their work on this book and various others during their duration for Image Comics. Jim Lee can be lumped into that mix too, but I feel like his iconic work for Marvel and DC Comics pretty much "standardizing" a lot of iconic heroes' looks and appearances overridden anything he's done in that regard though - at least for me.

Gen 13’s comics run went from 1998 to 2006 under Wildstorm, but they became officially part of the DC Universe after the New 52 reboot.

The title was "rebooted" in October 2006, initially written by Gail Simone with art from Talent Caldwell. At first, the title had no continuity with earlier series. The series was involved in the "Armageddon" crossover event and then taken over in 2008 with a new creative team, Scott Beatty and Mike Huddleston, as part of "World's End".

The new series was canceled along with the rest of the Wildstorm titles published at the time when the line folded. When the Wildstorm universe was subsequently folded into the DC Universe following Flashpoint, several of the members of Gen 13 began appearing in other titles. Caitlin Fairchild played a supporting role in Superboy and eventually began starring in the spin-off title, The Ravagers.

Gen13 had a wealth of crazy crossovers, including one with Marvel's Spider-Man. 

They even managed to have a wealth of crossovers with other heroes, including with Superman, Spider-Man, the Maxx, Monkeyman and O'Brien, two crossovers with the Marvel Comics teen hero team Generation X, and a crossover with the Fantastic Four. At one point in the early years, Wildstorm and DC were planning a teamup between the team and Batman. However, due to creative differences between creator J. Scott Campbell and DC, the crossover never happened, although Campbell did create artwork showing Fairchild, Grunge, Roxy, and Batman in a promotional image.

Gen¹³ also highly embraced the MTV Generation and built its sense of style on what was the contemporary fashion at the time, including the name Grunge (which was a quickly dated reference), references to popular bands such as Soundgarden, and a youthful drama inspired by MTV’s The Real World. Not coincidentally, Gen¹³'s editor was Sarah Becker, a cast member on The Real World: Miami.

Toyline: 

McFarlene Toys produced a few figures based off the comic book characters, due to Images' existing relationship. Not all of the characters were made though. Caitlin had three different figures, including a 6" Fairchild, a 1998 Wizard ToyFare Exclusive (12" Fairchild), and another as part of the 12" Figures by Exclusive Toy Products and Diamond in 1999 that included Burnout, Lynch, and Rainmaker.

Video Game:

There was a Gen 13 video game in development for the original PlayStation but never finished as developer Grey Matter went bankrupt before it could be finished. I guess EA didn’t want to pick up the pieces and finish it. From the limited footage that you can find of it online, it seems like they dodged a bullet anyway as it looked as bad as that Mortal Kombat: Special Forces game from Midway. On the plus side, there were plans to have the entire team playable in some fashion.

Animated Film: 

You can find the entirety of the animated movie up on YouTube/Dailymotion as the film was never released in the US, but saw a limited release in Europe and Australia. I've linked the video above, but don't be surprised if that gets taken down in the meantime. I claim no rights to the video above.

Kevin Altieri (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm) directed a Gen¹³ animated feature for Buena Vista Pictures. It was shelved by the studio soon after Wildstorm was bought by DC Comics and never released in the United States, but it has seen a limited video release in Europe and Australia in 2000. Grunge was voiced by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lynch was voiced by John de Lancie, and Threshold was voiced by Mark Hamill.
In the mid-1990s, WildStorm owner Jim Lee put his company on the market as comic book sales began to decline. It was during this period that Disney Studios expressed interest in developing a Gen¹³ film. The film project was already in production when Lee began talks to sell WildStorm to DC Comics, a Time Warner company. The sale was finalized in January 1999. By the time the film was finished, Disney decided to shelve the film because they did not want to market a film with ties to a rival production company. Consequently, the film was never released in the U.S., but did receive a limited video release in Europe and Australia and was aired on the Russian 2×2 channel on August 1, 2010.

Rasslin' Ramblings -- Getting a Few Things off My Chest

It's the last day of 2015 and I want to address a few things going into the New Year. I'm going to either piss a lot of people off or I'm going to make people nod their heads collectively in agreement. Then there's the third option where I get a combination of both. I'm personally banking on the latter, so we'll see in due time.

Livetweeting Wrestling Broadcasts in 2016

As you guys know, I have cut down my livetweeting considerably at the end of this year, mainly due to the fact that WWE was burning me out with watching RAW and Smackdown. Hopefully in the New Year the broadcasts will be better and actually worth my time going into WrestleMania season. I can guarantee that I'm going to get back to watching Impact Wrestling since they are moving to POP! TV and I actually have that channel, as well as continue watching Ring of Honor, NXT, and Lucha Underground in the new year.

I don't go back to work until Jan. 5th, so I might stay up late and watch Wrestle Kingdom 10 live at 3AM EST on Sunday so stay tuned on that. I need an excuse to renew my New Japan World account anyway. I'm not going to be watching on a shitty pirated stream that's for sure. NJPW is providing an English commentary alternative for those interested, so it's definitely worth checking out. I need to do a better job of keeping up with New Japan's product in 2016 as well.

One thing is certain though...

In 2016, I'm not going to allow unruly and disrespectful people on social media to ruin my personal enjoyment of what I love about professional wrestling. I have started to do so towards the end of the year and it's going to be heavily enforced in 2016 as I'm blocking anything that comes tagged to any of my social media accounts as offensive or disrespectful. I'm done preaching that if you don't like the product stop fucking watching. There's MORE than enough wrestling out there to suit anyone and everyone's taste.

You guys know that I love to joke around about the ladies on here, so I don't understand why so many females got butt-hurt over me making fun of their fixations on Roman Reigns. Ya'll like the guy don'tcha? So what's the problem? It's not like I'm trying to stab the guy during his entrance. Sex sells, whether you like it or not. That's why the porn industry is still around. I'm not going to play coy and act like I'm ignoring the sexual attractiveness of anyone in this business. C'mon, WWE completely understand that appearances will bring more new viewers than the "pure wrestling" loyalists. I would be a billionaire if I had a penny for every time I ran into a fan who said that they were only watching just to see the hot women or the guys that they are fawning over. There's NOTHING wrong with admitting that! I know someone is going to read that and take it as an insult when it's not meant to be one. Hell, I like the competitive aspect AND the smokin' hot women. I get to kill two birds with one stone with my wrestling.

If I wanted to see ugly girls fighting all the time I would be watching ghetto brawls on WorldStarHipHop or more MMA in general... Just being honest here.

The Divas Revolution & the So-Called Supporters of Women's Wrestling

I could make myself mad tonight writing a novel about this but I'm going to limit myself to a few bullet points.

Which Sasha Banks vs. Bayley Takeover Match is the Best?

Easy choice here - their match at Takeover: Brooklyn was the classic Dusty Rhodes narrative. Babyface overcomes EVERY obstacle in her way to earn the big win in the end over the vile heel. Outside of involving Bayley's super fan Izzy, their rematch in the Ironman Match pales in comparison. Not to mention a lot of sloppy spots and horribly executed moves.

Is Sasha Banks vs. Bayley the Greatest Match of All-Time?

For NXT Divas? Yes. For WWE Divas as a whole for all-time? Not really. That's not a fair argument in the least. Different time periods, different crowds, and different styles of women's wrestling. On top of that, women's wrestling on the independent scene has been in the vein of this VERY SAME style that Sara Amato (formerly indy women's wrestling sensation Sara Del Rey) is training the next generation of WWE Divas to showcase down on NXT. Just because you haven't watched anything outside of WWE's style of women's wrestling don't be so quick to regard this performance (while amazing in it's own right) as the greatest of all time.

Why isn't WWE pushing Sasha Banks?

Note: This is a direct copy & paste from the same topic discussed on this blog's Facebook page.

They know they have a potential goldmine with her after her success on NXT. After moving her onto the main roster, it seems like she's been simply cast aside. One could say it's the glass ceiling that WWE obviously has for black/African-American wrestlers in their company (You have to be retarded or incredibly naive to believe otherwise), one could say that she's not that really attractive (seriously she looks like Jackalman from Thundercats to me 70% of the time to me... I know I'm going to get heat for saying that but oh well I don't give a flying fuck) - we ALL know WWE is an appearance-heavy marketing company, or you could credit it to the fact that they are simply WAITING FOR THE BEST OPPORTUNITY.

I'm leaning towards all of the above, but mainly the latter because look at Paige and Charlotte's careers on the main roster. Both had MASSIVE success on NXT as former Women's Champions. Both had a speedy push to the top to overthrown the then "top Divas" shortly after their arrivals onto the main roster. If WWE did that, everyone would be just as bored as they are right now with Paige and Charlotte. All flash and no substance. WWE didn't give them a chance to get a slow climb or chase to the top. Imagine if they give Sasha a solid storyline to build off of that carries her throughout WM season and ends with her against whoever the champion is at WrestleMania? Wouldn't that be worth waiting for?

Slut-shaming on the WWE Divas

All year I've been hearing Diva marks talk about ‪#‎GiveDivasAChance‬ when they are the same ones who don't want to give anyone but their token favorites the chance to shine. They weren't happy unless AJ Lee was on top, wasn't happy after Nikki Bella got knocked off her throne, wasn't happy after they got what they wanted with Charlotte as champion, Eva Marie couldn't wrestle and she's actually getting training and people are STILL aren't happy. For the love of all things holy if it's one damn thing I'm going to distance myself from in 2016 is these marks who complain just to complain who are ruining my personal enjoyment of this sport. I'm pretty sure these same "fans" won't be happy when Sasha wins the Divas championship either.

When/where Sasha wins the title isn't going to matter, nor whether or not if the title is the Women's title nor the Divas title. Fans claim they want change but they aren't willing to accept change completely and willing to change their own personal receptions of how they view women's wrestling. If the fans aren't willing to change then everything that women like Sasha are doing are all for nothing.

That's one thing that differs my opinion on women's wrestling than the bulk of the people I encounter online. I may not like how every woman in WWE looks but I respect their efforts and I'm willing to give them the benefit of a doubt to improve and impress me in the ring. I don't sit here completely ruling out these women out of some petty hatred I have manufactured from reading "drama" from dirtsheets or from my own insecurities.

Closing Words

I'm going to continue enjoying professional wrestling in my own way, whether it be watching in the privacy of my own free time or among my fellow passionate fans on social media. I'm going to continue to write about wrestling - what I love about it and what I wish would change in the new year. Wrestling has been part of my life for a long time and I'm going to continue loving it, one way or another.

See you guys in the New Year where I plan to do my usual wrestling wishlist for the year sometime into the new year before the Royal Rumble. 

Late Night Ramblings -- Final Thoughts for 2015: Wrapping Up Loose Ends & Getting A Few Things Off My Chest

The coolest thing to come out of the Civil War trailer. I can't wait to
see Tony get that arrogant smirk beat off his face.

Whew, this has been a crazy last few weeks in terms of gaming and movie news, huh? This is the last article I'm going to knock out here before the New Year rolls around so bare with me that this is going to be pretty long with me wrapping up a few loose ends.

 

Fall Mid-Season Finale Reactions

The Flash Season 2

Unlike most people, I'm REALLY being let down on this show's second season. The multiverse plot was promising at first glance but now it's just boiling down to the same dynamic as last season with the villain of the week formula followed by Harrison Wells taking center stage as the most charismatic actor out of the entire cast. Seriously, if it wasn't for him I doubt I would have been watching this show this long.

At least Iris West doesn't annoy me as much as she did in the first season. Same goes for the rest Flash life support team outside of Cisco. The whole subplot about Joe's son wasn't that interesting but I guess we had to give Iris something to overreact about like last season as she's not a pivotal part of the Flash life support team, or rather Scooby gang here.

I don't know why but I have a feeling that they are setting us up for a HUGE letdown with the final battle against Zoom. I was letdown on how they handled the Reverse Flash situation last season and now it seems like they are retreading the same territory here to lackluster results. Even the Flash/Arrow crossover team-up wasn't as exciting or as noteworthy as the one in previous season.

Agents of SHIELD Season 3

I just don't know what to say about this shit. I'm beyond fed up with Ward as the villain. Kill this dude off or make him into the Taskmaster if they want to keep paying the guy. I want to go into detail about my personal disgust on how the MCU treats it's villains but I'm going into that in a separate article that I have been sitting on for a while. Just expect that sometime in the new year.

FF7 Remake News - New Gameplay Trailer

My best friend and I have had this discussion ever since E3 this year when it was first announced and I'm still pretty indifferent about it.

I'll admit that I'm glad that Square Enix aren't using the same voice actors from Advent Children (at least that's not what it sounds like this far) and it looks like the battle system is taking a more of an action-RPG approach, much like how Kingdom Hearts, NIER, and the upcoming Final Fantasy XV are utilizing. I could be wrong, but that's what it looks like at first glance. We won't know how much of this would change between now and the final product.

Why does Barrett looks so SMALL? Did Blade (Marvel Comics) and Raven (Tekken series) get the memo that they have a twin with a machine gun arm? Also, did anyone spot that one of the menus says "Summon" during the gameplay? It's been forever since I have played the game, but I could have sworn that you don't get a summon until AFTER the fight with the scorpion robot.

 FFVII Remake May WILL Be Episodic

The fanboys and fangirls can fall for Square Enix's processed PR bullshit excuse all they want, but this is the SAME company that has been milking the Kingdom Hearts series for roughly 15+ years with no REAL sequel/finale to this series in sight anytime soon. Great, they keep showing us footage for Kingdom Hearts III, but it's hard to get excited for a game that should have been out WELL over a decade ago. Why don't you guys see that Square Enix are hungry for their stupid fans' money who won't let go of nostalgia?

If they split the game up into "episodes" how's that going to work? You buy a stripped down version of the remake that is essentially the beginning Midgar portion of the game then they sell you the rest of the game's narrative as DLC on an insanely expensive "Season Pass"? Oh wait, could it be like Final Fantasy XIII and it's MANY sequels, where you would have to buy each "episode" separately for a full retail price of $59.99 each? Then don't forget to slap on potential DLC prices. Thanks, but no thanks.

I'm with a lot of you guys. Final Fantasy VII and most of the PSone era RPGs were my first "formal" introductions to the genre, but much like most things in gaming nowadays, I rarely fall for the hype anymore. Call me pessimistic or whatever, but I'm sick of the gaming industry trying to cash in on my nostalgia and classic gaming memories, whether it be by remakes or re-releases or merely reselling games that I have already played before. I loved Final Fantasy VII back in the day. I did like a lot of gamers did back then. I played through it on multiple occasions, planned my entire gameplay up to the Gold Saucer event to get the date with Tifa (screw Aeris, man...), beat all of the WEAPONs - save for that fucker Emerald, who I never bothered to level grind to beat, got all of the Level 4 Limit Breaks (Omnislash FTW), got a Gold Chocobo and Knights of the Round, and recruited all of the party members. To this day, Vincent is still my favorite character to come out of Final Fantasy VII. If I'm honest with myself, I don't even want to go through that horror of getting a Gold Chocobo again or that clusterfuckery that was the segment where Cloud had to cross dress as a woman.

As much as I enjoyed Final Fantasy VII, there was a LOT of bullshit in that game that fans tend to gloss over with tunnel vision. For example, no one talks about how Disk 2 was pretty much revisit all of the past locations from Disk 1 before returning back to Midgar to confront Hojo and setting up the stage for Sephiroth's "true" resurrection. Or what about how Disk 3 was pretty much a waste of disk as there wasn't much else to do other than go to the Crater to confront Sephiroth and finish the game if you haven't done everything else to this point (FFVIII did the same thing with Disk 4 but that's a discussion for another day). In most cases, players have as most players tend to over level and grind to an insanely high level early into the game for the rest of the game to be a cakewalk. Or what about the entire final battle seems pretty awkward when AVALANCHE splits up into 3 teams of 3, but one team has only 2 members as if the game's creators were conflicted about bringing back Aeris to join you all at this point. Or how about how pathetic Sephiroth is in the final battle - either one-turn kill him with Knights of the Round or cast DeBarrier and hit him with Omnislash and that's pretty much it. If you're lucky, you can pull that off before he even casts Wall and Meteor.

 

Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Captain America: Civil War, Deadpool: The Movie Trailer Impressions

Here's the thing being a Marvel fan. Every single time that DC Comics does something for their universe, whether it be for their TV shows, comic books, cartoons, or films, everyone expects Marvel fans to instantly shit on it because it's not their beloved heroes, especially now that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in full swing.

I don't have "hate" for DC Comics, it's just that over the years of being a comic book fan (especially during my teenage years and early adolescence), I just find Marvel Comics more entertaining. It's not a shot against DC Comics, but that's just how it's been. Sure, I can point out faults in both Marvel and DC but it doesn't stop me from finding enjoyment from their characters and storylines.

As for this trailer, I felt that Warner Bros./DC Comics showed FAR too much to say it was just a trailer. Seemed like they spoiled the bulk of the movie for us.

Here's the thing. I'm not going to shit on this... BUT I'm not as excited for this as I am for Civil War. I'm VERY happy that I didn't have to sit through two episodes of Jimmy Kimmel just to see both of these trailers too.

I'll admit that this is looking better with every new trailer but let's go over a few things here in this trailer:

1. Clark and Bruce's first meeting - Dying to see that scene play out entirely in the film as call me nuts, but Affleck has me sold on him playing Bruce for the ti...me being. The shots of him in costume look better and better.

2. Batman vs. Superman - It looks like they've spoiled the core dynamic of this encounter that the film is named off of with Supes saying "If I wanted you dead, I would've done it already." Sorry WB, you lost me there. Way to go on killing the vibe that they would be throwing down the entire movie. Of course, I know as a comic book fan that they wouldn't be fighting the ENTIRE movie, but one could hope that they could have kept this conflict grounded between them and come to an understanding without the "oh shit, end of the world dilemma" cliché coming in and forcing them to get on the same page.

3. Lex Luthor - Why is he giving me this strange Joker-esque vibe here? That's wrong VERY, VERY wrong... unless they plan on throwing a monkey wrench into the plan and making Lex become the Joker in this continuity somehow. Someone on Twitter mentioned that Jesse Eisenberg is acting like Max Landis and I TOTALLY can't unsee that now.

4. Zod and... Doomsday? I dunno who or what that Abomination looking dude is supposed to be but damn they spent some low budget effects on that guy. Definitely not as bad as X-Men: Apocalypse's leaked photos but geez someone needs to be fired in the CG department.

5. Wonder Woman - Gal Gadot STILL doesn't have me sold on this character. She looks too skinny to be playing an Amazon, especially one who is supposed to be Diana's build and stature. I know there's going to be girls who get mad at me mentioning that but c'mon, if I was cast in these superhero films - not matter what gender I was - I'd be hitting the gym hardcore and at least TRYING to make myself look the part instead of looking like a normal person wearing a cosplay costume. (Laughs) We've got Yaya Han and Jessica Nigri for random bimbos cosplaying...

Couldn't Gal Gadot get on a workout plan or something to at least TRY to bulk/tone up to at least ATTEMPT look like an Amazon for this movie? Does she understand that she's playing freakin' WONDER WOMAN? Yes, I understand that Linda Carter wasn't a built like a tank too but c'mon. Wonder Woman is supposed to look as "godly" as Superman does. Seeing her standing next to Batman and Superman in... the trailer looks like a bad cosplay costume.

Seriously, you would think that more actors would take these superhero roles more seriously now. Perfect example, take Chris Pratt's preparation to play Starlord for Guardians of the Galaxy. He went from the chubby guy from Parks and Recreation transforming into a hero that looks just as iconic as Chris Evans does as Captain America or Chris Hemsworth as Thor.

I hate to be nit-picky about stuff like this, but as someone who has spent the bulk of their lives reading, watching, and admiring these characters while anxiously awaiting to see them brought to life on the silver screen, I have pretty high expectations that these characters, especially the Trinity, are supposed to look larger than life - NOT like average people wearing their costumes.

 WHY IS BATMAN HOLDING A GUN!!??

(Calms down) I know Batman has used a gun in the past and made "exceptions" to his rule but this is a bad way to start off his "rebirth" in this DC Cinematic Universe, especially on how non-savvy fans tend to act like the films and cartoons are law in terms of where their core knowledge on these characters comes from.

Here's one last thing that people don't understand that are jizzling themselves off of this trailer. WB/DC Comics have done the single STUPIDEST thing at the end of this trailer.

They showed off the Trinity (Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman) AS ALLIES. Wasn't the entire selling point of this movie supposed to be Batman VERSUS Superman? I don't know about anyone else but I didn't want to see pretty much 60% of the plot already spoiled potentially in ONE trailer.

Now we know going into the film that it's literally the foundation/backbone to Justice League and they are trying to rush ALL of this in ONE movie to play catch-up with the Avengers and the rest of Marvel's Cinematic Universe.

If that Abomination looking dude is supposed to be Doomsday then it's going to take the entire League to take him down if they want this to be believable. The more I think about this trailer the more it's turning me off to having any anticipation for seeing this. Sure, I'll watch but it's not like a "must-see" now.

Onto Captain America: Civil War first premiere trailer... Anyone who knows me personally knows that Captain America: The Winter Soldier is HANDS-DOWN my personal favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe film to date. That means a lot to me as I don't consider myself a Captain America fan. Never liked the guy outside of acting as leader of the Avengers' many teams and factions over the last few decades, but that film sold me onto the character his worth to the MCU as a whole from the impact that film had on the entire scope of the MCU up to that point. I really hope that Marvel Studios doesn't fuck this up and do same here. After the disappointment that was Age of Ultron, I feel like Marvel needs to shake up the foundation again. We're closing in onto the Infinity War and some BIG shit needs to hit the fan.

I'm honestly trying NOT to watch a lot of these trailers as I don't want to have 90% of the movie spoiled for me as I have a feeling that a lot of the good jokes have already been spoiled already. Cool to see that the X-Men have a presence in this film. At this stage, I doubt that FOX can mess this up and it will end up being the successful gamble like how Guardians of the Galaxy played out for Marvel Studios. The only thing that I'm dreading are the droves of bandwagon Deadpool fans coming out of the wood work after this drops. It's already bad enough that we're going to have to deal with the bandwagon Harley Quinn fans once Suicide Squad comes out...

Capcom Cup 2015 & Street Fighter V News

While I didn't watch ALL of Capcom Cup on Sunday, I did see enough that I did enjoy for the most part. Glad to see Street Fighter IV go out in style in what I'm understanding the last "formal" event for the game as Capcom are going to fully support Street Fighter V for Capcom Cup next year. That's asking a lot of players who stuck around for the long-haul across multiple updates and different consoles to pick up a brand new console (either the PlayStation 4 or PC - that's it) just to play the next entry.

He reminds me of Hsien-Ko from Darkstalkers crossed with Voldo from Soul Calibur and Solomon Kane from Sym-Bionic Titan.

If I had one favorite match out of everything that I saw at Capcom Cup, it was this match. As a Chun-Li player myself, I tip my hat to Infiltration's play against The Beast himself. Infiltration didn't do anything wrong - he played with Chun's strengths by keeping it purely a battle of footsies. Daigo still managed to comeback from what looked like defeat in one round with a comeback that people will be talking about for years to come. (Whistles) And people are STILL talking about Daigo is losing his touch?

My End of the Year Confessions

Despite all of my friends who RAVE about it being the best film of 2015 next to Star Wars, I didn't much care for Mad Max: Fury Road.

Outside its BEAUTIFUL and AMAZING cinematography, costumes, and special effects, I have to honestly say that from a narrative perspective it was all flash and no substance. I watched the film twice and I still don't see what was supposed to be the big deal of it all.

Glamorizing being a nerd/dork like a fashion statement pisses me off to no end.

Seeing celebrities and some of the same people who ridiculed me when I was growing up parading around to this label to be "cool" in their adolescence just downright disgusts me. Roughly a decade and a half ago, society frowned upon everyone who loved anime, comic book superheroes, and video games. Now society has taken a complete 180 to that mindset. I should be happy but I dunno it just comes off as people just trying to be accepted when I was used to being an outcast on Nerd Island for so long.

Screw it, watch this episode of Freakazoid and you'll get what I'm driving at.

Despite my distaste for The Walking Dead brand as a whole - from the graphic novels to the television series (and spin-off) to the video game(s) - I actually do watch the show from time to time. Not particularly crazy about it but I watch it. 

I get that people love the survivalist aspect or the whole idea that humanity turns to the worst of their characters in this ruined world, but you could take out the zombie apocalypse dilemma and it's just as bad normal ordinary life. The older I get the more pessimistic it seems I get to this world and the people in it, so I tend to not like to be reminded that "Oh yeah, just about everyone you know is out for themselves, there's next to no good people left, and there's NO happy endings." I like watching TV and immersing myself into fiction for the LIES that this shit isn't true, not to be fucking more depressed than I already am from my own real life dilemmas and day to day ordeals. Frown on me for not liking this stuff for that reason, I don't give a fuck but c'mon, I know you guys are realistically watching this show for the reason that I am - I'm dying to see when it comes down to the point where everyone just gives up and kill themselves and quit lying to themselves about there's a happy ending to this shit when there's no way in hell it's going to end well, no matter how many ways you slice it.

It's funny. I can tolerate an "apocalyptic" world like Attack on Titan when it's the same premise, but I can respect that narrative more because everyone is fucked and the death toll is so high and not everyone is presented as a bad ass and instantly ready to deal with this situation. Don't give me that crap about people in TWD are like that too, but when they are they are killed off so fast that it doesn't even matter that they existed period in the footnotes over the course of the story. 

After thinking about it for a long time, I have to agree with Max Landis' statement about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Rey is the quintessential example of the Mary Sue archetype in cinema. On top of that, I don't think that the film was particularly great either. 

I'm going to review Star Wars: The Force Awakens early into 2016, so I'll keep this short for the time being. The only thing I'm going to put out there is that I feel like Disney played it too "safe" for this first journey back into Star Wars after the buyout from George Lucas. While the kid in me loved the nostalgia, I couldn't help but feel like nothing in this film was "original" everything came off as a recycling everything that "worked" in the original trilogy to repackage everything for this younger audience. It was literally Hollywood's version of the current trend in video games of re-releasing games you already played a million times as a "collection" and selling you it as something BRAND new. 

I don't get why people got mad at Landis for saying that Rey is a Mary Sue. She beat Kylo Ren in what many wrestling fans could refer to as "LOLCENAWINS" with NO prior Jedi training and little effort. 

'Nuff said, folks. 

Closing Words

No idea what's in store for the New Year as I'm still recovering from my oral surgery from the week of Christmas and I head back to work next week, so I'm going to take this one day at a time. More Ramblings to vent my frustrations and rant on random topics and hopefully some more movie and gaming reviews. Who knows, I might get a current gen console and finally be able to stream some stuff again? I dunno what's in the cards for me at this rate. (Shrugs) Who knows what 2016 will bring as I know I had no idea that 2015 was going to play out like how it did...

If you're out drinking tonight, be safe and call a cab home. Wishing you all a happy New Year. 

See you around, space cowboy... 

Late Night Ramblings (Nov. 12, 2015)

I guess this one should be referred to as "Early Morning" Ramblings as I happen to be up before 7AM typing this up...

I haven’t taken the time to chronicle the entire story of the recent Ultra Street Fighter IV tournament that I attended on Halloween at my local Gamestop, so I want to remedy that situation now.

To be quite honest, I didn’t make up my mind to enter the tournament until about 4-5 days before the actual date of the tournament. I just happened to be in the middle tutoring my friend Randy in the game and I was growing impatient with his progress. That’s a pet peeve of mine when it comes to teaching people fighting games. If I take time out of my schedule - especially when I’m supposed to be on a hiatus from this genre - and offer to help you out, I expect you to at least be grinding on your own practicing what we’ve done or in training room/replay channel to review and understand WHY you lost. With him I was going easier than I was with my close friends. We’d run a few sets and I’ll tell him between rounds/sets what he’s doing wrong, how to approach that match-up better, or simply something to work on out of words of encouragement. He was showing a lot of promise - I got him to stop mindlessly jumping in and mashing out Shoryukens and he was starting to understand the ground game better. Something happened and he started to revert to “online tactics” - tons of reckless and mindless approaches and mashing out moves. I guessing he panicked or something, but he was dealing with me kicking things up a notch more than some of my regular casual sparring buddies would. So it was just downright frustrating that he threw all of that progress out of the window.

As a result, it took me back to why I wanted my hiatus from this genre in the first place. I looked at the Gamestop tournament as my last “hurrah” to the game and the genre for the time being. I thought it was ironic that the second that I put my mind towards entering the tournament everything in my life that week went to shit and was hellbent on me not getting a single bit of time to practice until the morning of the tournament itself.

What was my tournament training regime you ask? Mostly I run into Training Room and go through ALL of the moves on both 1P and 2P sides of the screen. I dunno what it is with 2D fighters but my brain “skips” for a second to think of how to input commands on opposing side of the screen at times. I’ve NEVER had this problem in 3D fighters but it always plagues me in 2D fighters time and time again. After that, I run through basic “bread and butter” combos on both sides of the screen before jumping onto Ranked Match for a few random matches. I set the search for ANY in terms of Skill Level and focus on just reacting and studying how my opponent plays. If I run into a tactic that I can’t deal with or completely blows me up, I try to simulate it in training and figure out a counter or defense to that tactic.

Perfect example, that entire morning I was having issues with Dudley’s Jumping Diving Elbow Drop, a move I used to low-profile with cr. MP or cr. MK in previous versions of Street Fighter IV. In this version it was oddly trading, so I had to adjust my timing or just straight out knock him out of the air with st. MK. I think I practiced this anti-air training for about 2 hours straight until I felt comfortable against it.

After I felt good enough to get the nervous jitters out of my system and feel properly warmed up, I ate some breakfast/lunch since I tend to have social anxiety attacks pop up randomly in events if I do have an empty stomach and headed to the mall where the event was held.

I get there, there’s like next to no one there. I felt like a complete nerd - even more so than usual, carrying my bookbag full of controllers and my adapters where it looked like the thing wasn’t happening at all. FYI I play mainly off a PS2 to Xbox 360 adapter and I have one that allows me to use the PS2 controller on a PS3 as well. The clerk at the counter said they were still having the event and just that people were strangling along to get there. This really took me back though. Back in high school, they held a Soul Calibur tournament in this same mall but it was in the center of the Food Court. About the same size of entrants too, I think it was about 9-12 people total - few seasoned players like myself and others ranging from folks my age to kids who didn’t know what the hell they were doing - they were just there for the free candy that Gamestop were giving out.

Here’s the kicker about the tournament before it even started. The clerk hosting the tournament wanted to do 1-round, Single Elimination and the vets along with myself vetoed that idea out. At least give people a fighting chance. So, it was changed to Best of 2 sets (2 out of 3 rounds to win), Single Elimination. Character lock too. The tournament was on Xbox 360 on a no lag monitor but everyone was forced to use those wireless standard Xbox 360 pads.

Right then and there I busted out laughing because I wish I actually practiced on one of those. The clerk hosting the tournament allowed entrants to practice/warm up and I’ll say without a doubt they literally opened up some used 360 pads to use. D-pad and analog sticks were loose and buttons were mashed in from prelonged use. Seriously, how do people ruin their controllers like that so easily? I have PS2 AND NES controllers that STILL play like new.

I’m not going to label this as an excuse to why I didn’t win as everyone else had to deal with this handicap too. I threw a lot of people off during “warm-ups” as I was playing Hugo - a character I’ve been just randomly messing around with. I knew I wasn’t going to use him in this tournament so playing him now was pretty harmless, but it put a lot of people on edge since I could hear a lot of the seasoned players notice that I knew what I was doing. I was laughing to myself, I guess the jig is up now…

After a SHORT bout of warm-ups, they started the tournament up and I went first. I KNEW it was going to happen because fate likes to play with my emotions like that in these things. If I’m not one of the first matches, it really fucks up with my nerves. I rather play first and get it out of the way to see how everyone else - i.e. my competition fares.

My first match is where my competition came into play as the first of the trio who came to the tournament together as a group of buddies (reminiscent of my old gaming buddies from high school when we entered that Soul Calibur tournament together) who were pretty damn good in warm sets. One of them played a pretty scary looking Juri, the other alternated between Dudley and Seth, while the one who I was set to face first, was another solid Dudley player.

Oh the irony. Pretty much from the second I picked Chun-Li on the character select screen people were confused or shocked. “We got this, baby.” I told myself as the round started. Without a shadow of a doubt, I pretty much bullied the guy the entire match. The guy had decent footsies, but after I pretty much discouraged him from jumping (thanks to the training I went through earlier) he was afraid to do anything. Strange that this match-up is SOOO much easier offline than online. I won that one 2-0 to advance to the next round.

The second Dudley player had an easy first round bout as he fought one of those kids who didn’t know what they were doing, so he just pretty much turned those two rounds into training mode with Seth. You know the deal - one hit confirm into a combo for full stun, one mix-up into the reset, and repeat. Even his friends were disgusted that he played like that against the poor kid. I would’ve at least played Dan just to troll (laughs) and give the kid a honest effort.

The Juri player had another easy first round bout as he fought some random guy I beat prior in warm-ups who was using Ryu. I would end up facing the Juri player in my next round bout. In the Dudley match-up I went with Ultra 2 but with Juri because I think this match is completely revamped in Ultra now after Juri’s buffs, I went with Ultra Combo Double. Reduced damage but I like the added mindgame that he can’t zone me out with fireballs.

Surprisingly enough, this turned into a match of PURE footsies. Footsies = proper spacing and zoning where you’re in a tug of war fight to control onscreen space. I have two friends who main Juri and I haven’t seen one this good like EVER. I had him beat in one round and I dropped the Ultra Combo ender and lost the round because of it. It happens to the best of it. I’m not even mad at that goof up. Regardless, it came down to tied to win, last match, last little scrap of health. I went for a Focus Attack fake-out but he didn’t fall for it and got the jump-in for the win. GGs dude. The clerk and everyone there said we had the best match of the tournament afterwards, with my opponent saying that I was his only “true” competition. Even his buddies were impressed with my play, jokingly asking if we were trying to play like it was the finals of Evo. I can’t even be mad when in past tournaments, players were so intent to get me eliminated that they had to get the tournament organizer to play and beat me himself so this was a change of pace.

I stuck around to watch the remainder of the tournament with the two buddies finishing it out, as the Juri player completely wiped the floor with his Dudley. That was just ugly to watch. Hell, our match could have been the finals as far as I’m concerned. After those two were crowned the winners of first and second place, I had to play a final match against the other person who lost in the semi-finals. I could've won that match blindfolded to be honest. The only thing I did was play Gouken and parried everything he tried to do and after he got frustrated to death I spammed charged Gohadokens high and low. 

First place won a $25 gift card to the store, second place won a $15 one, and third got $5 that could be used towards any reserve. Better than nothing as the only thing I could remember getting from that Soul Calibur II tournament back in the day was a few preorder decals/stickers from Ace Combat 4 (I think?) that they were trying to get rid of.

All in all, I felt this was a good last hurrah to end on. Like Ivy before her in Soul Calibur II, Chun-Li gave me a good ride to the end of my tournament life in this game. With my mind at rest, I feel like I can finally move onto something else and not invest all of my free time on this game any longer. We'll have to see what's the next fighter that's going to hook me in to want to play competitively in the future. For now, I'm taking it easy and continuing to catch up on games I've missed out on the last few years after allowing Street Fighter IV to take over my gaming console for the last 7+ years.

The Flash - Season 2: 1st Appearance of Zoom

To be honest, I wouldn’t have stuck this long with this show if it wasn’t for Tom Cavanagh AKA Harrison Wells’ actor. The guy has an amazing presence in every single scene he’s in and it’s a completely different side of the coin that he’s playing with his character - who’s not the Reverse Flash/Thawne in this timeline. I’m starting to like Patty’s character more and more each episode, but I’m glad that they are scaling back on Iris’ character this season. She’s NOWHERE as annoying and sickening to watch this season as compared to the first season. I was to the point where I absolutely hated her character in the first season. That being said, Barry’s love-interests are disposable and interchangeable as his underwear, so Patty might want to look out before Barry moves onto the next big thing.

As much as I HATE the fangirls from Arrow, I’m going piss them off and say that I’m still keen of the idea of Barry hooking up with Felicity Smoak. Her on that “double date” with Barry and Iris was just too great. Fuck your “Olicity” fanfiction pairing that the creators of that show was forced to make a reality to not upset you clowns.

Moving on…

As for Barry’s first encounter with Zoom, I have to say that I was a little underwhelmed. It’s roughly the same as the first skirmish with the Reverse Flash. I said this on social media last night too. I don’t see myself watching this show for several seasons on end if EVERY season is another skirmish versus another “evil” speedster. Barry gets the shit beat out of him and becomes a martyr for other heroes and heroines to step forward to help him. Isn’t that same shit that they did on Smallville, Arrow, and even The Flash last season? C’mon, I want to see Barry beat this one on his own, especially after seeing Eddie Thawne take Barry’s man card from him in defeating Reverse Flash in the season one finale.

Supergirl - Superman saves Kara's ass from Reactron

Don’t ask why but for some reason I’m STILL watching Supergirl. Call me crazy or call me stupid, but I’m waiting to see if this gets any better. The CG effects look better than they did in the pilot now, but everything else is meh at best.

I’m just getting REALLY sick of this preset template to almost all of these Arrow/Smallville-style DC Comics-based TV shows. You got the support team setup in a Command Center that’s just as corny and comical as an episode of Power Rangers, the hero/heroine going through teen angst-style puberty with learning/mastering their powers in the vein of Spider-Man, and the “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!!” Pokemon/13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo mash-up subplot. It’s getting VERY redundant.

In Supergirl, she doesn’t have not one Command Center but at least 2-3 of them - her apartment, the DEO HQ, and now Catco where she works underneath her secret identity. C’mon, how the hell people aren’t figuring this shit out while she’s at fucking work?? Between The Flash, Arrow, and now Supergirl, you’d think DC Comics’ superheroes don’t know the meaning of secret identities. I’m sure there’s going to be that one nerd who’s going to argue that Marvel Comics does the same thing but in their defense, they haven’t had a reason to “conceal” their identities when they have been dealing with an alien invasion and other various terrorist and planetary threats. They aren’t stopping the small street level criminals like DC’s heros until Daredevil came around into the picture on Netflix.

I remember win this show was first announced, people were saying that it was going to be the start of a “movement” of female empowerment for the superhero genre. Nah, this show is doing nothing but enforcing the idea to frowning upon that idea. The second it was looking bad against Reactron, Superman showed up and saved Kara and took her home without a second thought before leaving to take care of more “important” business like he was metaphorically saying that what Supergirl was dealing with was beneath him.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD - Melinda May’s dilemma

***HUGE Spoiler if you haven’t been keeping up to date with the current season… ***

May’s ex-husband turned out to be Lash after tampering with Daisy’s mother’s Inhuman junk that SHIELD acquired after last season’s finale. Somehow it was rigged with Terragen Crystals that released the mist that “unlocked” his powers, turning him into that monster. So pretty much, May is reduced to being his Betty Ross for his Incredible Hulk rampages. A rare touching moment between her and her former husband, but I was ready for Ward to kill the guy off see her become an even more hardened warrior. Sad to see her and Mockingbird’s manhunt or rather womanhunt? for Ward end prematurely. Speaking of Mockingbird I didn’t know Palicki was so much taller than Ming-Na. Good grief. She’s a fucking amazon. I feel like that was a bit of an oversight in terms of Marvel’s casting for that character as Mockingbird is usually depicted as shorter than most heroes and heroines as she uses her petite size to her advantage. Her Amazon stature doesn’t diminish her character here, but that’s just me being a little nit-picky as usual.

What REALLY bothered me about this episode though? The end teaser where Ward’s new HYDRA buddies confirmed that Rosalind was one of their own. I have to remind myself that every time they add one of these one-off characters that haven’t been in the comics prior nine times out of ten they are HYDRA operative. I hope it’s not true, but to see Coulson falling heads over heels for her is a bit much. It seems like they have thrown the tension between himself and May out of the window completely that they have been hinting at for the last few seasons.

Star Wars Rebels

I did a marathon of the first season and the second season thus far over the weekend and I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed Clone Wars for the most part until it’s last few seasons as I felt that it overstayed it’s welcome, but this is a nice change of pace. It took majority of the first season to make me give a damn, but they got me hooked after tying the series completely to the original Star Wars trilogy AND the Clone Wars cartoon after introducing Ahsoka Tano and Darth Vader into this cartoon. I know that I’m dying to see Ahsoka’s confrontation with her former master more than anything else now since we were shafted out of Ahsoka’s character being “killed off” during the end of the Clone Wars cartoon after mixed reactions from fans and parents who were fans of the show, despite knowing what happened during Order 666 in Episode III. I seriously doubt that they are going to kill her character off now that she has such a strong following after Clone Wars, but her past with Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is going have to be addressed sooner or later. 

And seriously, where do all of these Inquisitors keep showing up from? Don't get me wrong. They all look totally bad-ass but do the Empire have an endless supply of them?

Revisiting New Mobile Report Gundam Wing

Watching uncut, unedited, and in gorgeous HD from the Remastered DVD/Blu-Ray boxset that someone was awesome enough to upload on YouTube. I’m up to episode 37 after grinding away at the series over the past week. Definitely not as “amazing” as it was when I first watched it back on Toonami when I was in high school but still a great Gundam series nonetheless.

I know I completely forgot about Lady Une’s schizophrenia/multiple personalities and the cause for it isn’t explained very well. It’s like her and Trieze have ONE minor disagreement between the end of the first major story arc and then the next episode she’s acting like a completely different person. I’m sure her voice actress had some fun with that one.

Speaking of voice acting talent, Gundam W sports a ton of great voices that are still floating around English anime dubs today. Quatre’s VA voices Light Yagami in Death Note as well a lot of other noteworthy roles. Trowa’s VA (Kirby Murrow) voiced Miroku in Inuyasha as well as Vaan in Vision of Escaflowne. Duo Maxwell’s VA voiced Protoman and Dr. Wily in the Mega Man cartoon and went on to voice tons of other anime characters following the success of Gundam W in the US, including Hohenheim Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist. Brian Drummond (Millardo Peacecraft/Zechs Marquise) is one of the most popular voice actors from one of the original English dubs of Dragonball Z’s Vegeta. Majority of the cast came back together to work on Gundam 00, that sports a similar tone as Gundam Wing did.

As for the fact of understanding why this series isn’t part of reruns on Toonami, there’s a LOT of religious content to edit out along with some suicidal tendencies of the pilots that parents would not be okay with nowadays. On top of that, this anime (much like most of the Gundam franchise) speaks about war in a way that most people don’t want their children exposed to. It’s a mature show for mature minds and doesn’t have a lot of happy endings - the pilots find this out the hard way on multiple occasions throughout the series.

As overpowered the Zero System was during the series’ final act, it’s no more overpowered as the essential “Newtypes” that have become the series staples in this genre To be honest, it’s literally the same idea without the genetics involved.

Looking back, the animation is still top notch - especially for this time period in the mid-90s but now that I’m older I can notice the same corners that were cut as other anime series during this time period, like Dragonball Z. For example, when Heero and Trowa fought Zechs in space with the Mercurius and Vayeate versus the Tallgeese, the same scenes from mobile dolls being destroyed are recycled into almost EVERY episodes’ space battles following this encounter. The same thing is done with the Wing Zero’s space battles. After reading up more onto the series, I found out that the mecha designs were simplified on this series due to budget limitations in terms of animation. That explains why the designs for the Gundams are DRASTICALLY different between the original anime and the Endless Waltz OVA movie as the series creator had the chance to redesign and detail the 5 Gundams as he originally envisioned them.

I’ll admit that Gundam W is a VERY slow build to the good stuff, but there’s not the comedy to fall back on to ease the grind like G Gundam had. (Laughs) Gundam W started the “pretty boy” anime craze in terms of getting girls exposed to anime in the US in the 90s, along with Sailor Moon and Inuyusha. If you were lucky to wake up for Vision of Escaflowne being HEAVILY edited on Fox Kids that my girlfriend at the time watching with her when I was in high school, you can add that to the list too. Kids WB tried to match that dynamic with Cardcapturers/Cardcapturor Sakura, but I don’t remember that anime airing completely on that channel before being elbowed off the network in favor of more seasons of Yu-Gi-OH! and Pokemon.

One more thing to laugh about concerning Gundam W to end on…

Dorothy’s fucking eyebrows.