Hi guys! I'm glad you could come. I have a special treat for you today. I'm your host, Sarm.
Hi guys! I'm glad you could come. I have a special treat for you today. I'm your host, Sarm.
And I'm your new co-host, Bub! Today we're looking at a video game that was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System by the now-defunct company, Active Enterprises. Sarm, go ahead and pull up the box art on this baby.
52 games in one cartridge! Ninjas! Dragons! Robots! Space ships! John Stamos! This game has it all! And only for...wow, $200. But still, 52 games! When doing the math, that comes out to $3.8461538461538461538461538461538 per game.
Okay, let's just say less than $4 a game. We turn on the game, and the first thing that greets us is
this. Aaaauuugh. This better be good for the price tag. We're shuffled to the game selection screen once the music finishes. Wow, that's a lot of games!
Well, no better place to start than from the top.
Hey Sarm. Get over here. This one's two-player.
Oh, sure thing. I'll be right there.
Okay, here-...what the heck? I died already. And again. And again. Oh, here I go. Now that I've moved away from the wall that appears half an inch from my ship at the start, I can finally play. I'm on the second level alr-OH COME ON, they put the wall right in front of me in the second level too!
Third level. *PAUSE* ...Yep, they did it again. Once again, I'm fighting the same boss at the end.
Dude, the game just froze on you. Hahaha. They didn't make a level 4. This is sad.
I've got this one. Okay, I'm in a Donkey Kong-like stage with guys running around, and the lights just went out. Now I can't see my character or the enemies. Oh, got one. Lights are back on, and...did my character just turn into a turd? This one's too weird.
I have to admit, after watching Bub's abysmal run in Star Evil my first impulse was to hold left on the controller once I found out that this was a scrolling space shooter too. This one moves horizontally, but very boring.
Hey Bub, doesn't this title sound familiar?
That would be because when the Action 52 was released, Active Enterprises announced a contest through their game. Whoever could complete all 5 stages of Ooze would win $104,000! I don't believe anyone has ever collected the prize.
Great! Let's do this!
Now I know why nobody collected the prize. The game crashes at the end of level 2.
Tsh...this is going to be a long night. I need a stiff drink.
I've got some bubbly in the fridge.
Oh shut up.
In this overhead game, you're a little knight dude who has to clear the forests of insects with his mighty BLACK NOT SILVER sword. You throw these things. Why doesn't he run out? And why does he throw them hilt first when you face south or west?
This guy moves slow. I'm talking "bicycling up a mountain with an opera lady strapped to your neck makes more progress than this" type of slow. You can only throw one sword at a time, so good luck when trying to kill anything. Three hits will kill you, but you don't have a visible life bar and with the speed the enemies move...don't bet on making it very far.
Don't ask me about the name. I think it's supposed to be yet another automatic side scrolling space shooter. Given the name, my first guess is that you're a white blood cell trying to kill off a foreign organ transplant. Go white blood cell, go!
What a terrible game. You're a ship, and you shoot the meteorites that rain down from the sky. That's it. No scrolling, no new enemies popping out, nothing. The screen shot below is the ONLY playing field you'll see for as long as you play this abomination.
Nothing to see here, folks. Black-screened from a Nintendo game. Move along now.
FUN FACT: Portions of the Alfred N The Fettuc source code was worked into the Windows ME start-up procedure.
*Snicker*
You called me for my turn, and the next game I play is another vertical automatic scrolling shooter that gets me killed within half a second? You have a sick sense of humor. Seeing how this is no different than Star Evil, just go back and read the first part of what I wrote. This game isn't really different.
Whoa. This is the first one so far that I've turned on where I would have truly believed this would have been a real game on the Nintendo.
Seriously?
Yeah. Then I started to play it. False alarm, everyone. Sorry about that. In this game, you're playing as a beaver who has to reach the end of the stage. You're not capable of stepping off of the road, though, so this isn't much more than "follow the winding path to the end" and it gets old right before the screen begins to scroll.
You know what? This is ridiculous. I am NOT playing yet another generic space-age shooting game.
Crispy is going to garrote you if he reads that, but I feel the same way. How about we just skip every scrolling shooter from now on?
Agreed.
Hey, this one's kinda new. A side-scrolling platformer set in an underground crypt. I didn't have to let go of the jump button in order to move in mid-air, and the music looped properly. Unfortunately, this impressed me. It helps that the character is pretty hot with her 8-bit bust. And...hey Bub, get off the phone. I'm trying to do something here.
Oh, sorry. Simon Belmont just called. He wants his game back.
Hey, remember when I reviewed Lights Out? This game isn't any different, except the lights don't go out this time. Skip it and move on. As a matter of fact, I'm extending the "skip the game" clause to any game that isn't really any different from what we've already reviewed.
Finally, something new! I thought we were going to get our entire show dropped from the network at this rate. Meong is...different, to say the least. Not good, though. Think Minesweeper + Chess - Fun = Meong. You move from tile to tile, hoping you don't blow up. If you stay on one tile for too long, you blow up. Step on the wrong tile, you blow up. You can't really tell if a tile is bad until you blow up or wait a few seconds (risking blowing up unless you dance between two tiles), so this game ranks around the 200 lightning dodges in Final Fantasy X in terms of logic.
We shouldn't be reviewing this one, because it's a vertical automatic scrolling space shooter. Why are we? Because this game is so un-bubbling-believable that it's almost an awesome game. You play as a FLYING PACIFIER who gets attacked by TEDDY BEARS, RAGGEDY ANN DOLLS, SAFETY PINS and those spinning things on top of cradles. This is one messed-up shoot-em-up game. I'd almost recommend you try it.
This one's actually quite interesting. It's a vertically-scrolling platformer, but instead of jumping you use a little hookshot that you shoot diagonally in order to grab higher platforms to drag yourself up to them. Think of Bionic Commando, except you don't actually get to swing around when you grab something. It's fun for a minute, but I wouldn't replay it.
Zzz...oh, we're back. Underground takes place...well, underground. It's a platformer with no jumping, but it's also one of the very few platformers in Action 52 that doesn't kill you if you fall the height of a jump. Seeing how you start the first level by falling down a shaft, all I can say is "why leave this feature out now?" Do you see that top-right portion of the area, with the monsters between the ladders? They run back and forth. How do you get up there and shoot them before they run over your head? Just spare me the pain of playing this game and give back the fall death.
Slashers, surprisingly, has nothing to do with any form of bladed object. You find yourself on the roof of a building, and the only way to progress is move right. You're periodically (heck of a lot) stopped by enemies who want to punch you. Punch them back and move half an inch forward to the next enemy who wants to punch you. You can move backward while attacking to keep from getting hurt, but after a dozen enemies you won't care anymore and let them beat the snot out of you.
I thought this game was going to be about drunken old couples trying to dance at the bar. I was sorely disappointed, but to be fair there isn't much in the world that could top drunken old couples trying to dance anyway. You're this tiny little guy who can (somewhat) maneuver through a maze and shoot little pellets that bounce back and forth. It's honestly very boring, and found myself charging into the spiraly things to run out of lives. This is a real yawner.
I think we're going to be out of a job if this keeps up. How ridiculous.
Zzz...
Hallelujah. Finally, a different game to review.
Wow. This game could've been pretty good...if it was made by any other company. You're some Indiana Jones knock off and you have to get to the exit in each stage. Sounds simple, right? Well, there's the "hold the jump button and you can't move in mid-air" bug which is ever-annoying, and random blocks like to spawn over your head and kill you, but the levels themselves end up quite large. I'm surprised, because a few of the later levels could rival an early Zelda 2 dungeon in size. It's a shame that the rooms begin to get repetitive at the end.
Hey, let me have this next one. I'm finally interested again.
Huh...don't I get all the rotten luck. This one stinks. You're a guy, climbing a tower with his bare hands. You just go up, while avoiding obstacles. The only thing that separates this from a vertical shooter is that it doesn't scroll for you.
Heheh...turned on the game, got a black screen. I guess you could say Jigsaw came pre-solved!
That leaves only one game left, doesn't it Bub?
Yes it does. It's crazy how quickly this show took off after we finished the first several games.
Amen, Bub. Of course, it doesn't help when well over half of the games on the Action 52 cartridge are clones of each other and in a sense, already reviewed farther up in the article!
I stopped counting at 26, myself. Anyway, let's focus on the last game. The game that was the highlight of the Action 52. You could say that this was Active Enterprise's excuse for this entire cartridge! Once this article is over, some of you may be scratching your heads with wonder. Why make a cart with 52 games for the purpose of only really intending it for one?
Hey you. The reader. If you tried to follow us along, go ahead and restart your Action 52 cart. Heaven knows you had to do it several times already. Got that? See that anthropomorphic cheetah with his fist raised in the air when you hear "Make your selection now"?
Why, it's none other than a character from the 52nd game, and that is...
As far as Action 52 games go, this really looks and plays nothing like any of the others. Too bad the intro comes off like Captain N and a stereotypical zeta rip thrown in a blender, but you can tell more attention went to this one than...Star Evil, for example.
Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up.
Yikes, okay. Anyway, this is what we were treated to when we started.
Stage 1. Touching those pits will kill you. Your character just blows up as though he was hit too many times, which is a shame because I doubt that a little spice in how you die could be all that hard. The hit detection feels a little off. I can't put my finger on it. It's something you'd have to try for yourself. Stage 2's boss had a very predictable pattern of "jump left 2 times, jump right 2 times". Even then, you had to get reeeaaally close to him in order to do any damage.
An interesting bug in the pure side-scrolling stages lets you jump in mid-air if you push the jump button in the middle of your attack frame. Sadly, this "air jumping" error made the game more enjoyable to play.
Now I get to play as the buff guy. I think his in-game sprite looks a bit better than the maraca-shaking one in the first two stages.
That's new. The first pit in stage three is a warp zone with a 1-up. Stage 4-AAAAAAAAAAH!
AAAAAAAAAAH! Thanks for the strobe light stage!
That boss kinda came out of nowhere. We had to reload a couple of times because touching him does 1 damage every nanosecond, so we blew up on the spot.
He can't touch us when we're standing here, though. Thank you bad AI.
The game looks like it freezes at this point. We were ready to wrap the article but Bub had to try hitting the Start button. Thanks a lot.
...
This guy actually shoots his crossbow for a distance attack. I thought this was great until I remembered that there's no crouching in this game, and the air jump doesn't work anymore. Yay...oh no! Those enemies that home in on you from Haunted Halls are in this game! There's another warp, but don't take it. It makes the next level glitched to the point of unplayability.
This stage was completely void of any enemies...
...Until we reached the boss. A flying vulture thing. From our position, his movement pattern never reached us. We sniped at him from safety until we landed the killing blow.
Yeah, but the only thing that happened was that the game took us back to the menu! Looks like the Gamemaster never got outside of the television, like the genie from Pee Wee's Playhouse. Poor guy.
Now we've somewhat covered every game for the Action 52 cartridge. What lesson did we learn, everyone?
That whenever you feel like complaining about how Byond doesn't have any good games, go play Action 52 for a few hours! And don't forget that some people actually paid $200 for this heap of trash. That's all, right Sarm?
Actually, no. Remember how we mentioned that the Action 52 was mainly an excuse to put out Cheetahmen? Well, included in the box was a comic for them! And for all of you lucky readers who sat through this entire thing, have some more Cheetahmen!
