I remember as a kid that my favorite fruit snacks weren’t the ones that looked like fruit or amorphous shapes–they were the ones that were shaped like characters that I liked, sharks, dinosaurs, etc.  Or, in the case of this box of vintage food that I found in the back of my closet, fruit snacks shaped like jet fighters!

Last time I checked the store’s selection of fruit snack shapes all that they had were licensed characters and generic fruit shapes.  There did used to be a place in a mall near me that sold fruit snacks shaped like weird things but they closed years ago.  Oh well.  I guess if I’m going to be blindly throwing them into my mouth then I don’t care what shapes they are, like the color of M&M’s.

I found these two (full, mind you… full!) cans of Super Mario Bros. sodas in my basement a while back. These mini sodas from the early 90s and made by Shasta sure bring back some refreshing sodariffic memories. I also remember there being some kind of Yoshi apple and possibly Princess Peach something or other. If the Princess Peach soda wasn’t peach flavored then I don’t know what those soda guys were thinking. Either way, I remember the Mario one being the best, which is probably why I was left with a surplus of Luigi ones. Poor Luigi.

That reminds me: when did she become Princess Peach? I aways remember her being Princess Toadstool in the old video games and the animated shows. Was it a name change like Sega did with Dr. Robotnik/Eggman? Would Peach be techically “Princess Peach Toadstool”? That would certainly make sense, considering both Mario and Luigi have last names: Mario Mario and Luigi Mario.

The Phantom Menace was released to generally-disappointed audiences; except for me.  As I look back on the film’s 15th anniversary, I’m reminded of the onslaught of merchandising.  In this case, it was candy.

From the above image of the Jar Jar lollipop, it is difficult to determine where the lollipop is.  After all, it appears to just be a sculpted head on a stick.  Pressing the back of the device reveals the shocking truth:

No.  Please, no.

That’s right, kids — the lollopop is Jar Jar’s tongue, allowing you to re-enact the part of the film where someone shoved Jar Jar’s tongue down their mouth and sucked on it.  Who could forget that scene?  That’s the reason why people generally hate Episode 1, right?

Last week we showed you the bizarre Jar Jar Binks’ tongue lollipop.  Just in case that wasn’t weird enough for you, here’s the second entry into our look back at ten years of Episode 1.

I purchased this figure back in 1999 because it was the first figure of Jabba the Hutt that actually looked like him: not because he had that great realistic vomiting action that you really need in a great action figure.  After all, they are called “action” figures, and there really aren’t a lot of different actions that you can play with Jabba the Hutt.  Let’s take a quick look at the things that Jabba does in his film appearances:

-He yells at people.
-He laughs at people.
-He eats space frogs.
-He smokes something.
-He watches a green tentacle-headed girl dance provocatively.
-He tries to get it on with the green dancer, but she rejects him so he lets his big pet Rancor monster eat her.
-He makes Princess Leia dress up in a metal bikini.
-He gets strangled to death.
-He falls asleep during the podrace.

This leaves a lot of room for creative liberties, so this figure came with a canister of green slime and little frogs to put in the slime.  To make Jabba vomit this substance, you would put the slime in his head then insert the canister below it, as shown in the image below.

Pressing the head with the canister inserted into it back into the body would force the glob up through Jabba’s mouth, making him effectively vomit it all over himself.

Yum?  Does Jabba enjoy vomiting or the taste of his own vomit?  If i was lying around with green slime and space frogs all over myself, I doubt I — or anyone else in my proximity — would be saying “yum!”  Heck, this is in all caps, too, so its not just “yum, that was good,” its “YUM!! Oh man, that was the best vomit I’ve ever vomited!  I can’t believe how green it was!  And the frogs!  Those frogs were so froggy!”  There’s just so much excitement there.

I would show you the slime in action, but the slime has somewhat joined together into a solid blob over the past ten years.  Here is that blob:

I appologize if you just replicated the action of the “Jabba Glob” figure after seeing the above blob of semi-fermented goop.  You had better appreciate this photo, too, because the odor it emitted upon removal from its canister made me choke.

Here’s the figure in proper figure-collecting mint-on-card condition.  First of all, did they really think that calling green vomit that’s full of little space frogs “glob” make this stuff seem any less like vomit?  Let’s see: its slimey, it comes out of his mouth, and its full of pieces of food.  Sounds like puke to me.

Upon closer inspection, the back of the card makes a case against the “glob” being vomit:

First of all, I don’t see why Jabba would be eating slime.  He’s a rich crime lord after all, and any rich crime lord wouldn’t be eating something that looks like it came out of someone’s nose or caused some pet shop turtles to mutate into a Shredder-fighting, pizza-eating, cowabunga-ing team.

The description of how this couldn’t be vomit isn’t the funny part here.  Read the last sentence.  “Be sure not to eat any yourself — Glob is for Hutts, not humans!”  Im sure that in today’s age of legalese and product liability the folks at Hasbro had to include this for legal reasons.  But really, give me a break.  Why would anyone eat this?  Even a stupid kid wouldn’t eat this.  I’d rather eat dirt than this.  If stranded on a desert island and only given this to eat, I’d start eating the plastic container that it comes in.

This isn’t the only occurrence on the package that they designate this as not food.

Just in case you missed it the first time, you now know for sure that this disgiusting slime isn’t food.

So there you have it, the infamous “Jabba Glob” action figure in its full glory.  In its defense, the figure itself was fantastic.  Even though Hasbro released an updated and more accurately-painted Jabba 3 3/4 inch scale figure later on, I always found the Jabba Glob figure (sans glob) to be more fun to play with as a kid because you could squeeze his head a little bit and make his mouth open as if he was talking.  They took a chance and I believe that it paid off.  After all, I’m not talking about any of their more successful products ten years later, am I?

Here’s to you, Hasbro’s Episode 1 toy design team.  Thanks for developing what is probably the most bizarre Star Wars action figure in the 30 years of toys from a galaxy far, far away.  And no, I’m not being sarcastic.  It isn’t often that you come across something so legitimate, bizarre, and hilarious that gets an official stamp of approval.

2-XL was more than a cassette player: he was my best friend on road trips when I was a kid.  Some kids remember fighting with their siblings during those long family drives through nowheresville.  Not having any siblings, I remember 2-XL’s programs.  I was even involved in a car accident and I can still remember what 2-XL tape I was listening to (“Fun and Games”).

2-XL is a quasi-acronym for “To Excel.”  He was invented by Dr. Michael Freeman, Phd.  The first model of 2-XL came out in 1978 and was released by the Mego Toy Corporation, until they ceased production in 1981.  During the original release period, Mego released two variations of the toy.  Mego went out of business in 1983 which left 2-XL an essentially dead franchise until 1992 when Tiger Electronics brought 2-XL back with a complete redesign (commonly referred to as type 3, as seen above).  For all intensive purposes, I will refer to this model by just 2-XL, since I did not own an original.

2-XL came before the age of portable digital media players so his 1992 program medium was cassette tapes (8-track tapes for the Mego versions).  These tapes, when played in the robot, allowed you to listen to that tape’s program and interact with 2XL’s questions by pressing one of the buttons on his panel.  Sometimes these choices were presented in the form of trivia questions so that you could test your knowledge of various topics.  Other times they allowed you to make choices to change the sound of music or a story’s plot.  Either way, they were a whole lot of fun and most of the programs presented a good deal of replay value.  It all added up to hours and hours of educational entertainment and you can’t put a price tag on that.

Actually, you can, and it usually goes for $29.99.

I never collected all of the 2-XL tapes since I had grown past him before they stopped releasing tapes a few years later, but here are the 15 of the 43 confirmed program tapes that I have and what I remember about them.

“World of 2-XL”
This was the tape that came with the toy.  You could always identify this tape since it was the only one that was white, as opposed to black.  It was a sampler that contained all sorts of different things.

“Voyage to Outer Space”

“Storymaker”
This was essentially an audio version of one of those “choose your own adventure” books that kids read in elementary school.

“African Safari”

“Batman: Carnival of Crime”

“Batman: The Sizzling Scheme”

“Chaos in Jurassic Park”

“X-Men: Ghosts That Haunt Us”

“Food Facts and You”

“World of Science”

“Fascinating Facts”

“Sports World”

“Monsters, Myths, and Dinosaurs”
This was by far my favorite tape since I’ve always been a fan of all three components of this tape’s title.

“Amazing World Records”

“Planet Earth”

Virtual pets were all the rage in the late 1990 and have kept a small presence in the toy market since.  To most people it would seem that all of these “product of the year” fads always suffer the one-hit-wonder phenomenon: they pop up out of nowhere, sell a gazillion units, then apparently disappear into obscurity.  Most of these products fit this description.  The Furby later spawned the Shell, which as far as I can remember, was a commercial flop.  I don’t even remember seeing commercials for these let alone seeing them in the stores yet somehow my mom was able to find one on clearance at Target for $2.50.

I remember these things as being mostly a “girls toy” and that I’d never be caught dead with one of them.  Toy manufacturers must have have realized this and came out with a series of “boy virtual pets” as shown above.

The Tamagotchi pets were by far the most popular of this genre, but they seemed… kind of pointless, really.  Why just raise a virtual pet when you could enhance a video game?  Thus Nintendo released “Pokemon Pikachu,” the first add-on peripheral for the Pokemon series of Game Boy video games.  Pokemon Pikachu was essentially a pedometer combined with a virtual pet.  By eliminating the need for monotinous caretaking, Pokemon Pikachu focused more on fitness by tracking steps taken and converting them into a form of virtual currency called “watts.”  These watts could be transferred over to the Pokemon video games and turned into items.

Back in eigth grade there was a guy in my class that was sort of an annoying rival.  He would always come up to me and brag about all of his recent video game achievements in that kind of condescending way that makes you feel like he just looked stuff up on the internet and is claiming to have accomplished something.  I remember seeing him with it one day and thinking “what a loser, walking around with a girly toy.”  He might as well have had a doll, for all I cared.  Then I read about them in Nintendo Power Magazine and realized that I was missing out on valuable items!  (Of course, I later found out how to hack the crap out of the game with a Game Shark and get all of the items without working whatsoever)

So, I went to the store and picked up Pokemon Pikachu.  I took it to school for 2 days before realizing how I probably shouldn’t have bought it.

When Pokemon Gold and Silver came out in 2000, Nintendo again released the Pokemon Pikachu, this time rebranded into the Pokemon Pikachu 2 with a color screen and compatability with the new games.  This time around I was in high school and while I did play the crap out of Gold and Silver I never bothered with the Pokemon Pikachu 2 (which I got here on clearance for less than $5).

Nintendo brought the concept back AGAIN in 2009 with the re-release of the Gold and Silver games on the Nintendo DS, again rebranded as the “Pokewalker.”  It made sense back in the 90s to make Pikachu the exclusive character to the portable unit since he was by far one of the most popular characters, but now that there are nearly 500 species of Pokemon characters in the games it makes sense to allow any character to be played as a virtual pet–and that’s exactly what Nintendo did.

Before Nintendo released the Pokemon Pikachu, Tiger Electronics came out with Star Wars virual pets.  As far as I’m aware, the R2-D2 and Yoda were the only made in this like.  Abandoning the “take care of this thing or it will die” model of Tamagotchi, these pets offered up something different.  R2-D2 acted like a virtually-useless sidekick robot and Yoda trained your Jedi skills.  I can’t remember ever using these for more than a week and, admittedly, were only purchased back then out of Star Wars completionism.

There we have it: a look back at a few of the more boy-oriented virual pets of the late 1990s.  In retrospect, they were somewhat innovative but leave the bad taste of shame in your mouth for having spent money on them.

Wendy’s was somewhat of a treat for me when I was young.  There was only one of them near my house and I didn’t go there very often, but I remember that going there was extra special.  We would always bring home a large chocolate Frosty and stick it in the freezer all day so that by dinnertime I could have it nice and frozen.  I still find it hard to have Frostys any other way to this day.

While their fries aren’t anything to write home about, I remember that their hamburger buns tasted better than the ones on the ones on the Happy Meal hamburgers and this was something I took notice of.  I also liked how their toy premiums were usually abstract things that weren’t from the latest movie or cartoon show.  While I loved those kinds of toys as well, Wendy’s toys worked great for imaginative play and that’s where these aliens came in handy.

If you notice their waists, you might see a joint.  The aliens were made of a soft plastic and could be popped apart at the torso and you could mix-and-match the aliens.  I thought this was a fun concept as a kid and had made numerous flip-type books where I would mix-and-match various monsters to make vampire werewolf mummies.

The purple alien was my favorite because he seemed to fit in better with my other toys and seemed like a nice guy.  The orange guy was usually his jerky friend and the yellow guy was silly.

I would build space ships out of Duplo Legos for these aliens and go on adventures around the house galaxy.  Good times.

The moral of the story: fast food isn’t all that bad.  Sure got me up and running around.

Hasbro released a line of action figures of all of the characters from the first “Mortal Kombat” video game circa 1994.  I can’t quite tell for sure because the date stamp on the figures all say 1991, because their bodies were, for the most part, recycled from G.I. Joes.  However, most of the heads were original (I’m wasn’t a G.I. Joe collector so I’m not sure what all was recycled) since they attempted to at least make these look like the characters.

The line consisted of all of the characters from the game, except for the secret character,  Reptile.  This breaks down to Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Raiden, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Sonya Blade, and Kano.  The two boss characters, Shang Tsung and Goro, were also released, though Goro will not appear in this article because he came in a multipack that I never could find in stores.

I used to keep these figures in a box together when I was a kid but somehow they got separated, which means that Liu Kang, Raiden, and Johnny Cage will not appear in this article unless I can find them at a later date.  While Shang Tsung appears in this article, the figure is actually the movie version and not the game version.  Upon reviewing some photos of these figures from other sites, I seem to recall that I owned the game Shang Tsung.  He too is missing.

Sub-Zero

Sub-Zero has always been my preferred character in the “Mortal Kombat” franchise because I hate memorizing moves.  Even after not playing these games in over 15 years, I still remember all of this dude’s moves (which is the reason why I have, and continue to, totally suck at “Street Fighter” games).

This figure didn’t actaully come with the cloth (soft goods) outfit–I took it from the movie “Frozen Sub Zero” figure and put it on this one because it’s a better figure.

Scorpion

Over the entire run of the Mortal Kombat franchise, only one character comes in second to my favorite, Sub-Zero: Scorpion.  His moves were easy to use and his fatality was one of the more exciting of the first game.

This photo isn’t of the Scorpion figure but actually the Sub-Zero.  Hasbro did release a Scorpion figure as part of this line, but he was one of the few figures that I couldn’t find when I was putting this article together, so I just did, with Photoshop, what the toy makers did the first time: use yellow cloth and yellow paint instead of blue.  Literally.  This is also what the developers did with all of the various differently-colored ninjas in the games (its a process called “palette swap”).

This figure didn’t come with a soft goods either, but the movie version did.  I also had this version and it is currently lost.

Frozen (Movie) Sub-Zero

This is the movie version of Sub-Zero, which came with the soft goods outfit that I later moved to the first Sub-Zero because it looks more like the character than this one, which just looks wrong.

Sonya Blade (Movie)

Sonya’s outfit looks nothing like the Sonya in the game, but this is the “movie edition.”  Gotta love those. : /

Kano

Kano is one of my least favorite characters from any of the games and was usually my go-to dummy to beat up on in.  At least the figure looks pretty accurate.

Shang Tsung (Movie)

Here’s Shang Tsung… I think?  Actually… I don’t know…  This one just doesn’t make sense.

This is actually the “movie version” of the character, but even then, this is still a fail because they could have at least used an older actor to portray the character in the film.  This doesn’t even look like the younger Shang Tsung in the film!  Then again, when have movies based on video games ever been true and kind to any source material?  Something tells me that the figure designers had spent all their budget or energies on creating the figures that actually look something like the characters and so they just used something from another product line.  According to YoJoe.com, this was a figure called “Budo” from a cancelled action figure line called “Ninja Commandoes.”

Custom Ninjas

I used the same color swap process that I used to re-create Scorpion to create these virtual custom figures of characters mostly that didn’t exist until later on in the franchise.

First is Reptile, who was released as part of the Hasbro line, but I never owned the figure.

Second is Ermac, the red telekenetic ninja that came out in “Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.”

Third is Smoke, a secret character in “Mortal Kombat 2” that later became a playable cyborg ninja in “Mortal Kombat 3” and a playable human form ninja in “Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.”  Hasbro also released an official Smoke figure.

Fourth is Rain, a ninja that controls the weather.  He, too, first appeared in “Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.”

There’s a story that the developers of “Mortal Kombat 3” weren’t allowed to use any straight-up “ninja” characters in the game so instead they changed the appearance of Sub-Zero to more of a generic martial arts character and introduced cyborg “ninjas” to counteract the loss of the classic ninjas.  Then, when “Ultimate Mortal Kombat” came out, the developers were able to put the classic ninjas back into the game, including classic Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Reptile, and human Smoke as well as several new ninjas including Rain and Ermac.  Noob Saibot also returned as a playable character in some versions of the game.  However, because he is essentially just a black silhouette of the same ninja model, I decided not to make a fake custom of him for this article.

In all, the line wasn’t a “flawless victory” but it wasn’t that bad.  The likenesses weren’t very accurate and the costumes were relatively generic and representational rather than accurate portrayals, but for 1994 they weren’t too bad.  I can recall lines that were considerably worse, namely pro wrestling and figures based on movies. My semi-custom Sub-Zero looks decent by today’s standards for toys of this scale and if the ninja chararacters had come this way in the first place then they would have been fantastic by 1994’s standards.

For more photos of some of these characters, including some that I don’t have or couldn’t find, visit this YoJoe.com article.

This super obese Super Mario from the McDonalds Super Mario Bros Happy Meal was the first time that I had ever been able to have any kind of Mario or video game character in a toy form aside from an early 80s plush Donkey Kong I got from a Goodwill.  Video games used to not be marketed the way that they are today.  Looking back, it seemed that games were marketed as games and not as general products across the market.  Not even Mario had a whole lot of product back then.  Sure, Nintendo put out a ton of shirts (and always has) but there was no aisle dedicated to toys of game characters in Toys ‘R’ Us.  There were no websites that you could go to and import stuff from Japan.  Hell no.  This was 1990!  The internet was used to share scientific data back in those days and not to watch videos of monkeys throwing poop at each other or zombie kids saying how they like turtles.  This was why I played with these toys long into the 90s until they started putting out actual figures of these characters (which I might do a Flashback feature over).

These came out in 1990 as part of a cross-promotion for the release of one of the greatest games of all time, “Super Mario Bros. 3” for the NES.  Up first is our hero, Mario.

Mario eats a lot of fatty foods, I’d assume.  Pizza, spaghetti, lasagna, calzones… the list goes on and on.  It looks like our hero Mario has been pigging out a bit much on them, as he required a spring with a platform to launch himself!  This picture is missing the spring, but I’m sure you can imagine what the mechanism would have looked like.

Luigi, on the other hand, doesn’t even have a body–it was sculpted into a cloud or something!  This was a pull-back toy that went… fast… I guess.  I don’t know.  I never really played with Luigi.  He looks a bit like a genie or something.

Now these were great.  The Koopa Paratroopa (left) and Goomba (right) were common enemies that Mario needed to squash, so I think that I must have gone to McDonalds several times during their available weeks because I have 5 or so of each of them.  Every time I clean the basement, I swear that I find another one of them.

The Koopa jumped when you squeezed on a pump that was attached to his shell and the Goomba did backflips when you pressed his head down to his feet and let the suction cup attach to the circle there.  In all, not bad for a fast food toy.

I cleaned out my closet a few years ago and found this box of Super Mario Bros. 3 fruit snacks that date back to around 1990/1991.  As bizarre as of a find as the box was, there was even an open package of fruit snacks inside of it!

The fruit snack pieces have shrunk over the years and turned into amorphous blobs, which is why I didn’t include any close-up shots of them here.  Instead, here is the side panel of the box that shows the various pieces that were included:

There also was a “save the princess” game that ended in 1991 where, if you found a blue princess Toadstool fruit snack and mailed it in, you could earn an “I Saved the Princess”  t-shirt.  Or, you could just cheat and send in 4 UPCs.  Remember the days when S&H was 75 cents?

I wonder how many people actually had blue princess pieces and ate them in the dark, in a big handful of fruit snacks, or were unaware of the promotion.  Any candy contest where variations of the pieces are the winning determanants makes me wonder.

For over two decades, Rare Ltd. has created some of the greatest, highest-quality video games on the market.  The list of classics and franchises is revolutionary: Goldeneye 007, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, Donkey Kong Country, Jet Force Gemini, Conker, Blast Corps, Banjo-Kazooie, Snake Rattle ‘n’ Roll… and the list goes on.  When I think back to childhood gaming, a huge percentage of my gameplay time went towards games that Rare released.

Oh.  I forgot one of Rare’s franchises, didn’t I?  That’s right… those crazy toad guys… yeah…  Well, let’s talk about them, then!

The Battletoads were more than just a knock-off of the world’s favorite Amphibian fighting team: they actually held up to the hype.  While Konami’s Ninja Turtle games provided some of the finest beat-em-up action of all time, Rare was developing their response: the Battletoads.

Battletoads was centered around progressing through stage, beating up enemies, and then taking down a boss.  It didn’t bring a lot of new elements to the table, but it was nonetheless a stand-out among the numerous beat-em-up titles of the 8 and 16 bit era.  Gameplay got even better in the sequel, “Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team.”  The Double Dragon games were also great beat-em-up action, but when added to the Battletoads style only got better.  Game crossovers can be strange but this was pure harmony.  Not only did Billy and Jimmy lee show up as playable characters but their classic enemies showed up as Toad fodder: Roper, Abobo, Shadow Boss, and many more.

Rash, Zitz, and Pimple started out as high school nerds that were mutanted into super buff toads that embarked on a crazy mission.  While the Turtles were fighting Shredder and the combined forces of the malevolent Foot Clan and Dimension X, the Toads teamed up with a space princess named Angelica and flew around in space in some form of spaceship hotrod.  Like every hero team, the Toads needed some outrageous enemies and they came in the form of the Dark Queen, a busty raven-haired warlord; Big Blag, an obese rat monster; Robo-Manus, a freakish cyborg; General Slaughter, a biker pig remiscent of “Mad Max”; and many other truly bizarre and memorable enemies.

Battletoads (NES)

Battletoads was robot-smashing, pig-stomping, giant-boot-to-the-face beat-em-up greatness.  Our adventure begins…

Simple and to the point, Battletoads begins with a flying saucer of some sort flying towards a planet.

The title screen appears and the three toad logos fly a the scrreen with excellent animation for NES standards.

After a few moments, we are introduced to our heroes: Rash, Zitz, and Pimple.  This screen is actually somewhat erroneous as Pimple was later recolored brown and Zitz was made a light blue-green.  However, because both Rash and Zitz were playable characters, the game designers needed their identical sprites to look different, so Zitz was made brown to stand apart from Rash.

Pimple sounds like a pretty slick guy, especially for the burly one.

That’s a nice space ride for a guy named Pimple.

Gasp!

This doesn’t look good…

I knew it.  Isn’t that just like a space princess to be captured by a blue spacecraft with a mouth…

She probably should have taken them to a farther away planet.

The Battletoads’ leader then squawks some instructions to them.

I gotta craving for action, too, but I don’t want to press start yet…

The Dark Queen interrupts in a burst of static and we see the horrors that await us: a blue robot, a red rat man, and… a curvaceous woman in some kind of latex bondage outfit?  Really?

And thus I was introduced to chesty video game characters for the first time.

As we begin the game, the Vulture (the Toads’ spaceship/base) drops them down to the planet with rappel lines.  In this demonstration, I began the game with two players to show you what both toads look like.

As you can see, both Battletoads look the exactly same except that Zitz, a.k.a. player 2, is brown/orange whereas Rash, a.ka.a. player 1, is green.

As you pummel down on enemies, the Toads perform special smash attacks where their body parts transform into massively-comical weapons.  These include giant fists (pictured above), giant boot feet (shown later on this page), and a headbutt with ram horns.   Just look at how that walker robot exploded… satisfaction.

Not only did I just punch that robot  walker so hard that it exploded, but I can also use it’s leg as a weapon to beat up the Dark Queen’s army of pigs! Plus, you can smash walkers’ skulls and get a bonus!  It just gets better and better for our amphibious protagonists.

I can even use that other walker’s leg against one of its friends!  Poetic justice at its NES best.

The Battletoads can eat flies in many of the levels to restore health.  In this level, you have to punch Space Invaders out of the air and grab their yellow health cubes.  That makes sense…

Take that, you stupid rat man!  Not only can the Battletoads punch these rat men over the head so hard that they get hammered into the ground and get stuck there, but the Battletoads can punt them with massive boot feet.   Take that, jawa punting in “The Force Unleashed.”

The difficulty on these games is epic and a playthrough for any amateur will likely be a truly painful experience, especially during the racing stages in “Battletoads.”  This game is so difficult that I still have not yet beaten it even after all these years and this section is no exception.  The Battletoads grab ahold of a scooter and progress to the right of the screen, dodging pillars and jumping gaps.  At first this isn’t too bad, but repeated deaths results in the need to use a continue and the old-school gaming horror of replaying a level from the start.

Uh-oh… it looks like we’re going to be riding these…

Well, I’m dead and have no more lives.  Good thing I enjoy replaying this level.  Not.

“Battletoads & Double Dragon” toned the difficulty down a bit by removing the frustrating racing levels and making the challenges level-to-level more balanced and enjoyable.  This time around, the difficulty came from dealing with enemies and learning how to defeat them rather than frustrating gameplay gimmicks.  “Battlemaniacs” on the other hand upped the ante and brought the difficulty back to a higher level.

Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team (SNES)

Now we’re getting into the really good stuff: “Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team.”  Two years after the original “Battletoads” was released, Rare released an unusual sequel: a crossover.  Rarely do crossovers occur until game franchises have run their course and are looking for new ways to incoprorate old characters, but this crossover is anything but stale.  Not only did it bring back the classic Battletoads-style beat-em-up levels but it also added the two main characters from Double Dragon, Billy and Jimmy Lee, each with unique styles.  This time around, all three Battletoads were playable characters (albeit that they used the same sprites but with different colors).

The game was released for the Genesis, Super Nintendo, and NES.   For the purposes of this review I’ll be using the Super Nintendo edition.  Gameplay was very similar across the board with the same levels and almost the same soundtrack.

The 16-bit era brought us higher fidelity music and biographies of the Toads and Dragons:

Crazy, eh?  He doesn’t look very crazy to me.

I get a Donatello vibe from Zitz in this game.

It takes a lot of guts to admit that you aren’t smart.  At least Pimple’s fists are smarter than his enemies’ fists.

Once mispelled as “Bimmy” in the Double Dragon series, Billy and Jimmy look like they jumped right out of a kickboxing movie.  With their typhoon kicks, they could sure lay a smack down on boxes… and enemies!

Jimmy was way cooler than Billy.  WAY cooler.  Those red jeans are pretty badass if you ask me.  And I’m not jut saying that because he doesn’t look like a stereotypical jerk bad guy from an early 1990s movie.

Abobo returns from Double Dragon.  I’m not sure who this guy offends more: African-Americans or steroidal video game bosses.

Face it, Blag.  You’re still big.  You think you can fool me into thinking you’re not an obese rat freak by changing your name from “Big Blag” to “Blag”?  Good idea.  Also, good idea with all of those apostrophe’d abbreviations in your introduction.  I’m really afraid of stepping inside the Colossus, now!

I’m not sure if this guy’s arm is actually a machine gun or if he’s just Megaman’s crazed, shirtless uncle.  Wouldn’t that make him Roper Man, then?  Nevermind…

Robo-Manus was l33t before l33t was leet.  Either that, or his programmer didn’t factor in how Robo-Manus’ drooling problem would factor in to his speech processors.

Shadow Boss steps up as the next-to-last boss.  This dude is like Shredder from the Ninja Turtles if Shredder actually tried.  Of course, he’s going to end up getting beaten at the end of the game, so I guess he has some more similarities to Shred-Head.

She’s back and she’s still determined on taking over that precious Earth.  With all the turmoil here, I’m surprised why any busty alien warlord would even want to come here, let alone own this place.  We do have lots of cool giraffes, though.

Now that we know who our heroes and villains are, we all know what is bound to happen here.

Big blips are pretty scary.

When Obi-Wan Kenobi isn’t available in your universe, the Battletoads are your only hope.  I guess the Dark Queen is flying a “Ratship” now.  You’d think she could afford something with more pizazz.

Whoa.  You know something is up when your protagonists are too overwhelmed for the game even before the game even starts.

Waiiiiiit… I thought the Battletoads were the finest warriors Earth had to offer…

Who isn’t ready to kick some evil butt?  I’m ready.  Maybe I’ll kick some evil hiney and caboose while I’m at it?  Also, why are these dudes just hanging out at city hall?  Are they involved in government now that they’ve successfully beaten several games of their own franchise?  If so, that city government has a lax dress code.

The gameplay itself in this game is virtually similar to the formula established in the first “Battletoads” except now enemies are more complex, the animations are nicer, there are more weapons and attacks, and there are new ways to more around stages including ladders and hanging from the edges of platforms.

Fond, Toady Memories

My mom bought me Battletoads for the same reason that she bought me Kirby’s Adventure: because the box art was something that I liked.  I didn’t subscribe to Nintendo magazines back then and had no idea what was in store with me.  All that my mom knew was that the game had frogs in it and that I would probably like it because of that.  I didn’t just like it: I loved it.  A few weeks after receiving the game, I recorded a movie called “Battletoads 90” with my friends where we made up a nonsensical story about the Battletoads and how they were fighting against the evil toads of the Bucky O’Hare universe.

I played the heck out of the game with my friend Erik more times than I can remember.  I can recall the days we spent together when we both had chicken pox.  We made a fort out of my parent’s sour-orange-colored couch and bunkered down with marathons of “Super Mario Bros. 3,” “Snake Rattle ‘n’ Roll,” and “Battletoads.”

I didn’t get a Super Nintendo until 1995 so I missed out on a lot of games and one of those was “Battletoads in Battlemaniacs,” the Super Nintendo Battletoads release that featured updated graphics and new gameplay challenges.  Maybe sometime I’ll do a review of sorts on this title.

The most memorable thing about the series to me is the incredible music.  Every time I hear the chugging guitar and banging drums of the opening theme to “Battletoads” I get the urge to rock out along with it.  There have been times when I even turned the game on and listened to the opening theme over and over while working out or cleaning.  “Battletoads & Double Dragon” had an even better soundtrack that to this day I enjoy in it’s raw, Super Nintendo soundchip style.  “Battlemaniacs” had a goodsoundtrack, albeit that it was nowhere as memorable as the offerings in the previous titles.

After “Battlemaniacs,” the Toads more or less dropped off of the face of the earth.  I don’t even remember hearing about or seeing anything for “Battlemaniacs” as it seemed like the media machine behind the franchise ceased to exist after the first game and the short-lived Battletoads animated series, which produced the only Battletoads memorabilia that I know of in the form of bendable, posable rubber figures.  I’ll showcase these figures in an upcoming “Flashback.”

The most of the Toads that Rare has given us since “Battlemaniacs” was a reference to their trademark spiked gauntlets as an unlockable accessory in Rare’s successful “Viva Pinata” games.  The Perfect Dark, Conker, and Banjo-Kazooie franchises have all seen an appearance in one way or another on the Xbox 360 and I believe that it is time that these classic game characters return.  The odds are slim-to-nil for Rare games to appear on Nintendo’s Wii Virtual Console since Microsoft holds the rights to these games, hence how we saw Xbox Live Arcade re-releases of both “Banjo-Kazooie” and “Banjo Tooie” with the Nintendo logo replaced by Microsoft’s.

Re-releases, remixes, and re-imaginings are a huge genre in the gaming industry today.  Megaman has seen two NES revival  releases to tap into the classic feel, “Castlevania Adventure” showed an enhanced remake of a Game Boy title, and countless other franchises have seen enhanced reissues through downloadable content, whether on Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, Nintendo Wii Virtual Console, Steam, or the Nintendo DSi store.  Capcom, Konami, Nintendo, and numerous other publishers are bringing back the classics that we loved 20+ years ago and making them just as fun as they were the first time around but in glorious HD by handing off the development to other studios, such as 4J, who ported Rare’s N64 games to Xbox Live Arcade and developed the enhanced reissue of “Perfect Dark.”

The classic Nintendo 64 game “Perfect Dark” saw a re-release on the Xbox Live Arcade earlier this year with high-rez textures, improved frame rate, smoother control, and updated multiplayer.  While Rare games have not typically fared well since the severance with Nintendo (“Perfect Dark Zero” and “Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts” come to mind) the classics still can hold their weight against the market saturation of similar, new games.

I downloaded the updated “Perfect Dark” a few months back and truly enjoyed the experience.  The only gaping flaw was the horribly-flawed Combat Simulator challenges, which have the most unfair AI I have ever seen.  “Dead or Alive 4” on Xbox 360 took a genre that I’m already not very good at (fighting) and put in AI that always knew how to block or counter any move that I threw at it.  The Combat Simulator challenges got to be so ridiculously unfair that enemy bots knew exactly where I would respawn and kill me literally two seconds into gameplay.  In a game where you don’t start with any weapons other than your fists, this certainly results in a headache… and probably a million swears on behalf of me.

Despite this, these challenges aren’t a core gameplay component.  The game itself and custom Combat Simulator matches are just as fun as they were 10 years ago when I was a to-be high school sophomore sitting around all summer blasting away at bots with Erik, the same guy that I had built the chicken pox-inspired sofa fort with.  I wasn’t just playing a good game when I downloaded the updated “Perfect Dark”: I was reliving truly memorable and special memories.  This is what a return of the Battletoads would be to me and not just because they were great games when they came out.

While a brand new title would be amazing, I don’t even care if all we get would be re-released “Battletoads” with some updated graphics, re-recorded music, and corrected glitches like the Xbox Live Arcade edition of “Perfect Dark” was.  These games are classic and can still hold their weight!  I’m thinking of something along the lines of Ubisoft’s “Turtles inTime: Re-Shelled,” an enhanced remake of the classic “Turtles in Time.”

While it is unlikely that this article will hold any power when it comes to a revival of the Battletoads franchise, I felt that it was necessary to share my opinions on the subject so that others out there like me can remember the good times (and the controller-throwingly frustrating) Battletoads pig-stompin’ moments.

Before I end this article, I’d like to thank the development teams behind the Battletoads that made our childhoods more fun with their fast-paced, action-packed games.  Not only are the games fantastic but the soundtracks keep me rocking to this day.  Just the fact that I’m sitting here right now writing this article shows that, in the worst case scenario, one guy at least would be happy with a revival of the franchise.  After seeing several classic franchises reappear this year at E3, I still hold hope that one day in the not-so-distant-future that I’ll be playing a new Battletoads game or even a 3D remake. However, with the disappearance of the Toads from Rare’s website, I get the feeling in the pit of my stomach that they aren’t “in” or even “necessary” anymore considering the huge push for Kinect motion games this year.

While some might argue that holding onto the past and disliking new gaming trends hinders progress, the whole thing just makes me feel a little bit down.  It makes me glad that Rare is developing the upcoming “Kinect Sports” and I know that it will be quality because of this, something just makes me wish that I saw more of the classic Rare stuff these days instead of another “Wii Sports”-esque game.  Maybe I’m just getting old or cynical.  I don’t know.

All images in this article are copyright their respective holder(s), Rare, and are used herein for review, educational, and celebrational purposes.  Thanks for the memories.

There isn’t a whole lot that I could say about this movie that hasn’t already been said perfectly by somebody else.  The movie flopped like a fish on land, gasping for air, knowing its about to die but unable to think about anything else other than “am I going to be cooked with teriyaki glaze or lemon butter?”

Rather than talk about the movie, I’ll discuss the toys.  For what they were, they were actually pretty decent.  I actually remember them more fondly than the film.  The likenesses were pretty good for how old they are, plus Mario and Luigi — aside from the lack of Luigi’s ‘stache  — look like the game characters except that the colors are reversed.  Below are the Mario and Luigi figures from the movie line next to newer figures that are true to the characters.

The movie unsuccessfully attempted to rationalize the nonsensical dream logic of the Mario world.  Mario and Luigi came with flamethrower gun accessories that blasted fireballs attached to a stick so that the projectiles never left the weapons.  Koopa also came with a similar “devo” gun like he had in the film.  No–the gun didn’t play Devo–then it might actually be good.  The filmmakers also justified Mario and Luigi’s super jumping ability with super jumping boots, but the figures lacked any kind of jump ability but you can see their hydraulic boots in the picture above.

The next entry to the “what were they thinking!?” file is the Goomba.  Pictured above are the movie goomba (left) and a paragoomba (right).  The only difference between paragoombas and regular goombas is the regular goomba lacks wings.  This doesn’t matter.  Neither of these guys look anything alike!  Goombas are mindless henchmen, so why does that mean they should be big, burly, trenchcoat-clad goons?  Goombas are supposed to be awful!  Movie goomba has to be seven feet tall!  This big green behemoth could pummel Mario just by yawning!  Look at the guy cockeyed and you’d be paste on the wall!  The only similarity is a big, wide mouth, and yet they managed to screw that up and take away the goomba’s trademark bottom jaw fangs!

For the record, I’d have given the movie goomba pants.  Just saying.  That’s something I just don’t need to see.

Next up is the big boss man himself, Koopa.  There really isn’t a whole lot to say about this one.  Why bother making the villain a full-blown turtle man when you can give him a crazy slicked-back series of tiny mohawks?

Growing up, I always knew Bowser, who is shown on the right, as Koopa.  He was always referred to as Koopa in the TV show and I remember manuals and books calliing him Koopa.  Then I started hearing the title “King Koopa,” so I figured that was just his titular name, like how kings are named.  They’re never referred to by their last names, so why on earth would I think that “Koopa” was anything other than this character’s first name?

Then came all of this “Bowser” business and I was confused.  Was his name Bowser now?  Was this even the same character as King Koopa?  It turns out that this character was technically named Bowser, King of the Koopas (the “Koopas” being a name for his various turtle-like underlings), so “King Koopa” was just a nickname for him being the king of the Koopa enemies.  This name business became even more of a problem with Princess Peach.  Today we know her simply as “Princess Peach” or simply “Peach” but when I was a kid, everyone and everything called her “Princess Toadstool.”  I figured that Toadstool must be her last name because that would be a terrible name to give a girl.  Then everyone started calling her “Princess Peach” in the late 90s and while I knew this was the same character as the Princess Toadstool that I grew up rescuing, it has baffled me why nobody brings up the Toadstool part of her name.  Is she actually named Princess Peach Toadstool?  That sounds about right to me.

The Peach nomenclature was an even worse problem in the Mario movie.  To understand this issue, let’s have a brief Mario history lesson.

The NES launched with Mario’s first adventure as Super Mario, “Super Mario Bros.”, in 1985 in Japan and 1986 in the US.  In this game, the princess was called “Toadstool” and the villain was “Koopa.”

The official Japanese sequel to “Super Mario Bros.” came out in 1986 in Japan under the title “Super Mario Bros. 2.”  The US never saw this release until “Super Mario Bros. All-Stars” for the Super NES.  Instead, we got a reworking of the game “Doki Doki Panic” with Mario characters added in place of the Middle Eastern-themed characters.  The Japanese Mario 2 was identical to the first Mario, except that it added death mushrooms and had much more difficult levels.  It also introduced Luigi as a slightly-different character than Mario by making him jump higher but slide more on the ground.  Again, our Princess was “Toadstool” and our villain was “Koopa.”

The US saw our Mario 2 release in 1988.  As  this was not a “true” Mario game, it ended up having a different villain, “Wort,” and had no princess  to save.  Instead, Mario and pals were trying to escape another world.

1990 (1988 in Japan) saw the release of “Super Mario Bros. 3” with “Koopa” and “Toadstool” again.  Super Mario Bros. came out that exact year with, again, “Toadstool” and, finally, “Bowser.”

Rewinding a year, 1989 saw the release of “Super Mario Land” for the Game Boy.  In this game, Mario had to rescue a princess named Daisy from a villain named Tatanga.  She was not the same princess as Toadstool, but a princess of another place called Sarasaland.

Not the same princess.  Not the same villain.  Not even the same world.

Yet, somehow, the Mario movie named princess Toadstool “Daisy.”  Maybe the movie’s writers and producers were confused because she had never been referred to as “Peach” outside of Japan (where she had ALWAYS been known as “Peach”) until 1993’s “Yoshi’s Safari” (she continued to be referred to as “Princess Toadstool” in 1995’s “Super Mario RPG).  However, Daisy had been, and never was implied to be, the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom!  She was the princess of Sarasaland!  Worst case scenario, she would be called “Princess Sarasaland” or even “Princess Game Boy.”  Honestly, I just don’t think they cared about any relation to the source material, considering also that Yoshi looks like a baby velociraptor in the film!  At least they didn’t make HIM evil.  That would have been a nightmare.  I can see it now… Mario crawling around in a kitchen a-la “Jurassic Park” avoiding an evil band of rampaging red, green, and yellow Yoshis, pissed off at their years of being used as a sacrafice and all-around horse by Mario and Luigi!

Next up are movie’ Koopa’s bumbling cousins, Iggy and Spike, who are roughly based on two characters from the Mario games.  By the term “roughly based on,” I imply no connection to any specific character, as in the case of Mario in the movie being connected to the Mario in the games.  Iggy is actually one of Bowser’s children in “Super Mario Bros. 3” and Spike is an enemy that hurls spiky balls.  Neither of these two turtle-like Koopa enemies look or act anything like the characters in the movie.  In fact, Spike is a generic term for an enemy type and not a specific individual Koopa underling.  It baffles my mind why they would use the name of one of Koopa’s children from the game but not another, considering that Bowser had seven children and six of them were males!  What, were Lemmy, Roy, Larry, Morton, or Ludwig all unacceptable names, or did they just go with “Spike” because it sounded more “punk” to fit the movie’s goth-punk-industrial late 80s dystopic atmosphere?  Why were they Koopa’s cousins?  Just because Koopa wouldn’t kill his own cousins?  Then again, this is the very same Koopa that was terrorized by a tiny — gasp — Bob-Omb, it wouldn’t surprise me if he would keep these morons around.

This whole Koopa relations discussion brings me to a really interesting point.  Bowser’s kids appeared in a few other (craptacular) Mario games in the early 90s and then went away for nearly 20 years until “New Super Mario Bros. Wii,” where they return as henchmen to Bowser and not his children.  The “Koopa Kids” or “Koopalings” were never implied to be related to Peach.  I always just assumed that Bowser had some kind of wife that was either dead (ouch) or had left him because of his obsession with Peach (logical).  Perhaps that’s why after “Super Mario World” the Koopa Kids just disappeared–maybe Mrs. Koopa was sick of Bowser’s creepy Peach obsession and took full custody of the kids.

What is there to make of the Koopa Kids from the “Mario Party” games?  Who are these guys?  They look just like Bowser, Jr. but there are several of them, each with a unique color scheme like the NinjaTurtles!  What is going on here?!

Also weird is the implication that Bowser is really named Morton, as one of the Koopa Kids is named “Morton Koopa, Jr.”  If this is true, is Bowser REALLY named “Morton Bowser, King Koopa”?  What a bizarre name.  Unless, of course, the Koopa Kids were adopted children.  Even then, where did they go from 1990 until 1999?  If they aged out of being kids, why did they suddenly return AS KIDS in “Super Mario Bros. Wii”?

Bowser Jr. has taken over the “Bowser’s offspring” role in the modern Mario games.  Did Bowser disown all of his “Koopa Kids” and “Koopalings” children?  If so, that must have been a lot of paperwork.  If Bowser apparently has a child named after himself in “Morton Koopa, Jr.”, what would this make the modern “Bowser Jr.?”  They aren’t the same character, as they both appear as two different characters in “New Super Mario Bros. Wii”!  Therefore, wouldn’t “Bowser Jr.” technically be named “Morton Koopa, the Second” like how Michael Jackson named two of his kids “Prince Michael”?

Additionally, Bowser Jr. calls Princess Peach his mother.  Did Bowser convince Bowser Jr. that Peach was his mom so that it would encourage him to assist in his own personal obsession with capturing the princess?  I’d certainly hope so, because it would blow my mind if what Bowser Jr. claimed was actually true.  I’ve also heard that Bowser Jr. knows that Peach isn’t really his mom but would like her to play a maternal role in hise life.  Why?  She isn’t evil like him and his father are.  We already know there are female Koopas (Wendy O. Koopa) so why doesn’t Bowser Jr. want an evil turtle mom?  Is he THAT enamoured by Peach?  That’s slipping into Norman Bates territory right there.

What would blow my mind even more is if Nintendo intended it to be this way, considering Nintendo’s history of cleaning sex and violence out of their NES and Super NES games.  I’d think a little blood splatter in “Mortal Kombat” is way less disturbing to children than the horrifying revelation that Princess Peach somehow had a relationship with Bowser.  Just typing that made me cringe a little bit.  Yuck.

If that was somehow, disturbingly, true, it might explain why Peach seems to get kidnapped so much.  You’d think that after Mario returned her in the very first Mario game that she would be okay.  But no.  That Mushroom Kingdom security is terrible as she just keeps getting kidnapped.  If you look at “Super Mario Bros. 3,” the king of every world was somehow turned into an animal by Bowser, so its not just Peach’s castle that has horrible security.  Every castle in the entire kingdom has such a lax security protocol in place that Bowser can just walk right on in with a bunch of worthless little fangy goombas and turn the king into a little animal.  It usually takes a super powerful wizard to do something like that in video games and Bowser falls short on being a wizard.

Plus, its a little weird that all Mario gets for rescuing Peach anymore is a cake.  Say that, hypothetically, I rescued a princess.  I’d assume that her family would be so pleased that I’d get a huge cash reward.  At the least I might get knighted or something.  Mario has never been knighted!  Poor guy.  I bet they knight Toads all of the time.  What a scam, Mario.  What a scam.

The only other logical reason that I can come up with for why Bowser might want to kidnap Peach is to hold her at ransom.  If this was a true scenario, I’m sure that we would have seen some sort of reference in one of the games by now where Bowser demands a massive sum of gold coins from the kingdom.

Perhaps Bowser wants power, clean and simple.  That is often the sole demand of video game villains, but what power would Bowser have to gain from Peach?  She’s not really that powerful.  True, while she was the best character in “Super Mario Bros. 2” because of her gliding jump ability, she’s far from being powerful enough to kidnap for the sole purpose of gaining power.  That’s more of a scenario that you’d see in a Zelda game (“A Link to the Past” comes to mind).  In those scenarios, its always obvious.

Maybe its just because we need someone cute and generally helpless to rescue.  I’ve read various interviews about the Mario franchise and the purposeful lack of a heavy plot like you’d find in a Zelda game because the game is what it is: dream logic and free-association that results in, simply, a fun game experience.  Its been a rock-solid formula that’s worked well both commercially and gameplay-wise for over 25 years.  Mario is more than just a character and icon: he’s one of the few survivors of a bygone era where games were what they were: simple fun that didn’t need to make sense.  Those classic games didn’t need deep stories, cut scenes, explicit and boundary-pushing mature content — they were pick-up-and-play fun that people of all ages could enjoy.

That’s the only conclusion that I can realistically reach.  Bower kidnaps Peach because he can and because there would be no game if he didn’t.  It just sort of bothers me that, when a playable character, Peach is  usually one of the more useful characters (“Super Mario Bros. 2,” “Super Paper Mario,” “Super Princess Peach,” and “Mario RPG” come to mind) and that, even with these abilities, she winds up being captured.  Maybe Bowser is just trying to do the whole “if you can’t catch Spider-Man than catch his girlfriend” scenario.  It was actually refreshing to see the stereotype turned upside down with Peach having to become the hero and rescue Mario in “Super Princess Peach.”  That’s exactly the kind of thing that I’d expect to happen.  Bowser should come after Mario because Mario is, for the most part, his only enemy.  I think that he enjoys watching Mario attempt to stop him and overcome his various obstacles and underlings.  The only evidence that I have to this is that, when faced with a common enemy, the two become begrudging allies (“Super Paper Mario,” “Mario RPG,” and “Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story” come to mind).  If these two can become a team without literally trying to kill each other every 10 seconds, even after 25 years of rivalry and Mario’s neverending success streak, then Bowser certainly isn’t some kind of psychopathic megalomaniac set out for wold domination.  Then again, he did act pretty psycho at the end of “Super Mario Galaxy,” so who knows.  Maybe this is all a big non-existent split timeline like how there are multiple Links in the Zelda universe.  Who knows.

Originally posted 25 August 2010.

Take a trip back to 1993 and revisit “Aero the Acro-Bat.” Personally, I think that an acrobatic bat isn’t all that impressive since they can, you know, fly, but at least he’s got his priorities straight by taking down clowns.
I started out “The Test of Time” with “Snake Wattle ‘n’ Roll,” a relatively-obscure game that would require either a working NES and a copy of the original game or an emulator to play. However, since I’d like these reviews to be of some use to people, I’ve decided that I should probably focus them on old titles that have been brought back to download services like the Wii Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade. This review covers the Virtual Console’s Super Nintendo release from July 26.

I get the feeling that somebody had big plans for Aero. He’s cute, he had some nice animations in his game, plus he had that Sonic/Bubsy feel to him. Somehting just didn’t click and our chiropteric friend vanished into obscurity after this game’s sequel, the aptly-titled “Aero the Acro-Bat 2” in 1994 (which will supposedly be coming out later this year on Virtual Console). Aero was the product of the boom of game companies that apparently felt that animal mascots were the way to go to tap into the home market. I can’t blame them: I remember playing a lot of games that starred animals when I was younger because they all seemed to be kid-friendly.

“Aero” plays out like a typical early 1990s platformer.  The main objective of the stage is to complete a quasi circus-themed task such as jumping on star platforms or through hoops.  Food items can be collected for points and stars can be collected to be used as weapons against Aero’s cirus enemies.

Aero’s primary attack is a tornado-like spin attack that is performed by double jumping.  Aero can spin upwards,  giving him a boost to his jump distance, or downwards, attacking enemies.  This attack is rather difficult to get right, so the throwing stars are a much more effective weapon, albeit that they are scarce and limited

The first level requires Aero to land on blue star platforms.  Each jump on these platforms will decrease the total number of stars on the platform from three to zero, resulting in the platform’s disappearance after the last jump.

Aero can also jump through hoops for points.  Like the circus, some of the hoops are on fire and can hurt Aero if he touches the fire.  It doesn’t look like it, but I actually made it through this hoop without becoming a blackened char!