Happy New Year, kids. Here’s the annual Winners And Losers Of 2024.
No much of an intro this time around, as my hopes for 2025 aren’t high and honestly, 2024 wasn’t completely terrible despite terrible moments taking place in it. In any event, have fun and see you in a little bit.
Have fun.
THE WINNERS OF 2024
2024 is a year that brought about some level of rare optimism for the most part. Sure, there’s a couple sad entries here (genuinely sad entries and not just sad and pathetic in general – that’s what the Losers list is for), but for the most part, there was a lot to like about 2024’s offerings… as long as it isn’t remaking or rehashing a classic property of your childhood.
Sacha (R.I.P)
The top spot of this Winners list naturally has to go to our first dog and spiritual mascot of this whole web venture, Sacha, who sadly passed away this February. She was a bundle of joy even during her trying final years and she was loved no matter what. And yes, our current pup Maya is also a bundle of joy, but you always remember your first. And we still miss the old girl, dearly. For a tribute page, click here.
Maya
She’s a couple months shy of a year old and she is certainly a handful, but we love her all the same. Expect to see more of her in the future, beginning with the new signature opening for videos in 2025.
Joe Hendry
Yes, around these parts, we still believe in Joe Hendry. And to be fair, he’s had a good year. Some good showings on NXT. A sizable following online. Immortalized on this here blog. While TNA may have fumbled the ball with this guy on a couple occasions, the man has certainly won me over, he’s got a charisma that I can’t help but admire, and his parody songs are wonderful.
Dune Part 2
The second part of Dune… it takes two movies to adapt one novel, apparently… but this was good. This was really good. One of the few times that merit a trip to the movie theatre and it was well worth it. Respectful to the source material, with some great performances, fantastic visuals, and a sweeping score to make this a worthwhile experience. This is the sort of thing that deserves to be called “cinema” before that word was tossed around like a hooker in drag.
Deadpool & Wolverine
Well, it’s another Deadpool movie starring Ryan Reynolds and those are always golden. On top of that, they brought back Hugh Jackman to play another Wolverine and stick him in a genuine honest-to-goodness costume. I’d say this gets the Winner spot simply based on the fact that it’s the only Marvel thing I watched all year, but the fact that it’s also a genuinely good film is an added bonus and not much of a surprise considering the star of the show.
MMPR: The Return
OG Pinky herself, Amy Jo Johnson, co-wrote a Power Rangers mini with her boyfriend Matt Hotson depicting an alternate take on what would happen if the original Rangers stayed together. The end result is one of the best Power Rangers outings to come out of the Boom Studios machine in quite some time and hopefully, the first of many such projects to come out of this partnership. More of this and less of the usual stuff you’d normally put out, please. Thanks.
TNA Wrestling
TNA’s first year after the return of the old name from years of just being called Impact Wrestling (officially, at least – it’ll always be TNA to us) has been strong enough that I’ve considered it my go to wrestling show to watch. I’ve even subscribed to their TNA+ service for a little bit before time issues made the investment not worth the investment. Mind you, not everything has been great and there have been some massive missteps here and there (you had one job…), but on a whole, it’s been a pretty successful relaunch for the most part. Anything that gets you on NXT’s good side has to be worth the stamp of approval.
Atari
I feel like I need to give Atari some credit. Ever since Atari 50 became a thing, they’ve been doing some good stuff. They acquired studios like Digital Eclipse and Nightdive. They’ve re-released vintage 2600 and 7800 games to go along with their new 2600+ and 7800+ emulator machines that uses actual carts, and they ended the first console war by purchasing Intellivision (but wisely not touching the Amico nonsense that had defined INTV for the better part of what feels like a decade.) Certainly a far cry from the company that hedged their bets on a glorified PC Ataribox thing that ultimately went nowhere. That, and I’ve bought more (first-hand) official Atari product in one calendar year than I have in the past two decades, so that has to count for something, right?
Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered
Dark Forces – the “Doom but Star Wars” game that introduced the world to Kyle Katarn – got a remastered version this year courtesy of Nightdive and it’s great. Not much in terms of extra content, but having a version of Dark Forces with proper mouselook means I can play this game properly. Yes, I know there’s the Force Engine and that works great too, but that’s an unofficial thing. Let’s give this official Star Wars products a win whenever they do good, because fuck knows that they need a win or two. (see below)
Star Wars Holiday Special (yes, really)
In many of his old shoot interviews, legendary wrestling manager Jim Cornette would often bring up something Ole Anderson once told him. Somewhere along the lines of, “Cornette I always thought you were a dumb fuck but so many more dumb fucks have come after you that you’ve moved up the ladder without any effort.” This perfectly encapsulates the Star Wars Holiday Special, which is still largely terrible, but because so many worse things have come along baring the Star Wars name over the years, all of a sudden, that Holiday Special is no longer the worst thing to come out of the Star Wars camp. That makes it a winner in my book.
Sonic X Shadow Generations
I’m only mentioning this here despite only sampled a bit of the game, but 50% of the package is excellent by default, so that makes it an easy Winner… well, that, and the new Shadow campaign is actually really, REALLY good. Probably the best new Sonic/Shadow game that they’ve put out in a long while. That’s got to be worth a win in someone’s book, right?
Sonic The Hedgehog 3
How do you follow up two perfectly good Sonic movies? With a third perfectly good Sonic movie. Third time is usually when the wheels start wobbling a bit, but Sonic’s third movie outing still holds onto the lead, with the usual cast giving their all and even Keanu Reeves’ take on Shadow has won me over somewhat. Say what you will about Sonic’s recent gaming output – and there’s been lots said there by other people – but his movie career has been holding up quite nicely.
Costco Guys (the Boom people)
A former pro wrestler and his kids buy stuff at Costco and give them booms. It sounds stupid, but they got a stint in AEW out of it… and to be fair, they do have a certain charm that isn’t easily ignored. I don’t usually care for these sorts of meme things, but this one was tolerable. So it gets a win and that’s a good note to end this side of the coin on.
THE LOSERS OF 2024
The Lists Of Losers Is Far And Wide… Unfortunately, it’s not wide enough.
2024 Box Office Bombs
2024 seems to be the year where Hollywood churns out these movies that are supposed to be big deals and they not only bomb at the box office, but the critical reaction isn’t that hot, either. We had Madame Web, which is Sony’s latest attempt at a Spider-Man-lite franchise that went over like a fart in church. There was also the Borderlands movie that also didn’t go over well, an absolutely needless Crow remake – and this is coming from someone who has only seen one Crow movie in his lifetime and it’s not even the one most people like anyway – that was soundly rejected. Even films that were rated somewhat favorably like the Furiosa film failed to hit a note. You’d think that Hollywood would take a hint and steer away from the type of films that are actively turning away audiences, but considering what’s coming ahead, it makes for a compelling case to have AI replace all the “creatives” involved in the making of these cookie-cutter films.
Joker 2 (Folie A Deux, Foley Of Dumb, Falling Uh Derp, etc.)
They made a Joker movie that made money. A movie that didn’t really need a sequel, but they made one anyway. When word broke that it was going to be a musical, that killed it for me since I don’t care for musicals. But when word broke that the movie basically craps on the first movie and anyone who enjoyed it, is it really any surprise that this one would bomb? There’s a part of me that wants to believe that Todd Phillips purposely made a sequel that betrayed its audience and its predecessor for the expressed purpose to killing any chances of further sequels being developed and if that turns out to be the case, I could almost applaud the effort. It’s just too bad that they charged people money to watch this thing… maybe this should have gotten the Batgirl treatment and considered a tax write-off. You all would have been better off… not me, though. This film lost me the minute they decided to make it a musical.
MCU Callbacks
How desperate are we getting when the biggest news to come out of the Marvel Studios front as that they’re bringing back the former Tony Stark actor, Robert Downey Jr, to play the role of Dr. Doom? How much more so when there are talks of bringing back Chris Evans to play the role that most people associate him with these days (here’s a hint: it’s not the guy who goes FLAME ON!) I realize that not everything you’re throwing at the wall is hitting outside the diehard circles, but I didn’t think how bad it’d be for you to beg these guys to come back. It’d be like asking Hulk Hogan to come back to WWE and… oh wait.
The Acolyte
Before anyone asks… no, I haven’t seen the show, but I have heard people say rather unsavory things about this show. You’d figure that despite all the bad reception and poor numbers, being a Star Wars property makes it immune from criticism and Disney keeps on trucking with another season of this thing, but when word breaks that they’re not only NOT doing another season, but also scrubbing any mention of the show from their online shops, that might actually be noteworthy. Maybe it isn’t enough that your show is the “gayest” Star Wars or whatever it is I heard some clown call it. Maybe you actually have make a show that’s actually good and compelling to watch. Granted, in my case, I’ve not had any of that, but this getting canned rather unceremoniously certainly makes the case for nothing of value being lost here and we all just move on with our lives.
Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection
This one actually hurts to include because I love the old Star Wars Battlefront games. They’re games I still play to this day and to see them be released to modern platforms should have been a boon, but when you ship a product with borked online, lousy controls, and not enough updating to merit a $40 price tag, it paints a pretty sad picture. Great for the console folks, but for PC gamers, you still have the original PC releases on GOG.com, which are not only cheaper, but they still work wonderfully. And with a little work, they could do even more. A bit of a letdown, but hey, Dark Forces ain’t too shabby (see above.)
Brian Gerwertz
Former WWE Head Writer, current Seven Bucks creative head, and all-around Dwayne strudel-rider Brian Gerwertz did an interview regarding the controversial angle, in which he (didn’t) blame Cody for not smiling enough during his genius segment to look like a geek and make way for Rock vs. Roman. I already wrote an entire piece on why Brian Gerwertz is a fucking idiot, so rather than spill my beans again here, I’ll just let you go to the post and read that instead. Moron.
AEW
The only positive I could say about AEW this year is that they managed a new TV deal with Warner Bros. Discovery that will make them more money for the next few years. If only that meant a damn to the product on screen… Granted, there have been some good matches, but on a whole, the shows haven’t been all that compelling. Whether it’s the Young Bucks or Jon Moxley’s crew trying to recreate the nWo (again), the rather blase end of Bryan Danielson’s wrestling career, the on-and-off-again pushes of guys who have been around forever and should be feeling like bigger deals yet don’t, or the inability to make the product on screen as interesting or compelling as the drama behind the scenes.
Tony Khan
Part of me wants to feel sorry for the guy because he tried to get an angle over by getting beat up by some of his talent. Part of me respects his attempt to sell the angle by wearing a neck brace (and then sell that neck brace for charity). However, five years in, Tony Khan is starting to turn into the modern-day equivalent of Dixie Carter – will make big, bold proclamations on social media and ultimately not deliver on them.
Twitter Replacements
People have been moving away from Twitter due to the supposed toxic atmosphere that turned it into a digital cesspool, which is laughable because Twitter has ALWAYS been a digital cesspool. So they come up with replacements that are decidedly less toxic – Threads, Blue Sky, Mastadon, Pterodactyl, Triceratops, etc… – which is fine on paper, except browsing through some of these sites for a few minutes reveal that these places are just as bad as Twitter is, except there’s less people frequenting them. At this point, I’d consider Facebook (yes, seriously) a more socially acceptable platform than any of these wannabes.
ReviewTechUSA
Rich of ReviewTechUSA – who once reviewed tech in the USA before migrating over to games journalism – had a rough couple years. His daughter had fallen ill, he had a rather public falling out with his former editor Jay, and the quality of his content had been on a downward trend until one day, he decided to nuke his channel, depriving the internet of his better content from years past. This was an entry that I was hesitant to add because I did like Rich’s work when it was on point and my thoughts and prayers go to his family during their trying days… but to see him implode the way he did… it’s hard to feel sorry for the guy when the damage done is self-inflicted.
THE MIDDLE GROUNDERS OF 2024
There were a few Middle Grounders that neither merited a Winners or Losers slot, so they get a mention here to remind people that they were a thing… just not enough of a thing in either context.
The Rock
Trying to be “big time” shit by taking away the Mania main event from Cody – who earned it from a storyline perspective – but after hearing the backlash, decided to pivot and go heel, resulting in the “Final Boss” version of Rock that is probably Dwayne’s best work since Hollywood Rock in 2003. Since he has enough sense to know what people actually want and went along with it, Dwayne gets a pass in that he’s not listed as a loser, but no way in hell am I giving him a Winners slot due to this whole debacle, so this is the closest he’s getting to recognition on this list. It’s for the best.
Ottawa
Took a trip to Ottawa this past summer to unwind and such. Found some stuff there that I brought back. Largely enjoyed the trip. Wish I had stuck around a little longer, but hey, I got a Dollar Tree bag or two out of the deal, so I’m not completely unhappy. (No, seriously, I had a good time there and would go on another trip somewhere down the line.)
Classic Game Room
2024 was supposed to be the year where Classic Game Room celebrated its 25th anniversary and the year had started off with Mark Bussler producing new episodes of his CGR 2085 show… that ended up with low viewership numbers that ultimately killed off the project only a couple months in. Ir’s unfortunate that he wasn’t able to continue the project in a way that would have been viable, but it did bring Classic Game Room back into the limelight for a short while and only serves to remind people that there will never be another show quite like it. Cheers, CGR. This beer’s for you.
CM Punk
What was supposed to be a triumphant return for CM Punk to WWE turned out be not quite that and a large part of that was due to injuries that came at inopportune times. He’s had a couple fun bits with Drew McIntyre and from the looks of things, 2025 is shaping up to be the year that 2024 was not. That, and he seems to be enjoying himself, so that has to count for something. Wishing him all the best in 2025, which hopefully turns out better than his 2024.
And that’s the list… Happy 2025, everyone. Whatever that might entail…
ADDENDUM – Vince McMahon
One final note before we end the post because I know
Vincent Kennedy McMahon began 2024 as executive chairman of TKO Holdings, the parent company who owns both WWE and UFC. By the end of January, he would resign from his position due to sex trafficking allegations among other legal issues that are ongoing to this day. The decision was made not to include him
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