Author: dtm666

I ramble about things.

COMIC REVIEW – Stone Cold Steve Austin (Chaos! Comics Miniseries)

In 1999, the World Wrestling Federation did a deal with publisher CHAOS! Comics to produce a bunch of comic book based on their various WWF Superstars. This included a Undertaker series that lasted several issues, along with a few one shots based on Mankind, Chyna, and The Rock. None of these comics have anything to do with wrestling, but rather take these characters on zany adventures outside their comfort zone. Undertaker fighting actual demons… Rock dealing with fixed fights… Chyna doing bodyguard work for other people… that sort of thing.

And then there was the Stone Cold Steve Austin miniseries… yes, a miniseries that lasted four issues… and once again, this has nothing to do with Austin delivering Stone Cold Stunners to other WWF Superstars or giving beer baths to Vince McMahon, but rather we’ve got Austin in the role of mysterious stranger coming into a Texas town owned by a less-than-honest Texas owner doing bad things. Your classic modern-day western of sorts… except instead of mysterious strange, you have Stone Cold Steve Austin, who has the ability to command a small crowd of townspeople fearing for their lives to give him a Hell Yeah whenever he calls for it. It’s simply amazing.

I mean… hell, when you think about it, the story itself is rather pedestrian and uninteresting. There’s a certain mystery surrounding someone who was run out of town, but that’s secondary to Austin beating up thugs and not selling a damn thing. They throw attack choppers and biker gangs his way and he blows through all of them. This would have been fine for a one-shot, but four issues is stretching it and there’s only so many ways you can depict Stone Cold opening various cans of whoop ass and stomping various mudholes through many asses before it gets a bit tiresome.

There’s a reference to The Corporation – the faction headed by Vince McMahon – but don’t expect any other WWF talent to actually show up in these books. I guess there was no artist on earth who would dare draw HHH and his big gonzo nose. Speaking of which, the art is alright. The action bits are well depicted, seeing Stunners on the drawn page look somewhat impactful, and the layouts are fairly clean by late-90s comic standards.

It’s not exactly a great comic by any means. The joke pretty much runs itself through the dirt about two issues and by the time you reach the end, it’s just… eh. That said, if you ever wanted a comic about Stone Cold Steve Austin being a total badass who’s nigh impervious to pain, then this is the book for you. They’re an amusing curiosity if nothing else, but not much more than that… which more than sums up the entirety of the WWF/CHAOS! Comics partnership if I’m being totally honest.

Spider-Man Unlimited… meh.

So I liked the Spider-Man cartoon that’s on Fox. I think it does a good enough job of adapting some of the more popular comic stories onto the small screen with its own little continuity and it has a pretty catchy theme song. Almost as catchy as that classic Spidey tune from the old cartoon from the 60s or something.

The show ended on a cliffhanger, with Spider-Man and that Webb lady looking for Mary Jane in some other dimension or something… but rather than continue that angle, we got another Spider-Man cartoon… called Spider-Man Unlimited.

This Spider-Man featured Spider-Man going to another dimension – a Counter-Earth, if you will – and now he has to help some rebels fend off against some other villains while also having to deal with mutated versions of Venom and Carnage. Spidey also sports a new suit with a bunch of gadgets and… I’m not a fan. Spidey has had costume changes before, but this looks god-awful.

Spider-Man Unlimited is a good show on its own… good original storylines, decent animation, but it’s not the Spider-Man I know from reading the comics. While there are some familiar faces, they don’t always show their face, leaving our poor webhead to make friends with some new faces, who vaguely resemble some characters from the comics.

I’m not going to bash this cartoon because it doesn’t follow the roots of which it came from. It’s a good show, but it would have been a better show if Spidey ditched the hi-tech crap and stuck with his basic web shooters and proportionate spider strength.

Or at least came up with a better suit.

MOVIE REVIEW – Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (1994)

For those who felt that the live-action Street Fighter movie was too much of a Van Damme movie and not enough of a proper Street Fighter movie, then perhaps Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie may be more to your liking.

When I first bought a VHS copy of this film, I bought it mainly for two reasons. It’s based on the popular video game of which I’ve played many times and I’ve always wanted to kick off my own collection of anime films… a goal that has fallen off the waysides as of late. I wasn’t expecting much – the Van Damme version wasn’t all that great of a film, although I’ll happily admit here that I do enjoy some of the cheese it provides… maybe I should’ve added that bit to the imdb review.

Turns out that the people behind the animated movie knew what they were doing and were more than willing to keep the movie faithful to the video game source it was based upon rather than try to craft their own narrative with all the players they were given. All sixteen fighters from Super Street Fighter II Turbo are represented – hell, they even snuck in a cameo by then-secret fighter Akuma as a background bit – and they’re all portrayed as close to as they should be. The fight sequences are also well-done and are a highlight of the film… as they should be in a movie called Street Fighter.

There were two localized versions of the film released: an unedited version (which is the version I saw) and a version edited for general audiences, which I assume mostly involves editing some choice words and some shots here and there. Neither version retains the few seconds of the Chun-Li Shower Scene where she bares all, which may disappoint all the perverts out there. But for the rest of you, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie does the games justice and is just a solid film in its own right. Well worth the watch.

MOVIE REVIEW – Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows (1998 Documentary)

I had seen this film back when it first aired on A&E channel a year or so back and when I saw the VHS tape available for sale and had the money for it, I snapped at the opportunity to pick this up.

What started as a simple documentary about wrestling became a compelling drama, which pits the hero Bret Hart against the manipulative Vince McMahon. What results of this confrontation is one of the biggest controversies in wrestling history. And you know something? That wasn’t in the script.

What’s wrong with this film? It features real people doing real things, real backstage politics, and yet there is something about this film that makes it so dramatic… so exciting that it seems like it’s scripted. But any wrestling insider will tell that it’s no work… no storyline concocted… this is very real.

There’s an additional bonus on the VHS version; an additional interview with Bret Hart and filmmaker Paul Jay reflecting on the film and the events that have transpired since the events of Montreal and the film’s subsequent release. It provides a nice bit of depth and despair to the existing story.

This isn’t exactly the greatest wrestling documentary ever made (although some people will disagree), but it is one of the few which holds nothing back except what happens behind the curtain. A good drama in my view.

My Conversation With A Man Of Steel

So a while back, I had come across MAD About Superheroes, which was a collection of MAD Magazine strips and pieces about superheroes. One of the pieces included was called “Superman R.I.P.” and was no doubt released during the hype period surrounding the Death of Superman story in the 90s… and yes, Superman is still around today, so that amounted to nothing.

Anyway, in one of the frames, Superman is shelling out his guts to a therapist and the thought occurred… what was the guy actually saying during that session? I don’t know, either… but I ended up writing this thing, which turned out to be… quite something else.

Originally dubbed a “Fictional Interview” but retitled something less mechanical and soulless… and yes, there are more of these to come.

Continue reading “My Conversation With A Man Of Steel”

Birthday Wish

Well, it’s my birthday today… nineteen years on this ball of soil called Earth.

I wish I could say that things were looking up from my point of view… but all I could really say is that things are going smoothly enough. So that’s guaranteed to not come true. There is something of a birthday wish that I would like to share… and I have no qualms about sharing it because it’s an outlandish wish that will never come true.

I wish that I had a more positive outlook on life.

I wish that I wasn’t as naïve about the real world as I turned out to be.

I wish that I was in a better place… or at least, a better frame of mind.

That’s my wish… and now that I’ve shared it, no chance of it happening any time soon…

Unless…

Revisiting THREE: A New Generation of Street Fighters

I remember going to the local arcade by the shopping mall, looking to see if there was anybody occupying the popular fighters during the day. And there it sat: THREE.

Why they went with THREE on the arcade banner and not Street Fighter III baffled me at the time, but looking back, I realized that the banner was a joke that Capcom went along with.

For years, people have been clamoring for a Street Fighter III and for years, we got anything and everything BUT that elusive game. In that time, there have been many countless jokes made about Capcom being unable to count to three when it comes to its Street Fighter games. The funny thing is that nobody at Capcom had a problem counting up to and beyond 3 when it comes to its Mega Man series. Maybe the problem is with Capcom’s arcade side of things, as now we seem to have a problem counting to 4.

Or maybe this is the last Street Fighter game for a good while… not counting the updates, of course.

I remember popping in a token into the machine, which had seen only a couple people play at most. I’d pick Ryu and then was astounded by the option to choose one of three Super Arts. Prior Street Fighter games and spin-offs gave fighters more than one super that were available at all times, so to restrict players to one out of three seemed like a step backwards, but then again, this was a “new” take on the property.

Other than Ryu and Ken, you have a cast of eight new characters. In a way, I was annoyed because that meant you had no old favorites to fall back on other than Ryu or Ken… but in a way, it actually makes sense. Street Fighter II had only three fighters making a return from Street Fighter I and this third game is supposed to denote a new generation. Shouldn’t there be more new faces to introduce to the pack?

So I play this new game and in a way, it’s familiar territory almost back to basics. Moves works as well as they did in past games, air blocking is gone, air hurricane kick is gone, only one level of super energy, and… wait a minute, why does that girl have three levels of energy and a much smaller meter? What’s going on here? Hold on, they’ve got a meter that shows me how many hits it takes to stun someone? Why would… HOLY SHIT! DID THAT SUPER SHORYUKEN JUST EAT UP HALF THAT GUY’S HEALTH?! WHAT THE FUCK?!

Street Fighter III was the same old Street Fighter game with a new cast of characters, a somewhat more fluid artstyle that was rougher looking and carried more grit than the anime-esque Alpha visuals,  and a new parrying mechanic that takes a while to master, but changes the dynamics of the game greatly. And I’ll be honest; I enjoyed the game quite a bit. It was nice to see a different looking Street Fighter game that didn’t just recycle the same Alpha sprites over again and there was a vibe to this one that I kinda dug.

The typical single-player experience gave you six random opponents for you to conquer before facing off against the final boss, Gill; a tall dude with blue and red skin wearing nothing but a loin cloth. This fucker was tough; his moves hit fast and hard, his reaction times were quick, and if he had a full super meter after getting KO’ed, he’d spring right back to life.  Clearly, this guy was an asshole that was hard as nails… but eventually, he was conquered and a high score was achieved… back when we cared for such things.

And then a year or so later, that SF3 machine was replaced with something else. I don’t remember what, but the game didn’t last long. I never did get to play the 2nd Impact upgrade in arcades, but I did play the Third Strike iteration during my wilderness years. A drastically different experience that no doubt felt like a considerable upgrade… but I’ve always had a fondness for the OG Street Fighter III. It might not have gotten the warmest reception at first glance, but I was just thrilled to get a different Street Fighter that actually felt somewhat different.

Revisiting The Original Street Fighter Game

Most people’s first experience with a Street Fighter anything was the second game. The one with eight World Warriors, special moves that took time to pull off, and made for some competitive battles between players. Even with that initial iteration, it’s easy to see why it became the basis for a much beloved fighting game franchise.

Of course, that is Street Fighter II, which denotes a sequel to a prior game.

The only other Street Fighter game that I knew of back in the day was the Street Fighter 2010 game for Nintendo that was featured in some comic book ads, but eventually, I’d come across that very first Street Fighter game and while my experience with it was brief, it stuck with me until the end of time.

We were at an airport one time and on the second floor, there was a rather modestly-sized video arcade section. I only had a couple quarters on hand to try some of the games; most of which were older games that I wasn’t too familiar with at the time and most of which I probably wish I sampled for the sake of saying that I played an actual [insert vintage arcade game here] arcade cabinet. But instead, my eyes were affixed on this one machine in general with a very familiar name.

Street Fighter.

But this one was different. This one had no roman numeral II on the marquee. And also, the game that was being displayed was not the familiar Street Fighter II game that I had seen before. It took a moment for my young mind to register that this was, in fact, not Street Fighter II… but rather the original Street Fighter I. Yes, the game does, in fact, exist. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes… and it bore the familiar set-up of six buttons (three punches and three kicks).

Being someone who had been on something of a Street Fighter kick, I couldn’t help but be drawn by this magical cabinet before my eyes. Ah man, I’ve got to give this thing a try… aw, but it takes two credits and that’s all I had… but still, it’s Street Fighter I. I’m never going to get this chance again. I rarely get out at this young age of 12. So I popped the quarters in and I start playing.

The game was primitive compared to its sequel. You only had one character to play with (Ryu) and your only option was to fight in Japan or USA. Naturally, I begin the quest in Japan, where I face off against a bald guy named Retsu and eventually get defeated by Geki, a ninja. And then there was a bomb. And then I had no more spare change and moved on with my life.

That’s about all I remember about the game.

I don’t recall if the game ever got ported over to home systems. The closest thing that I could recall was reading about a PC version of Street Fighter II that also came packaged with a DOS version of Street Fighter I, but that’s about the extent of it. It’d be nice to be able to play that game again someday.

We’ll see, I guess.

Later.