Author: Mike Drucker

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: 1990 Kenner Toy Fair Catalogue 🌭

Not to get all the panties dropping at once, but I recently attended an antiquarian book fair in New York City. That’s right, the New York City, where Spider-Man fights the Rhino and salsa that cowboys don’t like is made. I also live here, so it’s really not that big of an accomplishment, although anyone who’s ever had to take the subway from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side knows that it might as well be a plane ride to Chicago. Local humor! We love that! This guy knows what I’m talking about! Anyway, let me tell you about this fair of old ass books.

I actually go to the antiquarian book fair every year because they have some incredible items and looking at old things gives me a sense of continuity with history that also allows me to ignore my own inevitable entry to oblivion. The book fair has it all, too. There are editions of books by classic authors like H.G. Wells and Jane Austen. There are loose pages from ancient bibles. There are massive, hand-painted maps from the 1700s. There are medical texts that look like grimoires from a shitty roleplaying game. All of which costs so much money. They had a complete bible from the 1600s that cost over $100,000, an amount that I would have described as “infinity” when I was a child. The only people who can afford most of this crap are super villains who face a floor-to-ceiling window while giving a monologue about how small people look from the top of a skyscraper.

That said, there are some gems that are affordable. Well, let me throw some quotation marks around “affordable” because good lord, it’s still expensive. I ended up dropping about $300 and I left with the complete set of Zork off-brand choose your own adventure books – which you just know I’m going to squeeze like a bloodless stone for content here. I also got some corny art prints, the novelization of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and, most importantly, “Good Things,” the 1990 Kenner Toy Fair Catalogue. If you’re wondering how much that one cost me, imagine $99 and then add one more dollar. While other people at the book fair were buying obscure 1800s erotica – there was a lot available – I was spending a hundred bucks on a catalogue that they once gave out for free.

Waste of money? No. Perfection? Yes. Just take a look at this table of contents.

It’s hard to say what I love most about this. Maybe it’s the fact that every toy listed in this catalogue sounds like an amazing name for a minor league baseball team. Maybe it’s because our culture would no longer allow someone to associate filthy rainbows with innocent children. Maybe it’s because I forgot that a toy named Sit’n Spin existed. Maybe it’s because RoboCop, based on a violent rated R movie, is right between Ernest P. Worrell and Fashionstar Fillies, neither of which are based on violent rated R movies. Ernest Scared Stupid is legitimately frightening, though. A lot of things are!

Unlike most books, when you get past the table of contents, things here get really interesting. Nearly every section starts with a splash page that is required by the government to mention the brand as many times as possible. I feel like this was SEO before the internet? Just saying the same word again and again and again so toy retailers would buy it. Although, if we’re being honest, how much did people forget who Batman was? The way the name “Batman” is capitalized each time sounds like someone made a plan to have Batman jump out at the right moment and Bruce Wayne just isn’t showing up. “It sure would be great if BATMAN were here. We all love BATMAN and his BATMAN friends. BATMAN’s enemy, the Penguin, is stabbing me to death with an umbrella, so I sure wish BATMAN jumped through that window to save me like BATMAN does!”

The Batman section is notable for two things: The coolest Joker toy ever devised and what I’d soon learn was the beginning of a series of toy guns that would cause a kid to get shot by the police in modern times. Approximately, oh, half of the brands in this catalogue feature a plastic firearm that would look real to cops at a distance best described as “itchy trigger finger.” I don’t mean to be an old man shouting at clouds, but if you brought one of these to school in 1990, the teacher would get annoyed and probably take it away. If you brought it to school now, you’d get tasered and tackled by a 300-pound security guard and then be forced to watch Adolescence with your parents.

One interesting facet in this catalogue of 1990’s finest cheap shit is that it throws jump scares at you when you least expect it, which is kind of how jump scares work. For example, in the section on Play-Doh, you have your regular toys in which kids make inedible food. And they’re kind of cool! Check out the Make-A-Meal Sub Shop! It includes that meat slicer that we’re all afraid of, except instead of meat, it’s whatever God puts in that clay. Personally, the idea of spending hours pretending to have a job in a store making fake food never appealed to me, but maybe that’s because I like real food and don’t like actually working. Still, all this is pretty normal, even if ain’t nobody making swiss cheese look that good with Play-Doh.

But then, gahhhhhh! Play-Doh faces! Jesus Christ! Jesus fucking Christ! Apparently there’s some “game” attached that lets you roll dice to figure out what facial features you’re going to mangle? Look at them!

Look at her screaming. Look at his eyes agape with horror. Like Commander Data’s daughter, Lal, they can feel it! It’s like someone thought Mr. Potato Head wasn’t terrifying enough at an uncanny level and wanted to see if they could push the limit. If someone had shown these to me as a child, I’d still have nightmares. And, not for nothing, what a missed opportunity for a Batman/Clayface crossover.

It was around the Police Academy section that I realized this pristine copy of the 1990 Kenner Toy Fair Catalogue was actually falling apart and full of loose pages.

I paid $100 goddamn dollars for this! Man, why do I always fall for shit? I’m such an idiot! God! This is what I’m fucking talking about when I tell my therapist I can’t do anything right and I ruin everything I love. Just… fuck. Fuck! You know? I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let’s keep going. Where were we? Police Academy? Yeah, that seems right.

We don’t need to get into the nitty gritty with Police Academy, a franchise lacking both nitty and gritty, but rest assured, it’s yet another rated R movie that got turned into a children’s series. Fortunately for all the youth watching, they kept the racism intact as well as raised the stakes of the policing to frightening levels. One of the toys is a police officer hiding in a mailbox with a human rights-violating tiny prison cell behind him. Don’t look away. You couldn’t even sit or lay down in that cell. And it’s outside in view of the public, so people can attack you and you’d have no defense. It’s barbaric. It’s terrifying. So is that cage on the back of a police pickup truck. Then again, this is how I imagine half of the country wants crime to be handled, so don’t be surprised if I’m not the only one looking at a toy catalogue for ideas. I’m just saying, during the summer, that cell will kill people.

It’ll come as no surprise to you that the Police Academy toy set also features a gun that would get a little tyke merc’d. But what may come as a surprise to you – as it was to me because, honestly, this might be the most batshit thing in the whole catalogue – is a Police Academy “role playing assortment.” We’ve all seen a fake toy badge. Arnold Schwarzenegger used one to great success in Jingle All The Way. But you could apparently also buy fake police tape, fake traffic tickets, fake identification, and – this is the one that got me – fake tear gas canisters with the face of a crying man on it. I mean, I don’t think the Police Academy series is really propaganda the way some others might but this does not help the case!

What a Christmas morning! Finally the kids on my block can leave tickets on cars and then pepper spray the driver when they come out to contest it. All in good fun! Kenner!

Meanwhile, in a section for GIRLS – yuck! – there is Baby Alive, a toy with a name that implies one day the opposite will be true. The less said about Baby Alive, the better. But, as the picture says, she really eats and really dirties her diaper. This toy isn’t actually offensive in any real way – just vaguely gross – and, unlike 50% of the rest of the catalogue, won’t get you murdered by a disgruntled sheriff. But still. This was a thing that existed. Also, again, I can’t stress enough just how divided these sections are based on gender. There is not one picture of a boy in the section for Easy Bake Oven despite me constantly asking my parents to buy me one when I was a kid. My parents would happily buy me these rated R toys, but there was no way in hell they’d let their masculine son learn about cooking at a young age.

But RoboCop? Hell, yeah, baby! Look at him firing those massive guns at suspects! Due process? More like pew-pew-pew process! And no, I ain’t deleting that. RoboCop and the Ultra Force is great because it basically takes the entire point of the first movie and intentionally misses it. I do love, however, that in order for this to be child safe, the most threatening gang name they could think up was the “Vandals.” Like, is RoboCop using a backpack machine gun on a teenager tagging a wall? That could be a bit extreme, I think? Also, I love that they remind you that the latest movie is going to be PG-13 and not rated R, as if that really makes a difference with a robotic police officer blowing the heads off people in toy form. You better have a permit for that mural or you’re dead, son.

Speaking of which, I do have to give the RoboCop toy line credit for having the most “seriously, you will get a bullet in you if you take this outside” gun of them all. Yes, it has the word “police” written on it, but your hand is going to cover that while you hold the gun and nobody is going to see it until NormalCop kicks your prepubescent body to see if you’re still alive like that baby doll toy. You’re not, but you did poop yourself.

I will say this: Somehow a talking Ernest doll is the most normal toy in the entire catalogue. It’s also the one I actually went to eBay to check the price on. Most of the ones that are still in the box run for about $150, which is only $50 over my “moron who will buy anything” level. We really didn’t know what we had with Ernest. We made fun of him for just talking to Vern and having a good time. We were cruel and now the world has no Ernest. We deserve the Hell we’ve made for ourselves. We deserve pain and darkness.

Meanwhile, Fashionstar Fillies is just the best. I love, love, love that someone probably pitched this as a mature version of My Little Pony. Like it’s the feminine-coded version of Sega doing what Nintendon’t. The fact that some of them are called “Sixteens Horses” is a bit disconcerting since that sounds like an execution method saved for the worst traitors in the kingdom, but look at these beauties. Some horses are wearing literal shoes! I mean, come on, folks! Somehow a horse that dresses like Blossom from the hit show Blossom makes sense. Or maybe I just appreciate that these are some of the few toys that don’t involve pooping or the specter of death. Then again, if these were popular now, they’d likely have a lot of questionable fan art.

After a boys’ section called MegaForce (boring military equipment) and a girls’ section called Yum Yums (creepy flavored bears), we finally get back to the good stuff with Beetlejuice. The film was rated PG despite being horrifying, so we’ll allow it. And, honestly, these are the coolest toys as a whole. I have zero notes on any of these and I want them all.

There is an old man who turns into a buzzard! A fat guy who turns into a pig! A Beetlejuice that comes apart piece by piece. It’s a budding goth kid’s greatest dream outside of getting revenge on that 5th grade jock Thomas Valverde who won’t leave you alone. I want all of these toys and I want them now. Plus, there is nothing here called something like “The Beetlejuice Blaster” that will get you sent to the actual afterlife to meet Juno, your caseworker. That’s a nice surprise.

Meanwhile, the less said about the Sit’n Spin Ride-On Toy, the better. Ugh. I feel like I’m going to get sent to prison for having this photo on my phone.

Eventually, after a long, boring section of toys based on athletes – who fucking cares – we get to the headliner: The Real Ghostbusters.

If you remember, the Real Ghostbusters was the cartoon series that actually did Ghostbusters the best of any of the Ghostbusters, including the first movie. I know folks might disagree with me, but also, come on. I’ve literally got friends who acted in the latest movie and I still would tell them that the Real Ghostbusters was where it was at. They had an episode called “The Collect Call Of Cathulhu.” Yes, they spelled it wrong. It doesn’t matter; it’s an H.P. Lovecraft kids cartoon episode. This show was great and had some great toys that could’ve been mixed and matched with the Beetlejuice set if my parents had worked a little harder when I was a child. They could’ve picked up third or fourth jobs rather than coming home.

And so ends “Good Things,” the catalogue for Kenner’s 1990 toy line. I was hoping to take a lesson away from this of some sort. Something along the lines of nostalgia not being as good when you look back but, honestly, I would love these toys to exist now outside of overpriced re-sellers. This nostalgia’s pretty good. I mean, the toys are generally creepy. And if someone gave me that Play-Doh face set, I’d consider it a threat. That said, it’s fascinating how many toys would get your face on the news under a headline with the words “mistake” and “tragedy” if the police saw you with them today. We’d all be gone.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Aaron Croston. AARON CROSTON has impeccable taste. AARON CROSTON is incredibly smart and sophisticated. AARON CROSTON can punch a hole through seven inches of SOLID STEEL™ (sold separately).

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Ranking Every Song On The Mortal Kombat Album Other Than Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)🌭

In three thousand years, there will be exactly two songs from the 20th century that will be remembered: “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot and “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)” by the Immortals. Both inspired the world in their own ways. One taught us that it was difficult to lie about preferring a larger butt. The other taught us the names of all seven fighters in the arcade smash hit Mortal Kombat. It’s a song that transcended genre, going from a song created to promote the game into a song that was in the movie based on the game.

If you’re unfamiliar, “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)” involves a man yelling the words “Mortal Kombat” very loud and then, as you’d expect, a techno song. The rest of the tune is intense music punctuated by the announcer from the arcade game saying the names of the characters, but if you’ve heard it once, you can already hear it in your head. If you haven’t heard it once, just imagine the worst of 1990s Europop got into a choreographed bar fight and you’re pretty much there. It was a hit amongst us kids and, I assume, rode the billboard chart for years. Actually, I think it really did make the billboard charts which is weird as hell.

While “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)” was initially released as a single, it was conceptualized as part of a full album based on the game that was released later. This album, also by Belgian supergroup The Immortals, was advertised along with the game and features nine more songs. Seven are about the fighters you can choose, one is about Goro, the penultimate boss, and the final one is a quasi-remix of “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”.

Unlike other video game albums such as Killer Instinct’s Killer Cuts, this wasn’t a soundtrack. It was all new music inspired by the game! Or, at least, new music inspired by bits of information written on loose sheets of paper that were handed to the musicians in a language they didn’t understand. I think their main directive was “mention every fighter” and “make sure the songs don’t sound too different from one another.”

That said, it would be a shame to lose the other songs on the Mortal Kombat album to the fame of “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”. That’s why, to help you save time, I’ve ranked every song on the Mortal Kombat album except “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”. Please remember, art is a subjective experience and my opinions on this song ranking may not reflect your own or that of your family and friends.

9. “Hypnotic House (Mortal Kombat)”

Unfortunately, “Hypnotic House (Mortal Kombat)” is like the annoying little brother to “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”. They both basically sound the same and, again, there are no lyrics outside of the characters’ names. While I’m sure there is a lot to do with naming all seven Mortal Kombat characters, this song sticks to its roots a little too hard. At its best, “Hypnotic House (Mortal Kombat)” tries to be a slightly smoother, less head-banging version of “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”. At its worst, this song represents an odd omission: Every other song is based on a character in the game. And every character except Shang Tsung has one. So, where’s our Shang Tsung song to sing, sirs? They’re not talking.

8. “Kano (Use Your Might)”

I’ll give “Kano (Use Your Might)” one thing: It tries pretty hard! It sounds like a DDR song that only the worst people play. It sounds like a level in a 3D fighting game with no personality. It sounds like music from where the less cool vampires would go for a party in Blade. It’s just loud ‘90s techno with no heart. Which I guess is why Kano always needs to rip one out of people! That’s our show, folks!

At the very least, we get the announcer voice giving us a little juice with “Kano wins” so we at least know who this song is about. That said, there are again almost no words in this song. And the lyrics we do get are what I’d call “draft zero.” For example:

Use your might! Kano, fight!

The world is at your feet

Fight! Use your might!

I’m on your side

Why are we on Kano’s side? He’s a bad guy!

Also, I went about five minutes listening to this song before I realized it was on loop. That tells you something about how memorable it is, top to bottom.

7. “Liu Kang (Born In China)”

Don’t worry if the title of this song makes you uncomfortable, because the song itself will also make you uncomfortable! And good news: It’s just one of two songs on this album to specifically mention a character is from China! But at least it also includes the same explanation of Liu Kang that I would’ve said to my first grade teacher when the game came out:

Born in China

Liu Kang

Shaolin monk

The youngest, but also the fastest warrior in the tournament

It’s just so generic, even compared to the other generic songs. I’m all for weird, drawn-out explanations of characters in lyric form! Give it to me! Pour it down my fucking throat like molten gold! But god the music here feels like a sample track from a “How To Make Music” program you bought in a Humble Bundle and never plan on actually using.

The only thing saving it is using actual Liu Kang sound effects from the game as part of the beat. That’s actually nice. I can admit that.

6. “Goro (The Outworld Prince)”

Now here’s a song that starts with a little more pizazz! Right off the bat, we get a deep voice telling us some background on Goro. Whether or not you know a lot about Goro – and I bet you know lots! – it’s always good to get a refresher on one of the most famous characters in the series. Maybe you haven’t played one of the older games in a while! Maybe you just never looked up the lore of a fighting game because you don’t care.

2000 years ago

A man-beast was born

On a distant planet

They named him Goro

8 feet tall with four arms of terror

This Outworld Prince, half human, half dragon

Was trained to fight, to conquer, to rule

Whoa, right? That’s as cool as you can get in my book. Half human, half dragon, and trained in multiple subjects! So why is it not ranked higher? Because that’s about all there is to the song! It also has the vibe of the beginning of a Super Nintendo JRPG where they do a giant exposition dump about the end of the world or something. This would normally be cool, but the rest of the lyrics are just someone saying “Goro” at irregular intervals. It almost becomes a musical jump scare.

5. “Scorpion (Lost Soul Bent On Revenge)”

When this album was made, I don’t think anyone knew that Scorpion would be a breakout character. Then again, with only seven people to choose from, I feel like they all became breakout characters? It’s not really a big ensemble cast in this musical.

Scorpion’s song gets points for sounding different than most of the others. At least at first. It begins with something of a jungle-y theme – almost evoking the Living Forest level in Mortal Kombat II. This is almost immediately dropped, so don’t get too excited. But it’s still awesome for while it lasts, much like life, man. There isn’t a lot of “exploring the space” going on in this album, so any difference is welcome.

Unfortunately, where Scorpion’s song loses points is its lyrics. The entire thing is literally the words “Scorpion, lost soul bent on revenge” and then the “Come here!” and “Get over here!” sounds from the game. I’ll be honest: If hearing those sounds weren’t like rubbing my dying stomach with a warm glove, this song could’ve ranked even worse on the list. But it’s different enough and entertaining enough to eke up a few spots.

It is weird that they don’t mention Scorpion’s spear at all. Like I said, we do hear him shout “Get over here.” But, really, that’s… I mean the spear is a big part, folks! Why are we leaving out the obvious stuff here?

4. “Sub-Zero (Chinese Ninja Warrior)”

Alright, I know, I know, another song that mentions the character being from China. Back in the day, racism also meant that people from other countries were like aliens in Star Trek with their own specialties. In fact, for a couple decades, the entire fighting game genre was built on this belief system. It’s possible part of the reason we’re in this mess we are today is because we really hit home that being from a specific country led to specific ethnicity-specific abilities.

Not important! The Sub-Zero song is pretty neat. It kicks off with a militant beat that at least vaguely lines up with the character’s backstory being a ninja assassin antihero. This song’s lyrics are also ridiculous, but at least they’re kind of funny? While the previous entries on this list tended to just describe the character, this song also does that, but it sounds like a Lonely Island song making fun of them. Take this slick verse:

Ooh, Chinese ninja warrior

With your heart so cold, Sub-Zero

Ooh, your life is a mystery

Warrior with a mask, Sub-Zero

Wait. It gets better. Throughout the song, a woman screams “Yeah, yeah, freezing vibrations” in the exact tone and syllabic structure of the chorus in the song “Good Vibrations.” At first I hated it, but then I realized that it launches this song into absurdity. It’s one of the first songs to break me, and I respect it for that.

3. “Johnny Cage (Prepare Yourself)”

This is the first track on the album, and I can see why. It’s uplifting, sounding a little like that song asking everybody to dance now, “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”. It’s more fun than most of the other tracks. Maybe they wrote this one first, before all the gas was out of the tank. Whatever the case, this song makes me happy and, like Sub-Zero, has some of the dumbest lyrics on the album. Which, I want to reiterate, is saying something.

The song has three primary thematic elements: Johnny Cage is a movie star, Johnny Cage is not afraid to die, Johnny Cage needs to prepare himself. Seriously, we hear these facts mentioned quite a lot throughout the song. But we learn so much about Johnny here! For example, did you know this fun fact as explained in the song?

From the United States of America

The movie star with the iron fist

He’s 29, he’s mean, he’s in great shape

The one and only Johnny Cage

The fact that he’s 29 kind of bums me out considering I’m a decade older than him and I still haven’t killed anybody or starred as the lead role in a movie. But this song really brings out the full Eurotrash pop background of the album. You can hear those thick Belgian accents as they talk about Johnny Cage being from America and being too cool. It was that way that people actually used to see our country, which was awesome while it lasted.

Did I mention that they say that Johnny Cage has “the shadow kick we all admire”? No? Well, that’s why it’s third.

2. “Sonya (Go Go Go)”

Sonya’s theme is probably the most normal song on the album outside of “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”. That isn’t saying much, I know. It’s like choosing the most normal character in Street Sharks. But at least it feels like an actual song that an actual club could play, even if by mistake.

What’s the secret behind the success of “Sonya (Go Go Go)”? It has a normal beat at a normal tempo and, thank god, some actual lyrics that go beyond just describing the character. Although, fortunately, we still have that too:

I’m the coolest chick in the USA

I’m 26 and on my way to become the best

And that’s a fact

I wanna win the contest and forget the rest

That’s another reason I love this song. It’s the only one from the first person! Rather than singing about the character, the artists are embodying her! And thank God, because she’s got a lot to say about her process.

I’m Sonya Blade, so be prepared

I’ll knock you right out of the air

I’m left, right, up and down

The quickest foot sweep in this town

I control the air, don’t you dare

To attack me: I’m everywhere!

Don’t try to fool me, don’t forget

I can kill you with my kiss of death

Let’s be real with each other: That’s a solid summarization of Sonya Blade’s abilities in the game outside of shooting those pink rings from her hands. This song, of all of them – including the number one – does the best work telling us who this person is. Plus, she’s the only woman in the game, so you get the sense that the musicians actually could try something slightly different. That “slightly” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

This is the song that could end up on a playlist and me unironically enjoying it. If released today, it would probably be described as “woke” by people online.

1. “Rayden (Eternal Life)”

Here we are! Number one! It doesn’t have the best beat, but it does have the absolute best lyrics. I don’t just mean in the album. I mean of any song ever written. “Rayden (Eternal Life)” is a hall-of-famer. And of all the qualities that Rayden possesses, the one thing The Immortals really want you to focus on is that he is, in fact, immortal.

We all know he’s not afraid ’cause Rayden cannot die

He lives up in the thunderclouds; he comes down from the sky

Like the Sonya song, it’s nice that the musicians seem to know who this character is and some of his moves in the game. But these descriptions are far stupider, far sillier, far more goofy than anything that came before. It’s all the detail I’ve wanted for the whole album, but with the same “first draft, no notes” energy. I mean, have the Beatles ever come up with lines this good?

The kombat king, the best of the best

Just look at Rayden, he cannot rest

Our champ, solid as a rock

He gives his opponent a state of shock

With power, electricity, he disappears

No, you cannot see him move, ’cause Rayden flies

The Superman with eternal life

That’s poetry. That’s everything we really need to know about Rayden (later Raiden, but who fucking cares?). He does lightning. He cannot die. This song is just so stupid. Listening to it again has changed me as a man. It should be used in science experiments.

And it’s the best song on this album that’s not “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat).”

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Alex Knollenberg, eight feet tall with four arms of terror, half hot dog half dragon. ALEX.

ALEX.

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum 🌭

Pitching this idea was a mistake. I’d recently seen some talk online about Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum and I thought, “Wow! I never heard of that! It must be crazy! What a treat!” So, I wrote to the fine owners of this very website and asked if they’d be interested in me putting some words to screen. I mean, it’s a win-win situation, right? I earn a little extra walking around money and I get to play Street Fighter 2 and pretend it’s work. This was going to make my weekend, I just knew it. Because, after all, how bad could Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum really be?

Terrible. It turns out it can be so terrible. I wasted a weekend on this thing, and I swear to God, it made me want to die more than any humiliation I’ve been through. In middle school, two girls once pantsed me and laughed at my underwear. That memory is now easier to handle because I’ve experienced something far more painful: The Europe-only port of a classic arcade game for a British computer that had long been obsolete by the time this game came out. Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum might be the worst game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played a lot of bad games. I own a lot of bad games. They’re nothing compared to this.

Hell, emulating this nightmare was hard on its own. Because this port came out later in the ZX Spectrum’s lifespan, it uses some fancy technical tricks to still look awful (more on that in a second). Thus, it took a lot of experimenting with different emulators and settings to get the game to load at all. It came on a cassette tape, after all. I’m sure a British person twelve years older than me would’ve been able to get all the settings right away. Then, once the game did load, it took more experimenting to get it to stop freezing on the character select screen. But here’s the fun part: Everything runs so fucking slow no matter what that sometimes I wasn’t sure if the game was frozen or just taking a very long time to work. Sometimes it was! This is the most effort I’ve ever put into punishing myself.

Once you get the game to start and then run without crashing, oh baby, you’re in for an entire haunted amusement park of fun. First of all, the graphics are what I’d call fascinating. The ZX Spectrum port of Street Fighter 2 makes the Game Boy version look like fine art. Each stage in the game only uses a couple colors – all of which are also applied to the fighters themselves. And because some stages feature characters in the background doing nothing, it’s often hard to tell the difference between fighters and the rest of the level. Imagine if you were doing a coloring book and you only chose bright red and bright blue for everything. It’s like it was planned as a cruel prank by someone who hates colorblind people. My vision is now worse after playing this game. I need new glasses.

As a side note, I’ll say that – inexplicably – the best part of the game is the “Vs.” screen. Because the game can’t handle putting them side-by-side, we get full screen pixel art replicas of their character portrait. I’ll be honest… these go pretty hard and look awesome. If this was the entire game, I’d be a much happier man. Honestly, one of the few things that kept me going was enjoying this completely useless, non-playable part of the experience.

But terrible loading times and terrible graphics aside, the game itself is surprisingly good. No, I’m just kidding, it plays like shit. If there is a Hell, this would be the game available at a kiosk in the waiting room. Let’s start with what you already know: You choose a fighter. That fighter faces another fighter. You can move forward, back, jump, and block. Theoretically you can also duck, although I found that hard to do because the game responds to key presses with a relatively casual attitude. It’s like an intern who won’t get coffee because their dad is the CEO for a major company. Why are you even here if you’re not going to work? Sometimes when you press a button, it’ll do it. Sometimes not! That’s part of the fun: Will the game actually respond to button presses? The Brits sure do love their mysteries!

As for the actual fighting… good luck! The computer opponent knows all the moves and will just spam them again and again and again. You, however, are slightly more limited in your abilities, because this game was designed to destroy your self-esteem and willingness to try new things. Depending on which iteration of the computer you have, there’s either one attack button or two. At least, that’s what I can gather from menus or the world’s most confusing manual text. The two button configuration provides the advanced ability to kick and punch. The one button configuration still allows those moves, but you need to hold back or forward to change up what you’re doing. If that sounds confusing, it’s only because it really, really is!

As I said, the computer cheeses every single special move. When I finally got to Vega – and yes, I did actually put real time into this – he simply did the wall climb and jump again and again and again and again until I died. And, because of technical limitations, when he does said wall climb, your character may or may not be able to move. I’m not kidding. I don’t know why. I don’t know the reason. But sometimes I was only able to stand there and block and other times the game let me move in another direction. Fortunately, the game doesn’t even pretend there’s a button combination happening behind the scenes and allows Vega to instantly follow up with another power move.

After sucking for a while, I thought I’d choose Blanka and see if I could just rely on his electric attack to get some cheap victories. That’s the easiest one to do, right? Just keep tapping punch and you’ve got a nice little shell of lightning. Nope! No matter how much or at what rate I tapped punch, there was no electricity. It did randomly happen when I wasn’t entering the correct button combination, though! That’s something! The other fighter walked straight into it and was not hurt in the least. It was more or less character decoration.

That’s another wonderful element of this game: Whether or not you do damage is kind of random. In most versions of Street Fighter 2, throwing the other fighter delivers a nice little chunk of pain. Here, sometimes you chip a little off the life bar, but sometimes the character just bounces off the ground and stands back up without any change in their health. Even when a character is wide open and not blocking, a move that clearly hits the character might do absolutely zero damage.

After suffering loss after loss, I eventually chose Dhalsim because I figured his reach could counter-cheese the AI. And I was delighted to learn I was correct. In fact, I think Dhalsim’s regular punch does more damage than any other move in the game? I’m not joking. His regular punch takes off about one third of the other character’s lifebar. Zangief’s piledriver usually does massive damage, right? Here, the move is just him jumping straight up and down and it cuts off a tiny sliver of health. But that Dhalsim punch? Devastating. When I was lucky enough to connect it with an opponent – and the computer admitting it worked – I could win a match in seconds. Although, to be fair, the match timer also runs extremely slow so it might’ve been hours.

I can’t emphasize how bad this game plays. The Game Boy version at least delivered a good-college-try interpretation of the game. The Tiger Electronics versions at least had a consistent form of gameplay that understood pressing a button meant you wanted it to do what the button was designed for. Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum feels like it was made as a joke or as a last-place demake for an indie game competition. But this was sold in stores. I’m assuming real human beings bought it. Probably because, in my brief research, it appears that almost none of the ads for this version included screenshots. And before the internet, you just had to take a company’s word for it when they said something was “fun” or “enjoyable” or even “playable.”

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum is a wise deconstruction of the fighting genre, revealing the weakness in those who’d look to fictional martial artists for strength. Or maybe this was a port made for a narrow audience that loved having an old computer and hated having fun. Either way, the damage this game has done to my brain means this will possibly be the last thing I ever write. Goodbye, world. Goodbye, mother.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Victor Malevankin who was the champion of the Dhalsim punch meta back in ’92.

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Nerding Day: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (The Animated Series)

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Nerding Day: Mega Man for DOS 🌭

I actually asked my parents for this garbage. I begged for this shit. And I got it: The worst Mega Man ever made.

As a kid, I considered myself one of the biggest Mega Man fans of all time. This was convenient for me, since I was a child during the time in which this couldn’t be verified by any means whatsoever. There were no YouTube videos of toddlers beating the entire series on Donkey Konga drums while wearing a blindfold and getting spun in a chair. It was a different time then. You used to be excited when you found out someone else liked the same video games as you. It’s not like today in which discovering a shared interest blossoms into a deep horror as the other person angrily tells you that the main character’s body is too woke now or some stupid thing that people online get mad about when they don’t have actual problems.

Anyway, I loved Mega Man with all my heart. Some of this might have been the fantastic music, amazing platforming, and incredible enemy designs. As I’ve said before, some of this might have also been that I was a little fat kid and Mega Man was a little fat guy, just bouncing along on his fat little metal legs. A lot of people talk about the importance of representation in the media, but you rarely hear about the way Mega Man inspired a generation of amorphous-looking man-children. Without his influence, who knows what I might have gone on to do? Had sex with someone who didn’t avoid eye contact? Maybe!

But Mega Man was my boy, so any time I saw some sort of new Mega Man game, I had to have it. I’d do anything I could to make sure that the game was on my parents’ radar. After that, it usually meant waiting for months until a holiday or my birthday or until my dad got so mad that he did something terrible that resulted in him buying us a toy out of guilt. That’s how we got the SimCity 2000 Urban Renewal Kit! Man, expansions used to be cool. Man, no they didn’t.

When I saw Mega Man for DOS in the store, I couldn’t stop asking for it. We’d just gotten our first computer a few months earlier and a handful of cheap shareware games to go with it. Bad card games. Worse Tetris knockoffs. A level of Wolfenstein 3D, which wasn’t bad at all, but also I didn’t respect how much I’d need to train to fight Nazis in the future. The computer was more or less a business purchase for my dad and the games were a way to show it off a little or prove that he hadn’t just bought it for himself. I do think he also bought a strip poker game on a floppy disk because I found one years later and my mom isn’t the type.

The box for Mega Man on DOS is odd in that it uses the same box art as Mega Man for Game Boy, which itself seems to have taken elements from the box art of Mega Man 3. And even though it’s simply billed as “Mega Man,” it’s not a remake of the first game in any way. In fact, it’s an entirely new game with three new robot bosses. Oh, I don’t mean three new robot bosses in addition to your favorites. I mean that there are three robot bosses period. And these aren’t Dr. Wily’s best work. These are the D-Team robots, some Roombas with legs attached.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I have to talk about the exciting first level!

You know how in Mega Man X – a real Mega Man game – you’re dropped right into that crazy futuristic highway in the middle of a robot war? It’s cool, right? There’s pounding music. Wave after wave of creative, fascinating mechanical enemies. The level shifts and changes. Forget exposition, this game teaches you what’s going on by showing it! And when you die at the hardest part of the level, you’re actually shocked to discover this is the start of the real story! Wow!

Mega Man for DOS is similar to this in that you’re dropped right into the action. Except instead of it being a cyberpunk cityscape under robotic devastation, you’re on a brick walkway with little rope guardrails. When you start, you’re at a guard booth with a gate that they raise for you and you just walk by. Because, I think the guard already knows you? Mega Man doesn’t wave a pass or anything, but they let him right in. So he must’ve been called about coming over to help. As you walk down the straight path – and I literally mean there’s nothing but flat ground and one building you walk straight through on said flat ground – robot dogs attack you. If you kill the robot dog, another will come and attack you. If you ignore it, it’ll chase you and attack you. You can’t outrun or defeat them until they stop. No matter what you do, the robot dog will hit you for significant damage. The only way to get past this is to just keep running and jumping until you read a Dr. Wily-esque gate that leads to the robot boss selection screen.

Now, if this doesn’t sound fun, I completely understand. That’s fair. However, what you need to understand is that this is really made even less fun by the fact that there’s no music whatsoever. No music. Zero songs. Not in this opening level. Not in any of the levels. This Mega Man game is dead silent outside of the jumping and shooting and dying sounds. Mega Man’s music might be one of the most universally beloved things about it, so having zero music at all is certainly a choice. I guess we’re in the year 20XX and we’re fighting to defend the town from Footloose.

This lack of music is fascinating to me. I used to hold a Talkboy up to the screen to record songs from the games. If I tried that now with Mega Man for DOS, I’d likely get silence or some slight static where you could almost detect a ghost begging to be heard and have their murder solved. There’s just nothing there. I tried putting on some Mega Man music from Spotify while playing, and it’s one of the few things that made this game more fun other than turning it off.

But then we get to the robot bosses screen. Just so you know: Still no music. You’re not getting any of that here ever. Your choices are Dyna Man, Sonic Man, and Volt Man. All of which are designed to look nothing like a Mega Man robot boss. They could’ve gone a bit cheap and did some knockoffs by adjusting a pixel here or there. Nope! Pure free hand digital drawing. Dyna Man looks like a mad scientist who did too many sit ups and he’s one of the highlights.

Even as I type this, the difference between boss’ levels are melting together in my mind. One is a sewer landscape that’s just a series of walkways and pits. One is an electric power plant landscape that’s just a series of walkways and pits. Another is a warehouse that’s just a series of walkways and pits. I know “walkways and pits” could describe a lot of platformers, but I genuinely mean that your first level in Super Mario Maker probably had more nuance than anything here. If you gave me a sheet of graph paper and told me I had 15 minutes to design three Mega Man levels, this is probably the level of quality I’d produce. They dedicated the same amount of effort to the enemies. For example, the manual tells you to watch out for: BIRD (not pictured).

The old Mega Man games were the pinnacle of platforming precision. Carefully placed jumps. Deaths were common, but rarely unfair. Great. Forget that. Mega Man can neither jump that high nor shoot that low. Which is great, because every single obstacle is slightly too high to reach and every enemy will fly just below your shot range. Killing anything – even itty bitty shitty insect robots – feels more like a game of chance than anything else. I’m serious when I say that this game can only be completed by bum rushing through levels, hoping that you don’t lose all your lives before reaching an equally awful boss fight. Besides choosing between EGA and VGA graphics, there is no point in which this game becomes fun.

Oh, and there are those fucking annoying little blocks that appear and disappear. I’m glad of the things they could get right about Mega Man, it was the worst part of any level. There may be no music, the level design may be terrible, but at least we can try to time jumping between disappearing ledges. Phew! Thank you, Dr. Light, for keeping us going until we had the chance to fall into a river of flames again and again and again and again. In fact, I’d say the greatest challenge in this game is just getting to the robot bosses themselves. God knows you probably won’t defeat them unless you actually try and – if the developers didn’t with this game, why should you?

And I do mean that they didn’t “try.” After doing some research (i.e., Googling), I discovered that this game steals some of its graphics from Duke Nukem. Not the 3D one with the boobs and stuff. The 2D one that came in CD-ROM value packs.

You don’t remember those games because they’re not really worth remembering. They’re not terrible by the standards of the day, which means they’re nightmarish by the standards of now. For a while, Duke Nukem was the best the PC had to offer on sidescrollers, which is probably why developers mostly focused on obtuse, un-fun role playing games instead.

To be fair, I can kind of see why the developer, Stephen Rozner, stole some assets. Also, yes, Stephen Rozner is just one guy. This was a game made by a single person. That tracks. And I don’t want to shit on someone who made a bad game 35 years ago. Because, look, far be it from me to criticize someone else’s work. I’ve definitely put my name on projects that were great and I’ve definitely put my name on projects that paid me money. It’s also a bit of a relief: Knowing this wasn’t made by a well-funded team feels like less of a waste. And, if I’m being upfront, I’d feel pretty proud of myself if I made this in 1990, especially considering I was six. And at six years old, I’d probably feel less morally against stealing art.

The good news is you can play Mega Man for DOS right now! For free! The bad news is that, by playing the game, you’re using up some of the few, brief minutes you’ve got left on this planet. There is no music. Almost no enemies. Stolen artwork. Bosses that don’t make sense. And gameplay in which Mega Man can neither reach high or low enough to accomplish things. Mega Man may be a robot, but this is the first game to show us what would have happened if Dr. Light had a box of bricks fall on his head while designing a new creation. If I have anything positive to say, it’s that now – and when I was a kid – Mega Man for DOS made me respect how hard it must’ve been to create a fun game in the series. I can’t wait to play it again in another 35 years when I’m in my 70s.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Josh S, who was responsible for the music, but nobody told him.