The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode 92, Beat 'Em Up With Rusty Shackles

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

Ruffians have stolen this podcast! Seanbaby chooses his fighters, Brockway and special guest Rusty Shackles, to get it back. Along the way they'll have to punch clowns and eat street chickens, it's the retro Beat 'Em Ups episode!

One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred hot dog. Our podcast slams with maximum hype. Say hot dog podcast work. Yeah. When you taste that nitrate power, you're in the dog zone for an hour. Come on, do not win number.

One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero zero. Yeah, nine thousand. Welcome to the Dog Zone 9000,

the official podcast for one nine hundred. Hotdog.com. Go to our Patreon and support our all-star cast of comedy writers who champion the dying art of funny words by pictures. I'm the internet's Sean Baby, and with me in the zone is the Billy Lee to my Jimmy Lee, Robert Brockway.

I am nobody's palette swap, sir. Here's a Brockway fact I have before and will again eat an entire roast chicken I find in a barrel. No follow-up questions. I don't think I have any. That's a story. You don't want to know where my delicious chicken barrels are from?

That's the first question I would ask. From punching the barrel, I already know. Or throwing a man into it. Yeah, see where they located is like the question. I was anticipating. A bar, the subway, whatever you keep your chicken barrels. Our guest today, to side scroll and mean street patrol, is a beloved internet artist

whose work is featured in games, magazines, and all over our own site, Rusty Shackles. Thank you gentlemen for having me. I really appreciate being on to talk about one of my favorite subjects in the world, being about video games. Yes. Is that what we're doing?

Yeah, we are. I think that's the best thing about having a podcast is being able to curate adult conversations about things I otherwise would never get to talk about. My wife will not talk about Final Fight with me for an hour like we're about to. But now you get to demand that of your friends. This is a good promotional opportunity

for you to only talk about the thing that I am interested in. And not at all. That's the thing you're interested in. Can you imagine if you were just at a bar and some dude is sitting next to you and he's like, oh, hey, River City Ransom. And you're like, what? And I get to talk about River City Ransom at the bar?

Fuck. This is waiting my whole life for this moment. Yes. So yeah, Rusty, let's do some plugs. Sure. Where can people find it? So the easiest one will be on Twitter, which is just Rusty underscore shackles.

You can see my art and my nonsense there. I'm on Instagram as artists, Rusty shackles all one word. And that's just my art. No nonsense. I like your nonsense. Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate it. More nonsense is my only complaint.

So I also did kind of tying into the theme of the podcast. I am a artist for hardcore gaming 101.net. And we've done, I've done 11 books covers for them that are currently available on Amazon. But one of the most recent ones, of course, was beat em ups and that ties in today. Perfect. Yeah, you've trained your whole life for this discussion.

I think. Oh, yeah. Exactly this day to dominate this conversation. When I was a kid at pizza places, just sinking coin after coin into a final fight. I was like, one day I will meet a man. It's going to pay off. Well, I'm not sure if we're against each other in this,

but you better win. I think we should add an element of competition. What we're doing today is we each brought three games to discuss. And we're all given the same criteria. What's the best beat em up unironically? What's the best beat em up, but you're allowed to fuck around. And wild card category, which is basically nothing. It's as close to, I don't know,

big fucking video game as you can get as a podcast host. So those are the three categories. Best, best, but crazy. And what the fuck out. So the only real rule I gave was that it's a soft one that we should pick from back in the day games mostly because just to be fair, because modern retro games are almost always better than the ones that inspired them.

And if you're doing like best beat em up of all time, you probably want to go with Scott Pilgrim or shredders revenge or River City girls or streets of rates for those are like objectively better in most ways than the originals besides the tech upgrades. They built on decades of game design, yada, yada. You get it. So we kind of went all nineties.

We're rolling out the basic human progress. Right. Like we're, we're stuck in the nostalgia of our teenage years. Fantastic. Like, like everyone is. That's how I prefer to be. Right. So anyway, I know Rusty, you and your kid kind of work through

a lot of these classics. Do you have a main cabinet at home that you play these on or do you? Yeah. So there's a, it ties into my game choice. I'll, I'll explain that in a minute, but the, there's a certain kind of thing you can buy on Amazon and I don't want to open a Pandora's box, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

But it's a certain kind of arcade cabinet that you can just get online that has 3000 games in it. And of course it's highly illegal, but it is what it is. Illegal. It's in every home. Right. And it's not expensive either. But we can, we actually have gone through a number of games.

He's kind of at an age now where he's losing the patients to go through them. Like we started going through Ninja baseball, Batman, and it became a fight at the fifth level in real life. I was like, okay, well let's, let's, so we mostly focus on weird fighters like Karnaugh's revenge and stuff like that now, but we, like his, the first game he beat was the Simpsons arcade game.

Yeah. Which cost us far less at home than we would have at the arcade. So. Yeah, that would have cost you everything. Yeah. See, that's a good point. That was a Konami game that and Ninja Turtles and X-Men are

probably the most ubiquitous beat them ups. Those are in every bowling alley, every pizza place. And I found them really inferior to the Technos and the Capcom ones. Yep. I think that you can't trust Turtles. Like sometimes you hit a guy and you're like, dude, my pixels are so deep in your pixels.

Why didn't you get hit? Other times you grab them and throw them. You're like, why the fuck did I throw them with that stab and not the other stab? Like Ninja Turtles is tough. Plus the guys on the side are at weird angles. So they kind of don't go up and down, right? Or you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah. I'm convinced they were designed to fuck with you. Like especially there's some sections in the Simpsons game that it is designed to cost you that 50 cents because everywhere it always cost 50 cents. Because they knew. They knew. You want to play this game.

This game is going to be really mean to you. It's going to have to cost 50 cents and I'm going to retire on it. Yeah. And I don't want to brag. I can beat Final Fight on a quarter, but like you just can't do that on Turtles. Like I don't think, someone obviously can, but I've never met them and I wouldn't want to try.

So, well, let's get started. Who wants to go first with the best, unironic beat them up game? I don't know that I have pure unironic anything in me. I think the way I live my life and function has like about 40% irony. I think. So maybe I'm not great. I'm not great to go first. Okay.

Oh, please. Why don't you get us started? All right. Well, my best, and keep in mind all the warnings I just gave you, my best and favorite is Captain Commando. I think that's a solid choice. Very solid choice. Okay.

Okay. I'm glad we're all on the same page. 1991 from Capcom, of course, Captain Commando, which took me, I want to say seven years to get that joke. It's pretty subtle. It was basically. They should have named it after the baby, right? Like it should have been.

Yeah. Real like baby armor. It should have. Well, or. There's a ninja and a mummy. That's a fucking weird crew. Wrapping mummy from outer space. See, that's why I picked it is because as a, as a kid,

when I found Captain Commando in the wild, which was always kind of rare. Like it wasn't so rare that you would never see it, but it had to be like a real good arcade for you to run into the machine. I always assumed. Until Mame. Really? Oh, you never had it as a kid?

Never found it. Oh, wow. I must have been really lucky. I'd like two arcades. I would see the Super Nintendo port of it a lot, but I rarely saw it in the arcade. See, I don't think I ever saw the, I never had it at home. It was always like,

I have to find this in the wild thing. And it felt like such a special occasion because I assumed there was some sort of deep lore backstory or I assumed it was like, maybe an adaptation of, of a manga or anime or something that I did not get because it's so rich and deep with weirdness and it's so very casual about its weirdness is just like, Hey, here are your four characters. There's Captain Commando. You know him.

No need to introduce him. Now, real quick though, here's, here's Mack the knife. He's a mummy from outer space and he stabs people with his knives. And that's something here's a ninja. Don't worry about him. Here's a baby in a giant mech. And his name is his name's baby head. His name was baby head.

It was just such a like so many, so much of the cast in these games was like, was like Haggar was like a big guy that wants to be mayor. And you can get him immediately. But then you run into Captain Commando in a while and you're like, I can be a hip hop mummy from outer space or a baby in a robot. What the fuck is this? That doesn't play like years of backstory that led us to this. It does.

And it was so casual about it. So it wasn't like, we're the weird game. It was like, this is the most natural thing. He's on the Capcom, isn't he like the Capcom fan club or something? No, I looked it up for this. I never looked it up before and I just kept it as the weird thing that had a part of my childhood. But he was sort of an unofficial mascot of Capcom in the 80s

before, well before this game. And they, they had him on like their packaging and in their manuals for other games, but they never explained him or gave him any lore. He would just be on the back and he would be like, congratulating you on buying, you know, Capcom or whatever and be like, right. And I'm Captain Commando and you'll find out more about me.

Later. And he kept saying that in like every appearance. And then he'd show up with weirder and weirder shit. And like, I think one of them, he had like an alien chimp and was like, this is my buddy. And he kept promising you'll find out more about him later. That would have just bounced right off my brain. If you show me a superhero guy with a, with a, with an ape.

I'm like, yeah, that's totally normal. It's the baby and the mummy where I'm like, wait, what are you doing? Right. So he kept promising that you're going to, you're going to find out more about him later. And, uh, and he did this, I think it started in 1986. So he did it for five years across, across packaging until he showed up in this game.

And what I love the most about this game was that there wasn't really an intro or anything that gave you like, I'm Captain Commando who you've seen on these packages. And I've, it was just like, let's fucking go. We'll find out about me later. Any kind of a plot? No. Well, they do, they do, but only once you beat the game.

Oh, then you find out. So, yeah, once you beat the game, it, it capped in me like the, the mayor or president is congratulating you on beating. Scum aside, who apparently is the name of the last guy who was just a big fucking flesh beast. He's like, he was genetically engineering super criminals. You're like, Oh, that's what the fuck that was. So you were the good guy.

That was reassuring. Yes. But then there's, there's a moment where the president turns to the screen that Captain Commando is talking to him on and goes, and who are you? And the ending of his own game. He goes, I'm Captain Commando. The end.

That's as much explanation as you ever got. And it's, it was, And they had five years. They had five years of like pressure of like, Hey, I'll tell you who I am. And they did that for five years. Someone back there was like, God, I got to come up with something. Something wild.

Oh, wow. They were edging before it was popular. I guess. Yes. The Captain Commando engine. Quarter. Quarter edging. Put in another quarter to not quite come.

Which means that was their fetish was having the president not know their name. That was like, that's how they get off. They're like, yes. It was such a, like just in vibes too. Like the levels were, I think it was. It was just like regular city, right? Which everybody started out as, but if you, if you kept going with it,

there was some kind of dinosaur building, like maybe a museum, but it was never clear to me. I got as a kid. And then there was like a house full of ninjas, like ninja roommates, just all living together. And then the circus, which I guess, which was bog standard. And then there's, there was a level on a jet powered surf board where you have to punch through all of the billboards that are floating in the

sea, which was all the billboards. They have cut loose to roam the sea. And then you, I think you go to Atlantis and then you're on the spaceship and then you end. And I never got to the last, I never got to the spaceship or, or the last level, which is an opium den in space. Very nice. Like literally just there's guys in the back, like half alien

monstrosities in the background, just smoking hookas with, with alien bitches on either side and just, just madness. That's, that was so like, it's normal at the time. Like, I don't think I would have considered questioning that as a kid. Like why, why are they here? Why, why are the billboards in the ocean? Like it's just, I don't think there's a coherent fighting game, maybe final fight where it's like, hi, I'm the mayor and the kid,

not my daughter. And this is her boyfriend and his lover. And we're going to go fight this, the mad street, mad gear gang. And I'm like, okay, yeah, I get that. Right. I have two other choices that are, are just as confounding, but they're much more like down to earth and like the, the enemies, I mean, the enemies are always sort of themed to the level in most places.

And I think they, they are in ninja house and captain commando. But aside from that, it's like, it's like four guys in hazmat suits, the alien from aliens, two cave men and one break dancer with a broken bottle, like on screen at the same time. And you're like, fucking, what is even happening? I always assumed that I was like fighting through the collapse of time somehow. Like, I thought it was much more meta than it was because it was

just like, no, this is what the streets look like. This is, this is what society went. It's sort of like a manga take on crisis on infinite earth. If they didn't know anything else about the characters, just throw them all in one big pot. Let them have fun. I love it too. Let me, I mean, I, because I looked all of this up and I want to give

answers to people who, who like me just left this as a question on answered in their, their mind for decades. Captain command. This is from the wiki. Captain commando. Other things he uses are the captain goggles, which help him identify a criminal's face at a distance of two kilometers. I can't imagine that showed up in the game.

The captain protector, which is made of a super tough material called captainium. Okay. And stands up to a trillion degree heat. Yeah. So you can fight in the heart of the sun. Why not? The captain gauntlet, which multiplies captain's power 48 times,

48 precisely. And a captain boots, which makes it possible for him to take a 100 meter fall without injuries or damage to the boots. No injuries, but my boots explode every time. I think if you ask a child to like describe a video game character, that's exactly who they would come up with. He can fight on the sun if he has to. You never know.

He can fall off anything because of his magic shoes. Oh, also, also a lot of kids wouldn't think of this, but they don't break. You're probably thinking they're like airbags one time use. No, no, no, no. You assumed and he gets up to 48 times more powerful, not 50. No. Just short, just short of 50.

Yeah. All right. So Mack, the knife is a mummy like alien from outer space as weapons. He uses subsonic knives that melt any enemy he gets. So I didn't pick quite pick up on. I thought he was down. Meaning he cannot ever swing them faster than the speed of sound. I guess not under any circumstances with these knives.

If you put them on a plane, they'll fall out the back of the plane. If it starts to go supersonic, they'll stab through the plane, which is just what they do. Other things he has are the Captain Cap, which is a souvenir from his first meeting with Captain Commando. Not specified. What are why the genetic bandage, which is his life sustaining

equipment for survival on Earth. Because he died when he first met Captain Commando. I guess, yes, because Captain Commando was like, fucking, I'm not dealing with a mummy from outer space. Have have a trillion degree punch from 100 kilometers in the sky. So that's why he's a mummy is he's wrapped in genetic bandages, which he needs to live.

And the genetic knife, which of course melts all manner and gravity controllers, which are his pair of shoes that adjust the gravitational pull to where it's best for the battles. Yeah, this Rusty's right. This was a child made this up. These are words that don't mean what the author thinks they mean. Everybody got special shoes.

I didn't like replay all of this. I replayed a little bit just to get the vibe, but I don't remember. And I certainly did not see any of this in the game at any point. Yeah, it doesn't sound very relevant. Knives sound awesome on paper, but it still took him a few hits to kill stuff.

Yeah, like he wasn't immediate one hit killing everybody. There's Ginzu the ninja who is just a ninja. No second thing needed or added. You just got a ninja and of course baby head. That's that was always my favorite was the baby head. Where it was the baby inexplicable robot. The baby commando is a super genius infant. Didn't get that one super genius infant who fights using a robot

of his own design. See, I always thought and this is actually wilder. I thought somebody just put a baby in a robot and like let it go. I didn't realize it was like this is like I built my, my super body to take over the world as a baby because my, my own baby body is inferior. I just thought it was like somebody was like, let's see

what this baby does. Yeah. So easy a baby can use it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's so easy. A baby can use it and they just test it and they just kind of forget about it.

He's gone. He's gone. I'm not getting him back. See how he punches the features he uses are the talking machine, which resembles a baby pacifier and allows him to speak the three million languages of the cosmos. That's so stupid. You got to explain the pacifier you put on the baby design

and that's how you do it. Right. Why the fuck is the baby on the pacifier? Listen, let me tell you why. C-3PO. It has, because of C-3PO. It's C-3PO in his mouth all the time. Wait, that sounds bad to have C-3PO in a baby's mouth all the

time. I don't like the way that, so. It's just a little nub of C-3PO. Just a tiny little nub. He's sucking the tiny nub of C-3PO. Okay. There's no bad. You said there was no bad ideas in brainstorm.

Don't throw me out now. You can't. The three million languages of the cosmos. It's just fantastic. He also has the stable cradle, which keeps the robot from rocking, no matter how far it is still. So no matter what happens, the baby will be fine. Don't feel bad if you lose.

It keeps the cradle for, but he has a fucking thing that speaks three million languages and a robot of his own design. So you have to be like, and also he has a nice cradle that keeps him from rocking. It's again like a child at the very end of all that. Wait, we don't want to kill the baby. This thing, it has like a little baby shield to prevent the

baby from getting shaken to death. It has little rubber bumpers that specifically prevent shaking. So you can't shake him. It's one weakness. It's one weakness is being shaken. The robot's called the Silver Fist Vehicle and it has 12,000 horsepower.

Just a ridiculous thing. I don't know. No, it doesn't. It goes like three miles. It goes walking. It mounts. It's for some reason it says it mounts fuzzy logic control missile launcher.

I don't understand any of that. And that the missile launcher is actually a missile production facility built inside the leg. Oh, so he's got again, like someone thought, how is he going to get more missiles? You know what? Missiles. You can't just give missiles to a baby.

I mean, if I was selling missiles, a baby's the last person, I would sell it to a mummy before I would sell missiles to a baby. Yeah, that's just irresponsible. That's why the baby has to build his own missiles. Of course. I just like that we rounded this out by giving everybody special foot and leg wear every single character.

Just to sort of explain away something. Internally, I call this Luminean logic. Let me explain that. There's this old Superman cartoon from the 60s and Lex Luthor once pulled down these monsters called Lumineans from space and they come out and they're like, we are the Lumineans. We are made of laser light.

We vaporize anything we touch except with the soles of our feet. And I thought that was such a funny like add-on to explain, oh, shit, these guys would fall straight through the floor. They're like, no, no, check this out. Except the soles of their feet. It feels like this is very Luminean logic to be like.

They thought about it when the art was done, but not the work. So they were like, okay. Which is what happened with, I assume, all of Captain Commando. They asked for this and they showed up with this fucking crazy art and they're like, all right, I'm going home. Like what?

No, come on. You have to. All right. Well, what happened to his fucking chimpanzee? There's no chimpanzee in this. Oh my God. That baby tore it up and turned it into missiles. You got to feed that missile creator.

That's what it takes. It takes chimps for fuel. I think you made a great choice. Thank you for your best game. I played through Captain Commando at least a couple of times. I really love it. For my best choice, I picked the combat tribes, the combat

tribes. I'm not sure how to say it. It's got to be combat tribes. It's got to be combat tribes. That's what me and my brother always called it. It's a technos game. This was what they made after a double dragon. And it's got three guys in it.

It's got Berzerker. He's the guy with guile hair. He has blitz. He's the one with the ponytail. And there's a guy named Bulova. He was the black one. I think that's some kind of a weird axe. I looked it up for this and I got, there's a watch called

that. And I think they named it after the axe. Anyway, they also each wear a single color jumpsuit. So you can tell them apart if you're hair blind. I think there's supposed to be cyborgs. Fantastic. That's the best kind of world building. It's where it's maybe sort of implied their cyborgs or.

I think maybe on the super Nintendo, they might have said they were cyborgs. I don't know why I think they're cyborgs, but they're two feet taller than every enemy in the game. They're just complete monsters. It's always open to your interpretation. Yes. But it's technos.

They did river city ransom. They did double dragon. So they have the guys move pretty fast. Everything feels really nice. They have a run ability, which is something technos usually put in their games. They also did wwf superstars, which is my all time favorite arcade game.

Anyway, they, they're really good at squeezing. Yeah. That's the one rebel is training to be an absolute master on. She's good at honky tonk. From a young age. I, uh, what I like about that a game, especially and with combat tribes is you only have two buttons, but they can fit like 10 or 20 moves on there.

And, uh, combat tribes is really good about that where once you knock a guy down in combat tribes, you can pick him up and giant swing him. You can knee drop him on the back. You can sit on him and smash his face into the mat. You can just pick him up and then throw him into his friends. Yeah.

It's that double dragon shit. That river city ransom shit where you just got a really meaty combat system. And to that point, too, I think this is technically the fourth double dragon. I think this was like started to be a double dragon game. And then they went a different route. Yeah. This will never fit in the airtight plot of the double dragon universe.

I can't see Bimi and Jimmy doing this, but Bimi and Jimmy. Lova. I think, um, what happened was double dragon three got passed off to another developer and that was a shit show. And so then that they didn't want to make double dragon four because that IP was kind of dead at the time. I think I,

because it will acknowledge double dragon three. Yeah, that's a, that was a real mess. Uh, but yeah, but you're right. It's, it's really robust system. It's like, uh, at the end of river city ransom, when your guy has like all the moves, uh, but better than river city ransom in that, uh, here's a critique on river city ransom.

It's going to sound crazy, but that's not a perfect game. Uh, most of the time when you punch the guy in river city ransom, if they hit the ground, they're dead. So all the stuff you had that like fucked with guys in the ground was totally useless. Like there's a million moves in that game to mess with someone after you've knocked them down, but nobody lives long enough for you to use them. Whereas combat tribes, they're like really durable. Like they can't fight for shit, but like you can knock them down several times

and then mess with them there. Oh yeah. That's the best. Cause you know, there was never like a guide that told you anything about the game. It was only fucking around. Like you would, you would play that game in the arcade for like two straight years and you would still find a new move and be like, what the fuck is this? How did I do that?

I'm nuts. I've got to spend $20 trying to figure out how I did that. Uh, I really liked it. Like you could grab two guys at once and smash their heads together. It had like a really satisfying heft to everything. You'd punch a guy and he'd get knocked back and topple into his friends and you'd shake like the whole crew. Uh, and that was really unusual.

Like some fighting games, you'd punch one guy and the other guys just didn't take that punch. Or in like final fight, you'd punch like every guy would react to that single punch. It didn't feel like you're fighting a crowd so much as like a bunch of sprites. Whereas this just really felt like you were plowing into a bunch of real dudes. Uh, I think the theme is perfect. You start, uh, against a biker gang and then you kill a carnival with juggling clowns, which I love. Got to have the circus level. Carnival also had jugglers.

Everybody on circuses were a big dangerous place in the 90s. Nobody realizes this. I feel like everyone worked backwards from setting and what you could fight in that setting. So someone's like carnival and they'd have the whiteboard out there like, what could you fight at a carnival? And someone's like, oh hell yeah, you could fight jugglers, clowns, a carnival. It's like, yes, every, every single one of the games I brought has a circus level. The next level, there's a group I liked called the slash skate screamers.

It was just a 700 person roller hockey team operating out of a pinball arcade. And then then you move on to a, to a stadium and you fight the stadium barbarians. Who's just random dirtbags and their Native American mascot. And that's my favorite kind of idea. So maniac sat down and thought, what kind of enemies would you face at a stadium? And they're like, I don't know, peanut vendors. No, no, no, the goddamn Cleveland Indian. That's just there.

But he's also, it's going to sound weird. He's a little sexy. Like he's got this little loincloth on and these like buff legs. And you're like, okay, like he'll kick and like half his butt cheek will come out. And I'm like, I think, I think this is for the ladies or the fellas, whatever. I think Bolova, he was into it. Or for the children just learning about life. If you want to know what a taint look like.

Just educational experiences for children. The last level, you fight a group called the slaughter troops. Another great name. They're a paramilitary organization and they have their own skyscraper. So there's an elevator part, which is another very important part along with circuses. You've got to have an elevator fight. Speaking of, if you guys did not pick games that have elevator fights,

you can get the fuck out right now. Let's make that clear. I can't remember if they all had it. Some definitely have elevator fights. Captain commando for sure has a lift sequence. Yeah, they have a lift sequence. I'm trying to remember. It might be the only one.

It might be the only one that has an elevator fight. So I guess I lose. I guess I just lost. Well, here's another thing I like in fighting games that they don't do all the time, but I love it when they do is a boss run or a boss rush. I guess you call it. So you get to the last level and you fight all the bosses again, which in this game are a fat biker, Karnav from the hit game Karnav,

the Indian mascot who was weirdly sexy and the evil military commander with cyber bayonet hands. Great. No notes. Fantastic enemy. One of these things is just doesn't get along as well in the break room behind the scenes. You might have noticed I didn't say anything about the plot of comic

tribes because they don't. I'm not sure there is one. But here at the end, there's a twist because there's like an evil businessman and you're obviously told to have a twist without a plot. He's like, I'm the main bad guy, but then he dies. And then this girl who you've never seen before gets out of a limo and she's like, I'm the actual main bad guy. No words.

Like there's no text. It's just like this story is told with murder alone. She gets out. She's just a lady with electric powers. You beat her to death. Leave her for dead. And then the comic tribes disappear. And this is explicitly stated.

Like they're just gone. They disappear. And the narrator promises they will return if the shadow of violence again falls on the city, which is beautiful and poetic. And it's just like these guys showed up tattooed over my heart. Yeah. So actually to back up your thing about cyborgs, I remember in the original, I think the SNES version, I found the original ad for it because it's this comic book ad.

And it confirms that the main boss of the game, who is Martha splatter head of the Connecticut, Connecticut splatter. So she, it's confirmed that she's a cyborg in that because in the SNES version, when she is right before she comes out to fight you, she says, it is only you that can stop my destructive cyborg acts, which is, I don't know. Three rules only a cyborg can stop a cyborg. Yeah. It's maybe a really unwise thing to say to somebody that you're about to fight when

you lose that fight in your mind before you lose it, you know, out on the street. It's kind of a big boss and a naked snake. I guess there was the, you know, only he could stop her, I guess. I really don't know. I think it, and also if you look at some deep metal gear lore is why one weakness, I always lose the confusion from a conversation when you bring up metal gear. Let me clear this thing up. It's sort of like in metal gear.

No, no, no, no, no, no. This is just going to make things more confusing. And also clearly, they also just straight up stole Jack Nicholson's Joker from the 89 Batman movie for the ad with no apology, but they do also have clowns for Brockway's circus. So yeah, they cover all the faces here. All the way. We've got circus.

We've got elevator fight. I don't think there's a train fight in combat. Which is another important element of these games. Got a train fight in Captain Commander. Hell yes. So Rusty, what did you bring for your, your best on ironic? So we were talking about meme stuff earlier. And to me, this game is the, the system seller for a, for main, which is free, of course.

So it's okay. Right. So aliens versus predator by cap. Oh yeah. To me, this is like, this was the reason why I downloaded meme to begin with this because like this X men, Simpsons had never come home, but this one, it's, it's, it's also never come home officially in any format. Like a couple of years ago, Simpsons and X men were on the PlayStation three, I believe

aliens versus predator only came out in that weird arcade stick that's shaped like the word Capcom from a few years back. I don't remember it at all. That sounds like the worst idea I've ever heard. Yeah. It's, let me get out the Capcom stick and play my games. But the, the funny thing is too, because we were talking about the bootleg consoles earlier, those same people apparently got the same mold from whoever makes this Capcom stick.

So you'll see something that's got like SNK characters all over it that spells out the word Capcom, which is a weird, like, I don't know. Yeah. So, but yeah, aliens versus predator to me, when I was a kid, I remember reading the dark heroes comics and seeing aliens versus predator there. And then in predator two, you saw the alien skull on the, in the, in the ship. Oh, this is going to happen. And we activated the imaginations of a thousand nerves.

That was, that was our cinematic universe. That was beyond Nick Fury. That was just, that was just super awesome. And so eventually we got this game, which I think to me is the one true payoff to the concept because the movies and some of the, most of their games I think don't really live to the promise of it. But yeah, I can do excellent depth of combat system. Like it's every, you guys have more notes on the stuff.

I didn't really want to break everybody down, but I can do it. I can't help it. The predator has predator stuff. Yeah. Everybody feels really different of all the games that we brought, like everybody in combat tribes is more or less the same captain commander. There's some variety, but like aliens versus predator, all those guys play super different. Yeah.

It has that downstab that is just fucking from heaven. Like, I don't know. This is a hot tip for that game. When you get to the first boss, you can just bounce in that dude's head for the whole fight with Kurosawa. That's my hot aliens versus predator tip. You're on a first name basis with all the characters that we brought. You also have Dutch from the original predator, but he's got a cyborg arm now, which is just

like, okay, that's perfect. Everybody cyborgs. It's just implied. It's just implied, even if it's not specified. That baby in that robot was a cyborg, like the baby himself. It's crazy. But you also have the necessary lift sequence. You've got the bonus stage that becomes a running gun just to break up the action.

There's not much else I can really say about it. If you haven't played this game, steal it. Please. It was also a payoff because the movies came when we were all adults that had been teased by all of this stuff. This was our only approach to it as still somewhat children. Right. I was so excited to see Wayland Utani mentioned.

I'm like, oh, I know who that is. Now I'm just like, whatever, nerd. Yeah, canonically, this was our Avengers. I like it. It does a fighting game thing. I like where you're already just an overpowered god and they'll drop a weapon for you. You can already shoot lasers and throw your Predator Frisbee. But what if your lasers were 40% better?

You can pick up this gun. Go ahead. You don't need it, but it's here. And you bash people over the head with it. Yeah. At the end of the game, also, it fulfills the kind of, yeah, we were cool now, but next time we'll meet as enemies. The Predator is saying, oh, no, we're going to hunt you guys next time.

So it's set up a sequel that could have been. Oh man. So yeah, again, this is something like if I see it in arcade, I will, you know, our barcade or whatever, I will absolutely spend plenty of time. It's my happy place. I love this more than any other fighting game. Again, part of it probably is the fact that it never came home officially. There's never been a proper port, but that makes it unique and special to me.

It's a great choice. It was in my top five for sure. We sorted that out. Yeah. I was telling Brockway that we were fighting over it when we were first talking about this once we're bringing. I was like, me and Rusty, we're two minutes into this fucking email. We're already fighting about the Predator.

This was designed to make us fight. It's true. This was if you want to start a fight amongst nerds, like if you ever need some sort of distraction at a comic con for like a heist, this is what you do. You're like, OK, nobody, no overlap. Everybody pick your top three beat them up games and just a beat them up game. Yeah, we turn the friendly fire back off for the podcast. We're going to go smooth and not injure each other.

Do you want to go first for best ironic, Rusty? OK. Yeah. Well, thank you. So my insane ironic, just oddball choice is a game called Night Slashers by Data East. I'm very familiar. Oh, man. I love this game.

So to me, like Data East as a company, I kind of describe them as the canon film group of video games because they're very schlocky. Their stuff is just kind of real basic 80s VHS stuff. But when it works, it absolutely works. And this one is sort of like like a half step between Splatterhouse and Dead Rising, if that makes sense. But yeah, like the it really embraces the the horror aspect to you. Like it's super bloody for the time frame it came out.

I can honestly say I don't think I've seen this in the arcades. Yeah, I was going to say this even in arcades because I looked it up. I never played it, but I looked it up after you showed me. I was like, this looks like it rules. Yeah. I remember. I would have. In a weird way.

It's almost insane. This game isn't more popular because this is like this totally appeals to like, you know, the Sam Raimi horror fans, the splat, you know, the over the top. I believe I saw Ash in one of the screenshots. Like actual ash. There may have been. I don't know if it was playable character or an enemy or something, but there was somebody that looked impossibly not prosecutably ash, but was clearly ash.

There's one guy who's like he's they didn't want to do like a typical hockey mask type enemy, whatever, like a Jason type. So it's it's weird though, because like the guys that they have running around with the hockey mask all have like these kind of like green generic face mask and end up looking like Leslie Vernon. If you've ever seen that horror movie. Thanks. Yeah.

It's one of my favorites. It kind of looks like a prototype Leslie Vernon. So they get in my head. I'm like, that's who that is. But yeah, the funny thing is video. Okay. There you go. So the the funny thing to see is like two of the characters are pretty boilerplate.

There's Christopher, who is like if Richter Belmont, what was a major D. Okay. That's basic. Of course. Just a very. You expect. Okay. I expect to get a fancy guy.

He's a major D. A miserable bag of secrets. There's a Honghua, who is the the girl who get this isn't as strong, but she's fast. So that's a normal way to explore the differences between the sexes. You know, women be shopping and faster, I guess. Oh, she likes shopping too. That's great personality. That should be your ending.

The main character who like really stands out to I don't think I've ever picked anybody else have given the choice is Jake Thomas, who looks like if Rob Liefel went back in time and was created Captain America from jump. He's got this lot. Yeah, he's got this real shaggy 80s rocker hair. His back actually has Captain America stripes, but it's not continued on the front. He also has cyborg arms. His according to the game's attract mode screen, he's called the psychic cyborg.

But to my knowledge, he has no psychic power. He's a list of cyborg powers. Yeah, well, he's got cyborg arms. So he's got that. I'm not sure if he's got like, you know, if he can make his own missiles. So I don't know that he's in the same category as baby. I see that's maybe a good world building you need that you're missing. Yeah.

How does this care if a computer? He's got a flag on his back. So when he walks away from you, you know who kicked your ass. But he's he just is a very violent weirdo and he makes the game for me. I think so. Yeah, that's Night Slashers by Data East. It's very good. Do you know Tecmo Knight?

Have you played Tecmo Knight? I think that was PSP wasn't it? I think it was RK. I don't know if they ever adapted it for home, but it was like this RK game that was like wildly violent. It opened up with like a guy getting dismembered by a tiger monster. And then a woman getting stabbed directly in the head. It like cut the black like right before it went in, but it's like Jesus Christ. And then I played a little black tiger guy who wrote on a Native American who could turn into a tiger or a dragon.

Wait, wait, what? Hold on. Say that again. So you wrote on the shoulders. You wrote on the shoulders of a Native American guy. So that was the right order of things. Yes. Okay.

And then the Native American man could turn into a tiger. And if you were lucky, you would get a head from one of the guys you killed and that would let you turn into a dragon. That was very rare. And you were totally invincible. And you killed these Dr. Mow creatures that dropped bloody heads when you defeated them. And that's how you got like your points in your power up. You felt like a giant gorilla many times, but like where you'd punch his hands to death. And it's, you know, you can picture that.

And you didn't bring this one, huh? That's why it's fresh in my mind because I was like, God, should I bring this Tecmo night game? It's also called Wild Fang. So if you are looking at, you are looking it up because I was like, I think I know what you're talking about. Once I was like, Saul's Wild Fang. Oh yeah, that's that one. So yeah. Yeah.

I think it's on me as well. So I should mention somebody brainstorming and then like not willing to admit that they were wrong. Did you say that backwards? No, he rides on the Native American. I'm committed now. I'm doing this. And so I should say to you that like, I'm not sure if it is as well, but I'm actually Native American. So if we need to have rides later, if you guys, I mean, I'm not sure if I can, I can probably support Brockway.

It's a cultural thing. You can give us permission to describe some of these things. I think it's best if he just does it, like just send him what it is. You could not have had a better guest. So much Native American content. I did not expect it. I didn't know that. You know, our buddy Alex always honors the Native people who lived on the zip codes when we do his podcast.

And we always bring the beat them up games that have problematic depictions of Native American. We do not do our part. It's how we honor in our own way. I mean, honestly, this was, these are all from the nineties. We should have expected this much Native American content. That's true. That's true. Yeah, it was, it's one of those words.

I kind of look back at it and just, it's, it's hard to get mad at, you know, but like, because you don't understand what the hell they're fucking talking about. I can't look at, I can't look at teahawk and get upset. It's just kind of like, yeah, that's pretty deep. I guess we've got like a big, strong guy. You know, it's, he's not, he's not running to casino. Like there's so many stereotypes you could go for, but like, you know, you know, having looked at sexy one in combat tribes, that's fine.

That's good. That's a good representation. I agree. I agree. I feel like they meant it in a good way. Like you look back and it's like offensive stereotypes, but like at the time they're just like, no, if we need a guy to be super tough, we, we are like, know how to mystically track things or listen for horse. If we need a guy that can, that can anamorph into a hawk, we know what ethnicity we're looking for.

Yeah. Yeah. If I like, if I like, if I like metamorph, like transform into like a panda, that would be kind of weird. I agree. Like you need to be a regional, a regional like Northwest animal. Yeah. You have to see the animal to change into it.

I know about Native Americans. I've had some Native American friends. I grew up next to a reservation. There you go. And no pandas. Not a single one. Yep. We're learning.

We're teaching everyone a lot today. What about, what about Rusty's culture? Well, hey, speaking of culture, my next game for best ironic is called Growl. And this is the story of two Indiana Joneses and two Lorenzo Lamases saving animals from turn of the century poachers. They're called the Ranger Corps and they do not stick to the turn of the century when it comes to the weapons. Cause it opens with them drinking at a bar and they get a phone call from, I don't know,

I guess the president of animals and they're like, we don't actually, we don't actually hear what the president of animals says. So the good guys say, what? I have this quote written down says, what understand, we will not fail to defeat them. And then a grenade flies into the room and explodes all four barrels in the bar. And each of those barrels has a rocket launcher in it. And I don't mean like a single shot RPG, like multi shot missile launchers. And most games lucky, they'll give you a knife or a pipe every seven hams.

This game just fucking drops guns and bazookas from the sky. So also you're constantly rescuing animals that come fight for you and every enemy is programmed to like hang back and pull grenades out of their pockets real slowly. So it's just the easiest game. It's like specifically designed to let me spend an entire day of the day of the bowling alley with one quarter. So I love it for that reason. Just fucking rampaging and having the best time of your life.

And trying to explain, because my favorite part of these was when you go to like a bowling alley across town or in like a different town on vacation. And then you have to try to explain to your friends what this game was and nobody fucking believes you. Yeah. You all get rocket launchers and the animals fight for you. Yeah. Okay.

Sure. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Whatever. But it's not like great gameplay wise.

It's a little clumsy, but it's super high effort clumsy. There's so many moves and so many weapons and the screen is always crawling with enemies that just have no chance against you. They don't lean too hard on the Indiana Jones thing. Like there's a lot of pretty awesome original ideas. The first boss is a giant guy in football pads in a samurai helmet with a bandolier of lit dynamite. And that just completely rules.

There's a time limit for this fight, but it's only for me. Right. So he comes in with a pickup truck that he throws at you. And when you kill him, you guys probably know this or predicted it, but he explodes and then gets up and you have to kill him again. So he's wearing double explosion dynamite, but he can only survive one of those explosions. It's the perfect enemy. The next boss is just a guy with the bag on his head.

We throw his running clothes line. So like not every idea is super inspired, but that being said, when you beat that guy, you get an elephant who just casually tramples every enemy on the next level. So you just get a free level in this game where an elephant takes care of it. The elephant rampage as Rusty mentioned. Try to keep up with the murderous elephant rampage. And it's funny too. Cause when the tank shows up, you're just like, I know what this means.

This is not the first time I punched a tank to death. But if the guy in the game is like, Oh no, I can't punch a tank. Like they establish. I know you think you could punch this tank, but no, you're dead. And then the elephant head butts, it explodes it. And that's fantastic. There's a sloppy little jumping puzzle through a lava cave, which should be a crime, but you do see it every now and then I think double dragon might be responsible for this.

So fuck you. Perfect game. Double dragon for, for doing this. That's, that's because they need like they did some play testing and the original version of this game. And they were like, God, we're going to go fucking bankrupt. Nobody needs more than a quarter for this. Yeah.

We need to, we need to find a way to make some money. Yeah. This is what it is. Rusty, a quick question. How many times do you think you died falling in that stupid little river in double dragon? Oh my Lord. I, uh, like that's such an imprecise jump. Yes.

That I, yeah, just like, I started having flashbacks the second you mentioned that. That's, that is, that's. There's a way past the river. Cause you would always, cause like when, when every in double dragon likes like going back to the technos thing, they always have like certain like poses they would go to in double dragon when like, it almost like he's curling up to go to sleep. Yes. Whenever he dies.

Yeah. And I, yeah. Yeah. I thought, I thought it was like a, an artistic symbolic ending to the game. Like you reach the river and river to like a baby and disappear in the water. I wrote an essay about it. Swaddle dragon. No, I, I think there's a way to get past it.

Uh, you need to walk like nine pixels into the water and then you can jump and you, the horizontal distance of that double dragon jump was like maybe two pixels. Like, you basically look straight up and straight down. That was the, that was the only realistic jump in video games. That's exactly how I would jump. Like if you asked me right now, do a jump, it would be exactly that frame for frame. Yeah. And I see if you had captain commando's boots though.

And it was like. I need special boots that we need to have a full paragraph explaining. I think captain commando really like is answering a lot more questions, answer more questions for the beat them up genre than I've ever, we've thought before. Right. But in its wiki how, or in its Wikipedia page alone, not at all in the game. I don't know how they came up with this.

I have no idea where this material came from. It could just be one excellent liar. It could be captain commando being like, I see. I thought about this. People keep saying. Does growl have a lift sequence shown? I'm trying, I'm trying to recall it. Um, no, it has a train sequence, but no lift set by your own standards.

Yeah. No, I need to get the fuck out of them. I apologize. Uh, but the jump in growl is impressive. Like that dude has about a seven foot vertical. Uh, terrible jumping attacks, but like he gets up for them. Uh, I anyway, it's so fun. It has like a real story in a genre where I think we all agreed does not require

them. Uh, like I don't know what happened in combat tribes. I neither do the makers of combat tribes. And by the end of growl, you have, you have like long, meaningful relationships and adventures with elephant, several birds. And, uh, and it still has surprises. The main bad guys, a hunchback magician, I think remastered magic in this game. He's got like a clown face and a maroon top hat.

Black tuxedo. Counts as a circus level. Drives the tank yet. Those count as a circus level. And when you kill him, his body twitches and it spits out a 30 foot warm. I wrote down the quote here. It says, this is the final boss, controlling evil hunters. And then it spends the whole fight rooted to the face down corpse of the Wolverine

tuxedo guy. And when you, when you kill him, he explodes and then a gate opens, which held 50 gorillas, eagles, deer elephants, but not in a scary way. They love you. It is like a happiness rampage. And then the game says harmony between man and nature has been restored. And that's what it says word for word. Like you basically killed the evil worm that made it so we couldn't live side by

side with gorillas. And that's the plot of growl. And now everybody gets one gorilla, one gorilla piece. It's your, it's your group. It's your personal gorilla, like a personal person. Anyone could have hoped for. Yes. Your personal pizza gorilla.

I love that it has a message that's not say no to drugs. That's like every other, every, if they have a story at the end, it's, and you beat drugs. Good job. Everyone said yes to drugs. When they were making that game, there was a lot of yes to drugs. Say no to drugs. Say yes to free gorillas.

Yeah, that's a shirt. That's, that's my whole bid on growl. What was your ironic choice? I brought guardians load, which I wrote, wrote for the site. I think during our first week, early days, for sure. That was one of those, uh, early ones we did on the site where I just could not believe how much you were pumping out. Like we're both working pretty hard, but like, you're like, yeah, we're going to do daily

updates. And I'm going to write 4,800 words on guardians of the hood with screenshots and gifs. And I was like, Jesus Christ, we're going to kill ourselves. That was, that was the one time I got to do that to you. Yes. Fresh off of my firing from cracked in full panic mode. I'm going to, I'm going to one up Sean baby in terms of work ethic this one time and then never again.

You have, you have clapped back every single week with 5,000 words about, about a joke book about Barbies or something. It's maybe that's true. Your revenge has complete, sir. Just, just let me, let me rest. I haven't been destroyed by it. Uh, the guardians of the hood, uh, had most notable because it had digitized sprites like, uh, like mortal combat or pit fight.

I think it might have been that by the same people that did pit fighter. Yeah. What a golden age for just shit. Just thought we could do like shit. Like pick the pixel art ruled and everybody was happy with it. And they're like, no, no, no, we can do the fucking worst motion capture you've ever seen. We can do full video, uh, one frame per second and you will not see what it is, but we can do it.

Right. Amazing. And I did write down the story for guardians of the hood. Uh, it is the gangs have gotten worse. It's your turf and no one can stop the gangs, but you. That's the story. That is the story of guardians of the hood implied. You are a stiff bodybuilder with a one frame of punch animation.

Yeah. Everybody is just very, like that was a side effect of, of having these guys be digitized, but no, no, like motion capture is that we have three pictures of them. And so even by video game standards, everybody looks like their, their true battle is with arthritis. I just, I got to be careful guys. Implied in the story is that you guys are gym buddies. This is implied by the character introductions, which are really super fucking grainy crime

videos of, of four people doing an exercise. So they're all, they're all just gym buddies that work out together and might as well fight crime together. I guess the implication, like you're all strong. You work out. It's kind of a waste of the muscles if you don't guard your hood, right? It's, it's true. I mean, you have a moral responsibility to use your muscles against drugs.

I'm pretty sure that's how this goes. Probably a drug gang. Right. Yeah. I just assume anytime they say we're fighting gangs, it's really like an anti-drug. They're going to have the FBI like drug notification on that game and be like, yeah, see, see, we got that subsidy or whatever. I'm trying to make William Sessions happy.

Oh yeah, that guy's name. He signed all those videos. Yeah. I forgot about his name until the second you said it. Oh yeah. Maybe the gangs were like kid detective agencies or something. They're like the honeycomb gang. That would be kind of a fun twist.

Our characters are Connor, who is a superb fighter trained in boxing and karate. And he does push-ups. That's how we meet him. Chief, who is my favorite character, who is the big guy, former wrestler, built like a truck and out for revenge. Never specified what for. Just a monster of a man who wants revenge, I guess on society. I guess on the society not built for his huge body. Now he's named chief.

Does that refer to his heritage? I guess I'm going to assume. I'm just going to assume that was generally the kind of awareness you would approach with a Native American character. He would just name the chief and be like, hey, you get it. Yeah. It's not really his place in the tribe, but like it's one of the words we know regarding them. And Javier was a top kickboxer endowed with speed and agility. Now I seem to remember this was like not a main stereotype, but I do remember if they had like a playable Latino, Latino character.

They would be fast. I don't know why that was our racial stereotype. It's probably because the speedy Gonzales maybe? Yeah, by the same speedy Gonzales. Yeah, you're right. There are some bad guesses. Let's try to come up with some stereotypes. Let's try to figure out what they were thinking.

Not us. Not us, of course. And then I read all of these just so I could read the one woman's introduction. Tanya, who was riding a bicycle and they picked the one frame that looks like she's having a really fucking hard time doing it. She's just bent over an exhaustion. Like her shoulders are all rounded or heads down. And it's like a girly 10 speed. It's not on a hill.

It's just on flat ground. She looks like she's trying her best to do some therapy to recover from like a spinal injury. And her description, everybody else got former wrestler, but like a truck. She got statuesque, cat tall, fast and beautiful. You have to bring it up. I mean, if it's a lady, is she hot or not? We need no further details. And she's cat tall.

Cat tall is exactly how I would describe someone who's nine to 10 inches tall. I'm actually looking at the intro right now. I do see Chief's little animation there. It's vaguely kind of like a POV porn. Yeah, all of these have the graininess of them lends itself to either some sort of unspeakable crime or pornography or probably both. I mean, I imagine both. It's like, I just looked up like a bonus web ring or something and I'm getting gifs I shouldn't see. And of course, this was from that one, that one era I want to say is about three years, late 80s into early 90s.

When we thought a really cool, scary bad guy would be Michael Jackson, dressed like Bugs Bunny, dressed like Al Capone. I'm not sure I remember exactly what you're talking about. It does sound very scary. It was after like smooth criminal and we were like, yeah, that's what a real tough guy looks like. So anyway, you need to know that for a reason we will get to. Okay. And Michael Jackson, bad guy says, I'm taking over this crummy town and then points it to you as if in the middle of a Michael Jackson kick dance move. And I guess that's crime.

I guess that's the face of crime. I'm going to put a stop to it with my gym buddies. Now, some games get into problems in like the later levels, like they start you off and it's early. It's early enough in the game, like you're not out of ideas. You can just be like, okay, use us on the streets. You're fighting, you know, tough guys or whatever. And then as they get more and more desperate for different enemy types, they can reveal some like racial stereotypes. The first level is called beat the dreads beat the dreads who are of course Jamaicans.

Oh, everybody gets a name, of course. The names are things like Nigel and Toots. Toots is a traditional Jamaican name. You beat the shit out of Nigel and Toots, the Jamaicans. Nigel's more Haitian, but like, you know, the Trinidadian. So the very first level you're out there beating up just exclusively black people. Great, great look. And they have that really shitty digitized dialogue where they say shit like,

and we be jamming. Actual quotes. I'm not making those up. I wouldn't. I'm not brave enough to risk that. I'm Mr. Levin and Shaba. I don't know about that one. It's the kind of basic racism where you're like, you maybe heard of Jamaicans once,

but you're not willing to hear anymore. She's just, yeah, I get it. All right. I know what a Jamaican is. And then later, it kind of works in the later levels. Later levels are punk rockers and big skinheads and girls in neon mohawks. The Sean baby enemy as we have discussed. Sassy with really fast quick punches and first you grab a chain.

All of your main personality. Personality traits. Yes. Their game is good. Their gang is called the Shavers, which I think they meant like they shave their head. Can we use the second pass? Yeah. Can we change?

The first draft with the shaved teens and they're like, no. People are going to get bad thoughts about teens. I like the shaving. Barely legal shaved teens. Are we good with this one? I mean, they're not technically committing crimes yet. So they are barely legal, right? You know who's deadlier than them, the people who shave them.

Let's have them be the gang, the Shavers. That's why you're the best. One of my favorite aspects of guardians of the hood. The acronym for that is goth, which is fantastic. Yeah. They made the like throwable usable items in the levels are all people. So they had like a homeless guy, like, of course, just drinking as homeless people do. And you could pick him up and throw him at enemies.

I found out in the first level, like this is how they introduce, a Jamaican guy walked up to a comically drinking hobo, picked him up over his head and whipped him across the screen. That's amazing. I knew I was into something special. 10 out of 10. There are others that are just civilians. One is there's a level with a lot of prostitutes.

Of course you can pick up and throw the prostitutes. Later you get to throw. What does she charge for that? I think that one's free just to like, I think it's kind of like testing melons. You know, like you test the durability of the prostitute. You're allowed to throw a sex worker. You have to see if she's right. You have to go through and hurl each one.

Get the weight and the handling of each prostitute down. It's not like a test drive. Later on you throw a businessman and his briefcase full of papers explodes on impact and it's all worth it. It's all just perfectly worth it at that moment. And this was the edgy game. This is like probably the edgiest game we've brought. Well, intentionally edgy game.

So they had a long level in a porno theater. And they showed two frames of a soft core porn of just like a sexy woman in a bra like turning to look at you over and over again on the screen in the background. Before a maniac runs in and throws her. Very close. Very close to what happens. The boss leaps out of the screen and just jumps like out of her face and into the theater just completely ruining it for everybody beating off.

Unless they're into big Jamaican men named JJ, which I mean, that's your business. In which case your dreams just came true really aggressively. I'm more of a toots guy. If you're to make a guy named Toots, send an email to the Dog Zone 9000. Now that's the soft core porn digitized frames that they made. It fucking haunts me because that means they hired a woman for this. I mean, because it's an actual digitized woman and scanned her and had her like do limited motion capturing and we're like, what's this for?

What's this for? You're going to be on a porno theater screen in a video game we're making. And this is 1991. You got you got to want to die to answer that job ad. You have to hate life at that point. She's like, so you're not going to kill me? What was the fucking point? I showed up here for a reason and I thought we were both clear.

You also did fight in a strip club. Same woman being paid to dance around for this so they could use two frames of her in the background of this scene while while your ethnic minority beats the holy shit out of other minorities in front of her. It's just it's all. I know this would have made any of these decisions today. But in 1991, this is no one in the room would have said, I think this is a bad idea. Right.

Like, especially if it was all pixel art and it's got that level of abstraction, but it seems like it's brought to a different level of clarity when you're scanning real people and being like, yeah, now we have this mob violence in front of this sad stripping woman in the background. Is this wrong? I feel like a little bit wrong. Again, I've not not 1991 today. It would be insane.

But but then but in 1991, it was fine. And so it does look like like just fucking madness. It does look like impossible that this exists. It's one of those games that takes you a long time to look at a screenshot because you're like, what the fuck am I am I looking at? What's wrong with this bit fighter game? Yeah, especially when enemies start stacking on top of people, but they're like digitized pictures of people.

It gets into like human centipede territory every time. And of course, the last level is a circus and it ends with you fighting in just an abstract clown's nightmare and just floating floating masks and laughing clown faces in a void, which none of them this has all been in just like a grimy city up to this point. So you just fell through the grimy city into into clown nightmare. And all of this while your personal trainer is just jump kicking what looks to be just Chinese people, like they're not specifically made up to be mean or anything like it looks like they're just, you know, maybe on their way to work or something.

It sounds like like a Gallagher act. Like just it's certainly references to his pattern. Some old prostitutes. Yeah, this is this is a Gallagher act. It's certainly his pattern that he gets in trouble for. And he's like, ah, it's just stage pattern. There's nothing to it. But I was just riffing it.

Anyway, this is where Michael Jackson, the final boss, they're laughing in the background the whole time. And then he strips down to reveal he was actually a woman and he's a dominatrix and he leaves forward and attacks you with his sex whip. And that is the final loss. Is she tough? It didn't look too bad. Just really like short range on that little tiny writer's crop.

And like some decent health like she can she can if you if you threw her, you'd be like, yeah, I'll take this one. Well, it's kind of like it's like you've kind of committed a secret hate crime. Like I hate when games build on you. We were like, oh, I've been beating up a man. Oh, it turns out it's a woman. Now I'm a violent criminal. Yeah, it does change things a little.

Yeah, it's kind of like with poison and final fight where it's just kind of like, yeah, this fight feels different now. There's I don't hmm. I'm not sure if I should be doing this right now. Maybe leave the backstory out. Yeah. It could have been a gorilla or you could have had anything. But this was another excuse to actually force a woman into dominatrix gear.

And then scan her for your quote unquote video game. Again, that casting call should have been a red flag. These two women are almost certainly not alive anymore. Yeah, we we don't know that they were ever seen again and have very good reasons to assume they were not the once you once you beat her to death. The ending just says congratulations. You saved the hood. And then it flashes it flashes to a newspaper with the headline. Teens take back hood.

Teens this whole time. I guess they were chief is not a teen. I call BS on that. Chief is a man. Chief is the guy who shows up to the gym and is like, hello, fellow teens. I mean, pushing pushing 45. Gee, I especially brought audience hood because of everything I just said and everything I haven't said about it. But because they had one good mechanic where when you beat the gang bosses, you could unlock them as playable as you as you.

Oh, that's pretty cool. Which was pretty cool back in the day. And then they had one fucking awful mechanic where it cut to a cut scene with just like a like a filthy landlord kind of looking guy in a sweater. And he says fight. And it pits you against your friend that you've been playing with. And only only the winner gets to continue for free and the loser's game is over and they have to pay to join again. Nice. Like a double dragon where you had to fight each other.

Double dragon set the precedent for so many terrible mechanics. I don't remember that mechanic. Was that after the river? It was the van. Okay. He saved Marion. She's like, all right, you guys know I can't date both of you. One of you has to die.

Okay. Well, this does it between every single level. You beat a level and you one of you loses. That's amazing. Automatically. Just God, such an aggressively. So predatory. Terrible, morally, morally repugnant.

I've run a morally repugnant beat them up. I'm sorry, guys. Well, it's very good. So there was a circus level. Was there a train sequence? I think there was a train yard, but I don't think he rode on a train. Not sure if we can count that. How about an elevator?

No, there was no elevator. So one out of three circus. Was there a treacherous jumping puzzle? No. Okay. But instead, which should count in its favor, but instead there was a special mechanic where one of you just automatically lost, which I think is like saying, fuck you.

I don't want to design a jumping puzzle. Yeah, that's a treacherous jumping puzzle without the jump. Yeah, that makes sense. So I think it's time to move on to the wild card around. For me, I brought best superhero game because I do love the beat them up genre and as like a comic book nerd kid, I felt very lucky because every comic book adaptation by default for many years was just beat them up. And once they got the formula right, they were all kind of pretty good.

So we got like good Batman, Spider-Man Turtles, X-Men, Superman, probably about 10 each of those that were all basically the same, but kind of. Okay. At least. And so with the caveat of how it's very hard work making video games, the nineties era superhero beat them ups were a golden age of easy mode game design. And so I had a lot to pick from.

So I guess my leading ones were the Capcom Punisher, which is basically Captain Commando with a different skin, but just so good. I think that's about as good as a fighting game can get. How did they explain the baby and the robot in that one? Did they reskin it? They made them from Universe 616, where all the babies are full size Nick Furries. And so that's just how they explain it.

It makes sense if you read the comic. There's a rich backstory. Yeah. You got a name. Yeah. But the game I went back to the most as a kid was Batman Returns. I think it was adapted by eight or nine different developers, depending on the system, because that's what we did back then.

But the one I'm talking about was Super Nintendo one by Konami, who normally I rate distant third of behind Capcom and Technos. But this Batman Returns game is so good. It's weirdly faithful to the movie. It has like a perfect cartoony gothic tone of the movie. All the enemies are pulled directly from the film. And a lot of the situations too, like when Batman shoots a grappling hook at that guy and he's like, you missed.

And then he pulls a chunk of concrete in the back of his head. Like they put that in the game. It probably took two months of programming and asset design and testing, but they did it. Like they were just dedicated to making the best Batman Returns experience. And you're just a one man army badass in most fighting games. But Batman is a fucking beast. Like he'll take clowns out with just his jabs and he'll grab a guy.

He could just carry him around. You throw him in the ground, throw him into the wall. He can wait until he finds a second guy and smash their heads together. He's just a full karate terrorist. And I do mention that I think I think I mentioned this in a Twitter conversation we had Rusty where we were the way to rate fighting game is the things you could do with a man after you grab them. Like it's got a good way to rate them.

And so there's a block that's kind of unique for a game like this. You can throw batterings. You could do a little cape slash to stun guys. He has a sort of a hang gliding crowdsurf attack that can sort of stun an entire crowd of people. There's even a bionic commando section, which they didn't have to put there, but it's completely awesome. Elevator section, of course.

There's a pretty bad driving sequence. And when I say pretty bad, I'm saying it would have been like Game of the Year in 1986. It's just they threw in an entire driving sequence for three minutes of gameplay. It's so crazy high effort. There is a train level. I'm trying to think of all the things we've established as staples.

Oh, also, if you remember, Batman returns the movie. I seem to remember them having the weaponized penguins. I don't remember if you fight the weaponized penguins in the background. Was that just my secret desire? There might have been in some adaptations, but not in the one I'm talking about, I think. I didn't play through the entire thing. Did they not launch their missiles at you somehow?

The final boss, you fight penguin. And he's kind of like Danny DeVito in the movie in that he has no chance against you. He's in this giant ducky that shoots missiles, but they're so easy to get out of the way of. And then after that, he gets out of the duck and he sort of waddles around after you, but he's a boss, but he's susceptible to all the same moves that you use against like the fucking cannon fodder.

So you can just walk up to him and grab him and just bash his little ass into anything you want. He has no chance. So anyway, that's all my notes on Batman Returns. I think that game is, I don't even know if it's underrated. I think it did okay. It's just one of those that just, I'm sure got lost in the mix when those games came out every two months, like Maximum Carnage and Death and Return

of Superman. Like every superhero had just three or four of those a year. Well, it's kind of, but you're talking to like with, with beat-em-ups in that time period. Like I'm a big pinball fan too, but you think about it like pinball, like you just play one and you know how to play almost every single pinball game in existence. Same thing with beat-em-ups.

Like it's, it's, you know, here's your jump button. Here's your attack button. You hit them both for a desperation attack. And you know, double spinning lariat. You figure those out pretty quickly. So that's why they were so ubiquitous. I think that's why they were also so prone to madness is that you, if you had the framework there, you're like, how are we going to stand out?

And like, well, we're going to let the troubled janitor design all of our characters. And I've been writing down the shit he says for weeks. I think it's really compelling. It's real weird. Like in baby head. He's going to, uh, at the behest of the king of the animals. He's going to go on an adventure where, uh, where every, every barrel

contains a rocket launcher. Sold. Uh, Rusty, what did you bring for your, uh, wild card? So I'm, I'm going a little bit out of our 1980, 1980s, 1990s agreement. Um, so my choice, uh, for best other is best adaptation of a 1979 Walter Hill movie. And that's a fierce competitive category.

So to me, so the thing is, so yeah, I was to say, too, we, that's, we didn't mention, well, you know, Brockway could bring another game up, but I won't go there. But so, uh, with the warrior specifically that movie influenced so many beat em ups and video games in general. Yeah. Um, and 20 some odd years after the movie, rocks are decided we're going to make a giant love letter to the game.

And it's one of the best 3d beat em ups I've ever played. Like it, it really kind of gave me hope for the genre. Um, but it's, it's, it's a real strange thing too. That it given the, I mean, maybe like the start Lego Star Wars is the closest analog to it, where like the time between the movie's release and the actual game coming out. Um, I see. Yeah.

So, but that was like a special anniversary. There wasn't like a big, like, you know, big to do like, Hey, it's the blank. Like, they're like, no, we just love the warriors that we're going to make a game for. Yeah. That's what I was saying. Like I don't remember there being some sort of groundswell for like

where there's a reboot for the warriors coming out or the warriors that's, you know, coming up on fucking 25 years or whatever it was. Yeah. It was just, hey, you know what kicks ass. And then everybody was like, yeah, that does kick ass. And it also like went into depth, you know, talking about the lower of these games and all that too.

It really kind of like, whenever you saw the intro to the warriors and you saw those weird gangs, like here's this, uh, uh, the moon runners and here's this gang of like, uh, bebop singers, uh, and, and these guys who are dressed like elves or whatever, they let you like play as those guys and they've, the game starts three months before. The Gramercy Riffs next to the Van Copeland Rangers. I say, I'm not going to do the whole speech.

Oh, we were going to be quiet for it. I was, I was going with it. So if you can count suckers. Well, the funny thing is too, because I remember distinctly when each it just one of those oddball images that is with me for the rest of my life is in the preview for this in EGM, they rockstar had done a really loving painting of the leader of the orphans, the gang with like the green shirts, the real scrubs.

And it's, it's, he looks like a messed out David Schwimmer. Yeah. For sure. It's a really good way to describe it. And every time I watch the movie, you think he opens up with it? Well, it's so funny because he talks like so. He's, you know, he's, he couch out to them until mercy comes out.

And then he's all, get lost. That, that line always cracks me up. But, but anywho. So yeah, like they did like a really good job like translating the events of the movie into the game, the engine. Um, I don't know if it was modified to make bully, uh, because this came out a year before bully came out. There was a lot of kind of that, um,

ground and pounds MMA style, which nobody had really figured out in a beat them up context at that time. Um, plus there's an unlockable 2d version of the game. So you can play through the events of the, of the game in a kind of faux double dragon style. So yeah, it's pretty. I love it.

That was one of those genres that like, uh, like that 3d beat them up when once, like PS one era came out, people were like, okay, cool, let's take this beat them up and make it 3d. And it just fucking never worked. And then I did these giant bombers of a game. And like, I think fighting for the final, I think you could always kind of feel that they were like,

this should be easy. And then they went into it with that attitude and you can kind of feel like the sulking when they realized it's maybe not. You can just, you can just feel that lack of effort that, that begrudging lack of effort in there. I also love to, I like, I like when like in these kind of games or just games in general,

when you like during the credit sequence, you get to still play and shoot stuff up or whatever. So in this one, you play the event of the movie where it's, it's, it's the beach, Coney Island and it's playing in the city. And you're the riffs pounding the hell out of Luther's group. Yeah.

That's just awesome. Yeah, I love it. I remember that game also had like all that rock star crap where they just put really boring shit in the game. And like there's like spray painting, like graffiti and you'd have to do these like mini games. There's like God, I've goddamn spray painting graffiti mini game. Unscrewing the car stereo and all that.

Right. Right. Like why, why bother guys? Like in Grand Theft Auto, how it stopped to do yoga or you could play darts, like a super authentic darts simulator. Like, did anybody do that outside of where they were absolutely

required that you do that? So I don't think I played a single one one time outside of the mission where they made me do it the one time. And I was like, fuck. Well, the weird thing is too, because I'm a big fan of the, the Yakuza series. And it's very similar to that where the,

the main entries are all basically just a beat them up. But then you have all the side stories, the melodrama. And then you also have entire sub stories about playing darts or bowling or winning a chicken or, or whatever. And that's why I like those games. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like that that's a net loss when you have a spray painting mini game in your, in your game. Would you bring Brockway for your wild guard? I brought DJ boy. Oh, shit. I've, like, yeah, everybody knows DJ boy.

I do actually know DJ. Oh, you know, Captain Commander, you know DJ boy. I mean, come on. DJ boy is all you need to, I love that name because it's all you need to know about a character in 1989. They call him DJ boy. You're like, I know how he dresses and what he's into and

the way that he talks and the game's like, no, you don't cause it stands for Donald J bull. Just an immediate hard left turn from DJ boy. And the whole game was based, well, let's get, I'll say it's something nice about it first. It looks great. I love the sprite style of that.

Even if it's a little strange, like it's not full river city ransom sort of big head style, but it's also not final fight, just, you know, comic book style. It's cartoony. It's like middle ground where they're, everybody's a hydrocephalac. Like everybody's just,

just got a head that's like a little too big to be medically okay. Medical danger. But, but it, nothing else looked like it. And I gave it kind of a lot of personality. And the whole game was based on what Japan thought rap culture might be like in the US,

which chiefly meant everybody roller skates. As, as the hip hop culture was, if you remember 1989, every single person, every single black person, at least I know it was all in roller skates all the time. Very common. And so the whole game,

run DMC songs about roller skating. They, they bust through the, when Aerosmith bust through the wall into their roller rink. And then, yeah. And then just, they get the absolute shit beat out of them.

I love that. I would kind of love some Adidas that are rollerskates also, though, like run DMC style. Yeah. Early, early they invented run DMC, invented Heelys.

They're, they're run DMC Heely shows run in these DMC stations. So it's just such a weird bold stance to like say that and never like really justify it. They play, they play a big roller game in cigar tech city. It's how this is just right. But the whole game is on roller skates.

Like every, every part of the game and almost every character is on roller skates. And if somebody's not on roller skates, you know, they mean business. Like, wow,

this guy doesn't have to roller skate. He walks. He's one must be shit. She just got reels. So every, every level like scrolls by rapidly, like a big chase fight. And it just,

it gives it like this sort of sense of, of motion and urgency that was, it made it feel fresh. Like it's a gimmick for sure, but it made it feel fresh. Plus like everything was very pro wrestling influence. So there's a lot of just drop kicks, but with roller skates and a lot of like suplexes,

but you're both still roller skating at like 30 miles an hour. Roller skate jump kick to be fucking like triple damage. Yeah. It rules. I had some good mechanics at the river city ransom like store. So you got power ups as sort of light RPG mechanics. I brought it as a wild card, not just because they think that a rap culture was entirely on

roller skates, which should be enough. And not because DJ Boy stands for Donald J. Boy, which should be enough, but because there was an OG Japanese version that I've never been able to find because it was deeply problematic and just removed from society, from history. And yet as,

as I have gone through in the research, I found it wasn't as bad as guarding into the hood, which, which never apologized. It could be. It did not end with we're sorry. This has been guardians of the hood as it, it rightfully should have. But no, DJ Boy had a recurring boss called big mama,

which was literally just the Mammy stereotype. And she had her big comical bloom, where is her apron? She was bare feet and she, her move was she farted at you to shoot like power farts, which, Wow. Yeah.

I don't think that's part of the stereotype. I don't think that's part of the stereotype. Related to racism. I think maybe it's a stereotype in Japan. I got a. When you, when you had mentioned this game, I thought about that moment.

I like recently, there's been a recent trend with like a lot of like Japanese artists have been like reinterpreting Tom and Jerry. Apparently Tom and Jerry was very popular. Way more popular than one that was over here. And thinking about that, I was like, Oh, that's where they probably got some of this.

Cause you think they got it from old Tom and Jerry. I'm not trying to like, you know, I'm not old blame America. Rusty shackles over here. That's fine. That's what we call you. Old trader shackles. But like,

every time I see certain images like that, I'm like, where did they get this idea? Oh, that's right. Cause I'm actually looking at the flyer for a DJ boy right now. And, Oh boy. That's not.

Yeah. It's very not good. There were a few other moments where it was like they had other, other ethnic stereotypes that were like, not great, but this was like a boss character. And she was a recurring boss character. She comes back in the boss rush and she comes back. Like you beat the last guy who's kind of a thrash and metal head kind of dude.

Just fine. But you beat him and then the game's not over for some reason. And big mom on the Mami stereotypes jumps back in the screen and appears in a ninja outfit. And now she's a ninja and like smoke bombs in and out attacking you for reasons that are never explained. They could not. I would guess based on context, based on Japanese racial stereotypes,

I guess. But then you kill her and the end, end screen plays. So she's effectively the last boss in the game and certainly shows up the most having that third. She is, she shows up more than the end boss. So this is the most recurring character in the game was this, this really wild stereotype. And they pulled it even back then they knew like this wasn't,

they released it and we look back and think, ah, at the time, like they knew immediately and pulled it. So it's gone. It's gone forever. And I wanted to write one of our earliest columns, like a follow up to Guardians of the Hood. Or I talked about DJ Boy compared like the two versions and stuff like that. And I can find the main version just fine.

And it's kind of fun. But it's not enough to talk about. But this like secret other version I could never find. So I'm using this time. If you found it, if you have a playable version, send it to me. This is my request for this really should be a legal game. And I'm probably under arrest.

Please send all the racist materials to rubber play. Hold on. Only as pertains to beat them up as we have established. I'm curious if the thrash metal guy, shout out my fellow thrashers out there, but I was curious if he was, if you look at the Japanese flyer, there's like a Michael Jackson site. I'm curious maybe if they swam, they swam them.

Oh, wait. No, I think he might have been the same. Maybe he was. And maybe he wasn't that Michael Jackson type in the Japanese version. I have not played it. So I wouldn't know. But definitely in the, in the materials I've seen, because some people do have screens from it and things.

He looks, you know, glam metal, thrash metal of the era. Okay. Yeah. It was, it of course has a circus, it has a circus level. So it's great. Clown, there's like clown mirrors that come to life. And then you punch them and they explode into smaller and smaller clown heads until the whole screen is just tiny clown heads hopping around you.

So very traumatizing. Pretty standard. You get power-ups from floating Garfields tied to balloons and you kick them out of the air and they give you power-ups. Yeah, you could assume that. And there's a, there's a great level where what looks like kind of a punky Brewster character throws exploding hot dogs at you from an old timey trolley. So that kind of counts as a train level.

All right. Yeah. And also after you, after you beat it, it has what I am going to consider the best and most generous ending of any of these games. And I would just like to, to read this work of art to you. And you're welcome for me doing this. Thank you in advance. Having just rescued Maria, the only one you have ever cared for,

you help her tightly in your arms. That's not me misspeaking. You help her tightly in your arms. Frightened that you may lose again. Evening swept over the cold barren city. Colors fading until soon, only a black silhouette could be seen. You whispered, I'm sorry that I didn't come sooner. Please don't cry.

And so as fate foretold together, you lived happily ever after. And that's the ending of DJ Boy, Donald J. Boy, everybody. Feels really wordy. It scrolls. It scrolls while you get a full scrolling screen. As a reminder, Guardians of the Hood ended with a headline that said, Teen Safe Hood. That's how punchy I need it to be. It's very hard to pick a winner, I think.

I'm not even sure we planned on picking a winner. But I think we've come up with a way to determine one. We're going to add up the number of train fights, elevator fights, and circuses. Yes. And maybe treacherous jumping puzzles. No, treacherous jumping puzzles take away. Okay.

You lose a point. Okay. So we're adding up train fights, elevator fights, and circuses. So let's take a moment to go through that for all of ours. Should I count multiple elephants as a circus in Growl? There is no circus scene, but there's so many. You can hear alongside monkeys and other things. Absolutely, yes.

Okay, yeah. All right, I got six total. Okay, so you had, let's go through them yet. How many train fights? Captain Commando, I had six total. I had, let's see, Captain Commando had all three, had a train fight, had a lift fight, and it had a circus level. DJ Boy had a train fight, had a circus level.

Had a train fight, and Guardians of the Hood only had the circus level. And you didn't lose any from treacherous jumping puzzles? No treacherous jumping puzzles. Oh, fantastic. Well, I had two train fights, one in Growl and one in Batman Returns. I had two elevator fights, one in Compa Tribes, and Batman Returns you fought on a window washer lift, so I'm going to count that. I had a circus in all of my games.

Batman Returns is crawling with circus people. Compa Tribes, there's a circus carnival? Is that, I'm not playing games. Carnival counts as a circus, right? Yeah. Our purposes? Yes. And then Growl had just a number of circus related like things.

So I had a total of seven. I lose two from treacherous jumping puzzles because of the lava cave in Growl and the fiery Bionic Commando section in Batman. So I'm looking at a total of five. All right. So I'm in second place, Rusty. I think I'm tied too, because I think the AVP only has the elevator sequence. It obviously doesn't have a circus level.

That would be awesome. That would be fucking rad. I know what we're requesting in the community. Do we have any modders? Aliens vs. Predator vs. Ringling Brothers. Yes. Night Slashers has clown enemies, I believe. What kind of that is a circus?

There are clowns. We count that. It has an elevator sequence. There are clowns. It's a circus. That's what I always say. I've got a badge that says that. I know the Warriors has an elevator, or a lift sequence, and it also has the Mime gang.

Yeah, that counts. I don't know if I have to, I can't recall if it has a subway fight though. It has to. Are you talking about the baseball theories, or is there like a full Mime gang? Oh, no, no, there's a full Mime gang. Oh, wow. Let's see, Chatterbox is their boss. Do they do Mime?

Wait, they do, don't they? They do. I remember them. What an awesome IP. It's got everything. It's got a little something for everybody. Mimes, weird Kabuki baseball. Everybody.

That's a great book too. The book is like, they're just like miserable hobo kids, and so it's like, it sort of makes sense of why they're in weird costumes and nobody has a gun. Like in the movie, there's just that one precious gun that they like pass around. And it's like, yeah, because most movies, they explain why no one has guns. Like in a kung fu movie, you're like, why the fuck isn't anyone shooting each other? And the Warriors are just like, no one can afford a gun. This is very, very rare.

These are hobo fights. This is how the hobos live and fight. I have seen this is journalism. Well, I remember I had recommended the movie to a kid who was working for me and he was like, why don't they just drive? I'm like, buddy, it's New York. Yeah, they don't know how to drive. I will say that from what I'm seeing, they don't have a subway.

They have like a Warrior Street Brawl game that came out that does have a subway. There's only the subway station fight, so I'm not going to take the pity point there. So I will say five is my total. Okay. So congratulations, Robert Brockway, on winning the haphazardly assembled best beat them up podcast and game. Thank you. And just as a quick victory speech, I would like to thank myself and fuck both of you.

Fuck it. This is the only time DJ Boyd has been mentioned within the capacity of the word win. Yeah, won the category with the vicinity. It shouldn't be anywhere near it with games that should be backwards illegal through time. August was Dolomite month on the hot dog discord. So we thought it'd be fun to let Dolomite write one of these. Mules have kicked them, didn't bruise their hide. The next bit of them, they just crawled off and died.

The handcuffed lightning split the raging sea. These here are the motherfucking hot dog Supremes. Three finger lowy. Aaron Croson is a bad motor scooter. Adrian H. Aiden Moat. Alpha Sciences Java you rat soup eating motherfucker. UnAndy. Andreas Larson.

Armando Nava. Benjamin Sironin. Bim Talzer. Brandon Garlock thinks you need to move over and let him pass before they be pulling these hush puppies out your ass. Brian Saylor. If Brian Whitney ever sees a ghost, she'll cut the motherfucker. Brockway loves the meat milling. All hell yeah he does.

Sarah. Rev. Chance McDermott don't wear no fucking cotton drawers. Chris Brower. Curious glare. Man B is so bad he kicks his own ass twice a day. Dean Costello. Dr. Awkward.

Eric Spalding knows why I'm not doing the voice. Fancy Shark. Jell-O-Hope. Greg Cunningham is his name and fucking up motherfuckers is his gay. Ambo. Haraka. Hot fart. Jay Burrell Aiden is a low down, oh I can't say this one.

Jacob Thornberg is a snake eating yellow, no I can't do that one either. James Boyd saw a white woman, nope. Jeff Harasky is so black, no. Jeremy Neal once dated a pastor's daughter and he's, oh god. My man John Dean's wife is so, not doing that one. John Hector McFarlane met this deaf girl one time and holy shit Dolomite, no. John McCammon thinks you're such a mama's boy, you know, skipping that one. If John Minkoff was in Mississippi, no.

Josh Babien is a motherfucking, no, can't see any of those words. Here, Josh S hopes you eat as cold as the Windy City because the way he feels now, baby, he sure could warm you up. Aw, that's a nice one. Thanks for getting this out of that, Josh. Ken Paisley, K&M. M. Jaihi Chappelle just wants to see a honky dance. Matt Riley, Max Baroy will get behind you, getting in front of you too. Michael Lair, Michael Wells, Mickey Lohman, Mike Stiles. Moji once walked from New York City to the deep, deep South just to slap a son of a bitch straight in the mouth.

Andy, Neil Bailey, Neil Schaefer. Nick Ralston wants you to listen and listen well. He's that bad motherfucker drove the devil out of hell. Nick H, Ozzy Olen, Patrick Herbst, Rain Vargas. Rhiannon's been known to rise up, but we'll cool down later. Sarkovsky, Spotty Reception, Ted H. Timmy Leigh is a no-business, born and secure, jock-jawed motherfucker. Toast to God.

Tom Sikula thinks you're bad and you ain't got no class. He's gonna rock this shotgun up your motherfucking ass. Tommy G, Waylon Russell. Ysarion wants you out of here in 24 hours and baby, 23 of them are already gone. And Donald Finney don't want no dilapidated, seep-sap and pigeon-toed, cross-eyed and bow-legged son of a gun's a messin' with him.