YouTube Videos: Sep 10-16

 

YouTube Videos: Sep 3-9

 

YouTube Videos: Aug 28-Sep 2

 

YouTube Videos: Aug 20-26

 

YouTube Videos: Aug 13-19

 

YouTube Videos: Aug 6-12

 

YouTube Videos: Jul 30-Aug 5

 

YouTube Videos: Jul 23-29

 

Tiny Toons Looniversity Thoughts

The thought in my mind was that Tiny Toon Adventures was more deserving of a reboot than Animaniacs. I like Looney Tunes and I like the 90s approach the Steven Spielberg produced show had. You get your ups and downs, but it paved the way for Warner Brothers. Maybe as a way to avoid stealing Animaniacs' spotlight when it returns November 20th, the Tiny Toon gang is coming back with Tiny Toons Looniversity. Plans are two new seasons and on HBO Max.

There are definitely some big hurdles and its things I can only speculate that early. Can the Toonsters adapt to a 2020s style of humor? Or will it try to follow the classic formula that Looney Tunes had? Another part is that the main cast are teenagers. When Tiny Toon Adventures first aired, they were roughly 14 to 15 years old. They might up the ages a couple years. I'm not sure if there is continuity or trying a different age to liven up the comedy. Both them and Animaniacs feel like they are aiming for PG territory. And they weren't afraid of showing stuff for adults that kids wouldn't understand.

But the biggest hurdle will be voicing the characters. Buster Bunny's original voice left before the final season wrapped up in 1992. I'm not sure if he would return. Same for any of those actors that were around 30 years ago. From other types of media I've seen, its tough to see the same energy at an older age. The passing of Joe Alaskey in 2016 leaves a huge void in someone to voice Plucky Duck. Billy West took over as Hamton Pig when Don Messick passed in 1997. I don't even know if West is still acting, but he's near 70 years old. Whether they go with a new youthful group, I have no idea. Danny Cooksey was a teen when the show debuted, but whether he can unleash his inner Montana Max, that's up to the producers.

One notable omission is going to be Elmyra Duff, whose mentor is Elmer Fudd. The character is not like the hunter when it comes to animals. She loves them and wants them as pets rather than shoot them. Some want answers. I know PETA was around when the show was new, but I can't see them going overboard. Then again, they went after Super Mario, so you never know. Supposedly, executives loved her and writers grew tired of her. I would wager most fans don't care for her. When used right, she's not a horrible character to have. There are episodes where you can't help but feel bad. An episode I can think of is Prom-ise Her Anything. Max throws insults on Prom night and she's brokenhearted. There is redemption, but those moments were very rare. I think removing her will benefit from a comedy standpoint where writers won't feel forced to shoehorn her in.

There is plenty of material that is ripe for humor for Tiny Toons Looniversity. You got plenty of high school material. Easily do parodies from stuff that was made 15 to 20 years ago. Horror movies have seen surges in popularity since 1996. While not new, there is much more to mock. Those are just some small examples. If they're going to do slapstick quite a bit, they better find ways to be more creative or make running gags common yet feel fresh.

All that aside, it has the better potential to do well. Animaniacs feels like shaky ground unless the humor really wins the audiences over due to not many characters returning. But either way, both shows have to get a new audience hooked to them and hopefully bring the 90s fans along for a new ride. The 90s generation for Warner Brothers rides again.

30 Years of Invading TV: Tiny Toon Adventures

Cartoons needed a good jolt from the 70s. The 80s were hit and miss depending on the company in question. Warner Brothers being one of those examples. To get the ball rolling in September 1990, you get Steven Spielberg involved and others who worked on cartoons. That's why a show like Tiny Toon Adventures deserves its chance in the spotlight. A syndicated program (later a Fox Kids program in 1992) that exceeded expectations. A period that you could say brought the best of WB.

What is so special? It follows the slapstick nature of Looney Tunes. The difference being the Looney Tune crew being mentors to these teenagers, who are the focal point. More than a dozen characters that follow the footsteps of the legends. Learning how to make a cartoon, getting in sticky situations, the whole production. Nothing low budget. Of course, some favoritism here and there, but what show wasn't like that back in the 80s and 90s? 

Your mileage will vary on the episodes. Some of it follows like a Looney Tune bit. It has its fair share of original content. A lot of parodies that flew over kids heads. They did an episode that was a straight up parody of Citizen Kane, black and white. These writers loved film and television. It's a Wonderful Life for the final episode. One bit that made fun of Carrie, an R rated film based on Stephen King's novel. Those are just small examples.

Overall, Tiny Toon Adventures was a nice franchise that made WB stand toe to toe with Disney for a period of time. Maybe there's legal issues or something (I'm guessing), but a modern version I think could work based on the content that was made. Thirty years of laughs and creating a new generation from the Silver Age when anyone could make a show and most could hook an audience immediately. 

Easiest and Hardest YouTube Videos I've Done

I've kept the same YouTube channel for over seven years. Quite a bit of videos I'm pretty happy about. A bit of others that could have been better. Some might think it's that easy, but it's not. If you're very familiar and really good, it can be. For something a little different, I'll talk some of the easiest and hardest games I've done into videos, starting with easy.

Medal of Honor (1999): This was fun to do. Going through the levels at a good pace. Showcasing my approach to playing it and the run and gun feel in some of the areas. Probably one of my proudest playthroughs.

Sonic and Knuckles: These are a little complex with doing both characters and getting the Emeralds. After that, it was simply finding the path to the bosses and gaining lots of rings. It was always great to look at the level design and see the strengths and weaknesses to who you were playing as. Sonic 3 and Knuckles is one I would want to do at some point in the future.

Altered Beast: It's a very simple game. A lot of it is memorization, but I don't think it's necessary. Even an average person could get through it with such ease. The only blemish I had in the video was the fourth level and losing some health. Other than that, it was a perfect run. It's one game I would like to come back to and showcase the difficulties.

Now to hard:

Crash Bandicoot: You don't get to go back to the bonus rounds. One chance and that's it. Some of the later levels are really tough and getting a perfect run of a level is next to impossible at points. You can't die if you reach a checkpoint either. Fun game to play, not fun to do videos of. The second and third game would be a bit easier to record if I want to do videos of them.

Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose: This was done on hard, but doing it on normal for a practice run was not great, either. The health system sucks. I would argue the football level was not the best designed and the Star Wars parody level was not designed well. Add in that the hard difficulty has visual graphics in the end credits (which was a dumb move), and it's one of the tougher playthroughs I've done for videos. Great game, but one you need to have a lot of memory of knowing when to jump, attack, and whatever else.

Driver: Even if you don't record, undercover can be very brutal. The cops are the main gripe and they will usually determine if you will succeed or fail a mission. Pursuit missions don't leave you with much time. Some of the time limits are a bit ridiculous. You don't know how long these missions will last. And the late missions are a huge hassle. I've been on the fence of doing Driver 2, but I think if I were to come back to this, I would do the driving games, training, and show the cheats off for it. There's more to Driver than its undercover.

Three easy and three hard games I've done videos of. Maybe I'll do more in the future, but they will not be common blogs. Happy reading.

Game Emulation Stories: Volume 1

This might be the start of something I want to do, but we'll have to see if it pans out and if I talk more about it. I've had my share of playing games via emulators and emulation over the last decade or so. I'm going to talk two games in this volume.

One of the games I would keep playing via emulators was the Sega Genesis version of Home Alone. I had tried it back in the mid 2000s on emulator, but 2010 was where I played it extensively. It would be something I would get a chance to play any time I didn't have any college work. Around Christmas, I walked down to a local used game store that had been open for almost two months and found a copy of it. Along with Tecmo Super Bowl (Genesis), Doom (PlayStation), and Mission: Impossible (PlayStation), I bought Home Alone.

It is a game I always try to play around Christmas. This is a fun one that captures the spirit of the movie. The graphics are solid for a game released in late 1992. Christmas vibes are what I think of with the outdoors and each house is unique. There is fun in assembling weapons and setting traps. It may be the best of games that the first two films had.

The last is another Genesis game. As a kid, a cousin of mine had Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure. I played it a few times in the early 2000s and that was it. Around the same time in 2010, I played it again after a long time. It was a hit of nostalgia since I hadn't seen the show in about almost a decade at that point and about seven, eight years since playing the game. It's a Sonic the Hedgehog type of game. Looks like the show, has a great soundtrack and has solid controls. My only complaints are a somewhat high difficulty and a complicated password system.

I played it for a while in 2010, but stopped and didn't come back to it until August of 2011. It was one of those nights where I played it overnight on my laptop and used save states to beat it. When it got to the credits, I knew a few characters, but most I didn't know or remembered. It got me very curious and it got me to watch clips of the show. Then it grew to watching episodes and writing a spec movie script of my own. I do own an actual copy of the game and have beaten it legitimately on a real Genesis.

Hope you folks enjoyed these two stories and hopefully I'll do more of these in the future.

YouTube Videos: April 27-May 3

YouTube Videos: April 20-26

YouTube Videos: April 13-19

Shut Up, Millennials! (The Whiny Ones, At Least)

I will always consider myself a Generation Y kid and generalize 1983 through 97 as that group. Unfortunately, that ugly phrase, millennial, is used in place of Gen Y and is accepted as that. However, that's not that point of this blog. This is about whiny millennials crying about James Bond 007 films.

Most people now these days will find a vast array of films, showcasing different eras of time. James Bond has been a relevant franchise since the 50s and since the 60s with the movies made around Ian Fleming's secret agent. In the case of millennials, articles are publishing about the whining about how racist and sexist the early ones are. This is considering recently as well that they are not just criticizing 50 year old stuff. The TV show Friends has gotten criticized for homophobic jokes and lines, and that started airing from 1994 until 2004.

To the ones criticizing this stuff, this is what I have to say. Shut the fuck up, you over privileged, over sheltered, coddled, spoiled, rotten, uncultured, thin skinned, over sensitive, snotty, four flushing moronic pieces of shit. These kind of films and shows are a product of their time. You can't criticize every little thing that happened back in 1962 and expect it to be like 2018. There was a time where you could say queer. Now, we don't today. I wonder how any of you will react to Austin Powers, which was a huge parody of Bond films and had a lot of sexual references.

I wonder how many would react to stuff from plays like A Streetcar Named Desire, which came around in 1947. It's sad that these kind of millennials are getting offended so easily by different eras of film. They are not the only ones seeing them. Hell, when Looney Tunes started releasing their shorts on DVD, they put up a few things in them to say that their very old cartoons might have certain things that reflected the era they were in. After all, most generations have seen at least a cartoon or two of this group. It'll be funny to see how many would also react from the One Beer episode of Tiny Toon Adventures or any kids cartoon with smoking or drinking.

These millennials crying need to grow a pair and look at culture from back then without bursting into rage and tears. Despite how racist Blazing Saddles is, it is still a very funny film. One of these days, they will get older and a new generation will do the same thing. It is an endless cycle, only except today, they vent on social media. The Internet may be great, but it is a very dangerous weapon.