Tag video games

Player Two Start!: Wreck-It-Ralph: Stuff You May Have Missed

silverstar 1 Comment
It was a good summer to be a gamer.
Disney’s Wreck-It-Ralph, the story of a big, burly but lovable video game villain (voiced by Walk Hard/Stepbrothers/Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule comedian/actor John C. Reilly) who just wants some respect and ends up getting so much more, earned an estimated $130,248,000 in North America, and $35,700,000 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $165,948,000. In North America, the film debuted with $13.5 million, an above-average opening day gross for an animated film released in November. During its opening weekend, the film topped the box office with $49 million, marking the largest debut for Walt Disney Animation Studios, ahead of Tangled‘s opening ($48.8 million).
I myself am an extremely casual gamer (I probably play an average of 1 or 2 games per year, though I watch a lot of game reviews and am a regular viewer of The Game Overthinker), but my general video game illiteracy didn’t prevent me from enjoying this movie. So far, I’d say that Wreck-It-Ralph is probably my 2nd favorite movie of 2012, topped only by The Avengers, and given how there are already Wreck-It-Ralph toys and tie-ins, Ralph himself cameos in the latest Sonic the Hedgehog racing game and costumed mascot versions of Ralph and Vanellope Von Shweetz (the ‘glitchy’ star of neighboring racing game Sugar Rush voiced by comedienne Sarah Silverman) have already been planted at Disney theme parks, it’s safe to assume that others enjoyed it as well.
I’m not going to review the movie itself, as I generally don’t do film reviews, since there are already dozens of people on the internet who do movie reviews and all of them do it 20 times better than I would, however I will list some of the ‘hidden’ bits, allusions, trivial facts and character cameos that were sprinkled throughout the film. Director Rich Moore determined that that for a film about a video game world to feel authentic, “it had to have real characters from real games in it”, thus Wreck-It-Ralph and his pixelated brethren inhabit their own world within the arcade, interconnected by a massive hub known as Game Central Station. GCS is brimming with a galaxy of characters and idioms from the gaming world, so there are a lot of things that you may have missed the first time. (I didn’t spot all of them right away, either).
First, the obvious facts about the fictional games within the movie:
  • Ralph’s game, Fix-It-Felix Jr., is a homage of 8-bit classic arcade games such as Donkey Kong. The story of Fix-It-Felix Jr. not only establishes Ralph’s counterpart Felix as the resident “golden boy” hero of the game, but also helps the movie audience identify and sympathize with Ralph: the game’s into depicts Ralph as a giant-sized backwoods yokel who’s living peacefully in a stump on his own property, when a deluxe luxury apartment is constructed around him, forcing Ralph off his land and into the junkyard just to the right of the screen. Enraged, Ralph proceeds to climb to the top of building and demolish the place from the roof down with his bare hands (“I’m gonna wreck it!”). This brings in the hero of the game, Fix-It-Felix Jr. (voiced by 30 Rock‘s Jack MacBrayer), the building’s beloved superintendent, armed with a magic golden hammer that can repair anything with just a tap, to fix the damage that Ralph wreaks (I can fix it!”). In the game, Felix hops and jumps across the building’s ledges a la Mario (fun trivia fact: Mario’s original name was Jumpman).
  • The first game Ralph ‘game jumps’ to, Hero’s Duty, is a grim, dark, edgy and violent First Person Shooter (FPS) in the mold of games such as Halo and Call of Duty, with some traces of Metroid. The main character of Hero’s Duty, Sgt. Calhoun (voiced by Glee‘s Jane Lynch) is not only reminiscent of Ripley from the Alien movies, but she may also be a sort-of homage to Metroid‘s Samus Aran, who likewise wears a high-tech suit of armor. (At the end of the original Metroid for the NES, if the player defeated the entire game on difficult, then Samus’ armor would disappear, revealing Samus to be a woman.)
  • The second game Ralph jumps to (and where he meets Vanellope), Sugar Rush, is a mix of the popular children’s board game Candy Land and the Super Mario Kart racing game series.
Now, some of the more obscure stuff:
  • The song “Wreck It, Wreck-It-Ralph”, performed over the movie’s closing credits, was composed by the duo of Buckner & Garcia, the same pair who wrote “Pac-Man Fever” back in the 1980’s.
  • The theme song for Sugar Rush, also heard over the closing credits, was performed by an actual J-Pop band, AKB48.
  • Speaking of music, real life dubstep musician Skrillex makes a non-speaking cameo in the movie; he’s the DJ at Felix’s 30th anniversary party.
  • At the movie’s opening, in Litwak’s Arcade, one of the game cabinets seen is the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game.
  • After Litwak’s closes, the character who announces that all is clear is Yuni Verse from Dance Dance Revolution.
  • The bar that Ralph visits after the party scene is Tapper’s Tavern. Tapper is an old arcade title from the early-to-mid 80’s, in which the player controls a bartender whose goal is to slide mugs of beer over to his patrons.
  • The chef seen in the kitchen of Tapper’s Tavern is Peter Pepper, the main character of the 80’s video game Burger Time.
  • One of the items that Ralph finds while digging through the lost-and-found box at Tapper’s is the exclamation point (!) that appears over the head of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid games, complete with the accompanying sound effect. He also comes across a red mushroom from Super Mario Brothers.
  • Game Central Station is riddled with graffiti reading “Aerith Lives”, a reference to the character of Aerith Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII, who is killed within the story of the game and spawned the internet meme “Aerith Dies”.
  •  Other graffiti scribblings include “All your base are belong to us,” (an engrish phrase popularized from the game Zero Wing), “Sheng Long Was Here,” (referencing an April Fool’s joke around the made-up character Sheng Long from Street Fighter), and “Jenkins” (a nod to the popular Leeroy Jenkins meme from World of Warcraft).
  • There is a rumor that Mario and Luigi were originally supposed to appear in the movie, but didn’t because Nintendo wanted too high a fee for their usage, but the actual reason was that the producers couldn’t think of a reasonable way to incorporate Mario into the movie without it looking like he was shoehorned in. Mario does get a causal mention in the movie: when Ralph knocks on the door of Felix’s apartment during his party, Felix says “Must be Mario. Fashionably late as usual.”
  • Pac-Man is seen as a guest at Fix-It-Felix’s party. The 4 ghosts, Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (blue) and Clyde (orange) can be seen turning a corner in Game Central Station.
  • Dr. Wily from the MegaMan (Rockman) games was originally set to appear in the move, but didn’t.
  • 7 characters from Street Fighter II appear in the film: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li (both in person and as a drawn caricature on the walls of Tapper’s Tavern), Cammy, Zangief, M. Bison and Blanka (during the closing credits).
  • The guard in front of the restricted bonus level of Sugar Rush is Beard Papa, the mascot of an international chain of cream puff stores started in Japan by the company Mugino Co., Ltd.. Their slogan is “Fresh’n natural cream puffs”. Beard Papa’s has over 250 stores in Japan and 300 worldwide.
  • King Candy’s palace guards are a pair of doughnut cops named Winchell and Duncan. Aside from being a walking joke on the stereotype of cops loving doughnuts, they’re both named after popular doughnut franchises: Winchell’s Doughnut House and Dunkin’ Dounts, respectively.
  • Turbo Time, a fictional game within the story, is based on arcade racing titles such as Pole Position. The actions of that game’s main character spawned the in-universe expression “Going Turbo”, which refers to when a game character decides to abandon their respective game.
  • When a game is broken, it’s arcade cabinet is taken away, and the game’s inhabitants are rendered homeless. Characters from Q*Bert: the title character, Q*bert, Coily, Slick, Sam and Ugg are shown as homeless characters who are later taken in by Ralph and Felix into their game.
  • Also present at Game Central Station: the title character from Paperboy, a Puka, a Fygar and the title character from Dig Dug and the 2 paddles from Pong and the Qix from Qix.
  • Many of the established game characters are voiced by their current voice actors: Roger Craig Smith as Sonic the Hedgehog, Kyle Hebert as Ryu, Reuben Langdon as Ken Masters and Gerald C. Rivers as M. Bison (or Vega or Dictator, depending on which side of the pond you live on). Zangief is voiced by the film’s director Rich Moore, who also voiced King Candy’s henchman, Sour Bill.
  • When King Candy hacks the code to Sugar Rush, the door to the code is locked with a NES control pad. King Candy unlocks it by pushing the buttons Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, A,B,A,B, Start. This is the infamous Konami cheat code used in many Konami games, including Gradius and Contra for the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), and it was also the fake code posted by Electronic Gaming Monthly which claimed to allow players to play as Simon Belmont (the hero of Castlevania) in the NES version of Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game, and one of EGM’s first and most notorious April Fool’s jokes.
  • When the rocket that Ralph falls into careens through Game Central Station, it knocks Sonic onto the floor, causing all of his rings to fly out like in his respective game.
And finally, we come to the scene in which Ralph attends Bad-Anon, a support group for video game villains, one of the first scenes in the movie leaked to the public and arguably one of the most popular scenes in the movie.
Wreck-it-Ralph-Pacman-580x240
There are numerous game baddies in attendance here, some you’ll instantly recognize and others you won’t:
Some are obvious: Bowser (aka King Koopa) from Super Mario Bros., Zangief and M. Bison (Vega/Dictator) from Street Fighter 2, Dr. Eggman (or Robotnik) from Sonic the Hedgehog, and Bad-Anon’s leader and mediator, Clyde, the orange colored ghost from Pac-Man. (Interesting that the producers would choose him for this role when in most of Pac-Man’s publicity, Clyde is often portrayed as the least intelligent of the ghosts.
Less obvious characters:
  • The yellow robot with the buzzsaw hand is one of the enemies from the Sega Genesis’ Cyborg Justice.
  • The thuggish looking cyborg with the arm tattoos and infrared eye implant is based on Kano from Midway’s Mortal Kombat, though he’s not officially named as such.
  • The zombie is based on Cyril from House of the Dead.
  • The purple rhino creature is Neff from Sega’s Altered Beast.
The other 4 characters: Satan, er, um…Satine (the red devil), the ninja, the floating green blob monster with the crown and this sexy elf-eared blue lady, are apparently not from any actual games, but rather were simply added to fill out the numbers. Jason (Goldstar) suggested that if the filmmakers wanted a female video game villain, they could have used the Dark Queen from Battletoads, which would’ve been a good idea, but since I like looking at the blue chick, I’m not going to file a complaint. I’ve unofficially named her Lady Cassandra from a game called Monsters, Magic & Mayhem, but you don’t have to.
Too much free time? You bet!

Player Two Start: A Salute to Marvel Super Heroes

goldstar 1 Comment

Here at Twinsanity, we sometimes like to pay tribute to things that we like, but don’t be deceived by what your about to read here. I don’t review video games. I’m not the Angry Video Game anything. There are already plenty of game reviewers out there, many of which are much better at that sort of thing than I could ever be. So no, this is not a game review. I’m merely taking this time to pay tribute to one of the most fun, and most underrated video games of all time: A little one-on-one fighter from Capcom known as Marvel Super Heroes.


Marvel Super Heroes made it’s arcade debut in 1995 and was released for the Playstation and the Sega Saturn in 1997. I played the game in the arcade and was downright giddy when the Playstation version of the game came out. While most of the gaming world has fully embraced Capcom’s later fighting titles such as Marvel VS Capcom and especially Marvel VS Capcom 2, MSH kind of got left behind in the dust afterward. Despite this, MSH remains one of my all time favorite games to this day. If you doubt me, just check out the awesomeness of the game’s opening cinema:

Anyone who hasn’t played this game yet, find a copy and play it now! You won’t regret it. One piece of advice, though: When searching for MSH, do not under any circumstances, confuse it with this title:

Super Nintendo Marvel Super Heroes War of the Gems Front Cover

This is not Marvel Super Heroes. This is Marvel Super Heroes: War of the Gems, a game for the Super Nintendo which is actually a retread of an earlier SNES title, X-Men Mutant Apocalypse, only with a slightly altered story and some different characters. Don’t get me wrong, Mutant Apocalypse is actually pretty fun, but if you rent or buy this game under the belief that you’re getting the arcade classic, you’ll be in for a disappointment. That said, on to the real MSH:

Marvel Super Heroes features 10 selectable characters; 6 super heroes — Spider Man, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Wolverine and Psylocke– and 4 villains — Magneto, Juggernaut, Blackheart and Shuma Gorrath (the latter 2 I’ve never heard of before playing this game. Sorry, comic book fans!) In the Street Fighter tradition, there are also 2 bosses– Dr. Doom is a mid boss and Thanos is the final boss. My only complaint about the lineup is why we got Cap and Iron Man but no Thor? And why only 1 female character? There are too many good woman characters in the Marvel universe for this game to only have 1. Each character has the requisite set of personalized special moves and super moves, here called “Infinity Moves”, which are all quite cool.

However, MSH’s standout feature is the inclusion of the Infinity Gems.

In the comics, the Infinity Gems grant their user near god-like abilities that allow you to rule the universe faster than you can say “God-like egomaniac!”, but in the game, they just enhance your fighter’s abilities in a unique way: The Space Gem causes your character temporary invulnerability. The Power Gem causes your attacks to deal out much more damage. The Soul Gem slowly replenishes your life bar. The Time Gem speeds up you character. The Reality Gem gives your character projectiles, and the Mind Gem fills up the Infinity Bar faster so you can bust out with a super move. Generally, an Infinity Gem is tossed into the fray after the 1st attack of the match. The Gem will land in the middle of ring, so your opponent has a chance to get it as well. Each gem grants it’s user special powers (as if the likes of Juggernaut and Magneto need to be more powerful!), and certain gems grant particular abilities to specific characters. The Reality Gem causes Blackheart to turn invisible. The Power Gem gives Captain America shadow moves. The Soul Gem causes Iron Man’s hits to strike with electric shock, etc. This was a very unique and innovative touch to the world of fighting games and so I’m truly surprised that this experiment was never repeated. Also, this is a minor nitpick, but I have to wonder why Capcom felt it necessary to change 2 of the Infinity Gem’s colors for the game. The Time Gem is orange in the comics, but it’s magenta in the game, while the Reality Gem is yellow in the comics, but it’s orange in the game! Ultimately, this change doesn’t make any real difference but still, it strikes me as curious why 2 of the gem’s colors were changed, while the colors of the other 4 were left unchanged.

Anyway, Marvel Super Heroes was a superb title with fun game play and a surprising amount of re-play value despite it’s lack of secrets and unlockable characters (Supposedly, there’s a Game Genie code that allows to you play as Anita from the Darkstalkers games, but it never worked for me. Whenever I tried it, it would always freeze up after the VS screen).

It remains one of the great mysteries of the gaming universe why this game never got a sequel (and no, I don’t count Marvel Super Heroes VS Street Fighter. The Capcom “VS” games were a separate series and are not connected to MSH, at least not to me. Also, I had some criticisms about MSH vs SF’s lineup. Did we really need to have Captain America and Cyclops? The way that they played, they were practically 1 entity!). It would have been great to have gotten a Marvel Super Heroes 2, especially if the lineup had changed some and we could have gotten Thor, The Thing, Human Torch, Silver Surfer, Storm, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Firestar, Ms. Marvel or even She Hulk as playable characters. Nonetheless, Marvel Super Heroes was a great fighting title for it’s time and it still holds up now, and for this, MSH, we at Twinsanity salute you.

SAL-UTE!