Steampunk Awesomeness from Myke Amend

Somehow in my various travels across the internet I stumbled upon the Super Punch blog. I don't really know how to explain it beyond that he posts lots of fun and awesome artistic things to share with his readers. One day he shared a link that mentioned you could get a grab bag of steampunk related goodies for only $15.

The artist in question is Myke Amend. I had literally no exposure to his work before I saw the link, but enjoying some of what he had on display there was enough to get me to buy it. It arrived yesterday and now I thought I'd share them with you.


Here's the bag they all came in, which was wrapped inside some cardboard packaging to keep the prints from getting bent. Obviously not handmade, but still very pretty.


This was the first thing I noticed when removing the items from the bag. Hopefully I'm right in assuming it's a hankerchief.. I'm fairly certain it's not supposed to be a cloth napkin anyway. I'd be afraid to use it for anything other than display though, as I wouldn't want to ruin that painted on image.

The rest of the items are all postcard sized. I apologize that the pictures are not very good, I took them with my phone.


There were actually two prints of this one. I really like it though, so I'm not complaining.






I think this one is my favorite. So of course the picture came out the worst. :P





Overall, I'd say it was $15 well spent.

Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds

While looking for classes to fill up my electives in college, I had stumbled upon a "Film as Literature" class. It was technically considered an English class, but it involved watching lots of movies so I was all for it. The idea of the class was looking at the way a film is shot and how that is used to tell the story. We also read Heart of Darkness and then watched Apocalypse Now, but that felt like something that was forced in as an attempt to tie it to literature. Another one of the movies we watched in this class was Rear Window.

Rear Window was my first real introduction to Hitchcock and I loved it immensely. On my own time since I've seen Psycho (loved it!), North by Northwest (also loved it), and Vertigo (reviewed here). I realized it was about time I caught up with one of the two things I always knew Hitchcock for in my childhood: The Birds. The other is Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which is currently sitting in my Netflix streaming queue waiting for me to finish up some other series first.

The biggest problem for modern audiences to face when watching this film is how outdated the special effects are. They used a mix of real birds, puppets/fake birds, and a green screen effect where the birds are flying wildly and it is overlaid on top of the actors' performances. Obviously the real birds don't do any attacking. The puppets can be incredibly unrealistic at times, and it's left up to the actors to make you believe it. With the stars this works pretty well, but when you see them attacking the kids, for example, it's a little too obvious and silly. I really thought the green screen effect was put to good use, particularly when the birds are inside the house. The performances of most of the actors are strong enough that you really believe they're in danger.

Another problem by modern terms is how long it takes for the movie to get going. There's a very slow moving story with this woman and her attempts to surprise this man's younger sister with a pair of lovebirds. There's no real indication that anything is about to go wrong, so you're forced to just sort of wait around until stuff happens about 30 minutes in. In contrast to something like Psycho or Rear Window, which take a bit to build but keep up the suspense the whole time, I was a bit disappointed. Apparently, I've been too far influenced by Hitchcock's other films, because I expected Melanie Daniels to be killed the moment the first bird struck her.

The strongest scene of the whole film for me comes when Lydia goes to the Fawcett farm. The complete silence, the slow movement down the hallway, the slow reveal in the room... it's all just completely brilliant and classic Hitchcock. I also love the way she chokes on her words rather than screaming like so many other horror movies would have her do. I've had so many dreams where I tried to scream but the words wouldn't come out, it seemed so perfect to me. Overall it had that same realistic approach to this situation. People who haven't seen the birds attack are believably skeptical, and those who have are too caught up in a state of panic to spout witty dialogue. In fact, a lot of the best scenes in this movie contain no dialogue at all, and the actors reactions sell the horror and suspense completely.

What was up with that song the children were singing at school? What could you possibly learn from that? It worked to make things creepy, but man, it just kept going and going.. The only time I remember doing stuff like that at school was when it was the last day before a holiday and the teachers wanted to keep us busy but not actually teach us anything new. I guess Annie is a lazy teacher.

While watching the movie I kept guessing as to what could be causing the birds to act in such a way. I think there are clues here and there, though some of them are probably red herrings. I enjoyed the fact that it was never explained and that the ending in itself is very vague.

This is related to absolutely nothing but Rod Taylor looks like he could be related to Robin Williams to me. I kept thinking it over and over again as he appeared on screen.

Another thing I couldn't help thinking of on and off was the Animaniacs short, "The Boids" in which the Goodfeathers are stand in stunt birds for the film. I kind of expected to see Melanie Daniels whack at the birds with her purse to mirror one of the scenes of the cartoon. The cartoon actually is fairly accurate though, as it shows both the playground scene and the phone booth moment.

Superman: Red Son

If you know me then you probably know I love superheroes. There's an entire room of my house that is essentially dedicated to them full of posters, action figures and comics. I tend to watch all my movies at home, but if there's anything that will get me to go to a theater, it's a superhero movie. What may surprise you is that I hate the granddaddy of all superheroes: Superman.

He's boring. His powers are over the top and too perfect and his morals are always perfectly in line. His secret identity is weak and honestly why does he need one anyway? He can apparently see and hear everything happening miles away from him so he can always save his family members in time. The first Superman movie was boring me to tears until it got to that part where he goes backwards around the earth to go back in time and then it royally pissed me off. Seriously, that doesn't work by any stretch of the imagination. I loved the X-men and Batman animated series in the 90s, and because of the X-men I watched the Spider-man, Fantastic Four, and Iron Man cartoons, but I couldn't bring myself to watch the Superman cartoon past the Batman crossover. He's just so dry. The Adventures of Lois and Clark, Smallville, Superman Returns... no matter how they attempt to reinvent him, I just can't get into it. All the superheroes I love have something to them that helps you to relate to them. A tragedy in their past, a difficulty they have to overcome, etc. Superman lost his home world when he was too young to even know it existed and his weakness is a made up substance that is generally used in the most expected of ways. His love interest is a snotty overbearing workaholic woman stereotype. I could go on, but bashing Superman is not actually the point of this post.

I'll admit that my experience with Superman in the comics is pretty thin. My brother purchased the Death of Superman comic like everyone else did, and I read it then and its possession has now passed into my hands. I kept up with the storyline that followed mostly through articles in Wizard magazine, but once again it wasn't particularly interesting. Given his extremely long history, I'm sure there are story lines out there that managed to take a more honest and human look at the character but I just haven't found them yet. I'm always willing to give something a try, even a couple tries, before I flat out give up on them. I would have sworn that Iron Man was dreadfully uninteresting until the movies came around and presented him in a new way, so I imagine the same could be done for Superman.

A friend let me borrow a copy of Superman: Red Son. The premise of this story is an alternate universe storyline in which Superman's rocket landed in the Soviet Union rather than America. It's certainly an interesting take from the get go. Unfortunately I had some problem with its choices very early on. As the book begins we see Superman standing beside Joseph Stalin. In recent years I've gained a bit of a fascination with Stalin. While everyone loves to regard Hitler as the great evil of the 20th century, in my personal opinion Stalin eclipses him by a long shot. I find it so fascinating because of the way his deeds are often disregarded these days. We saw Stalin sitting next to FDR and Churchill during WWII, so surely he had to be a nicer guy than Hitler, right? And of course in Russia itself Stalin erected his own cult of personality, an image so strong that there are apparently those in Russia these days who would willingly vote for him in an election and regard him as a great leader. The fact is he was just as paranoid and bloodthirsty as Hitler, if not more so, and is responsible for genocide and killing more people than Hitler ever dreamed of. So as the book begins and I see Mr. Goody Two Shoes standing beside Stalin, my suspension of disbelief has been blown. While I can accept that the general public would be largely ignorant of his activities, surely someone working as his right hand man would see the bloodthirsty way in which he ruled? It's not an absolute deal breaker for me, but it was distracting.

Despite this, I found Superman's rise to power to be completely logical and believable. I also highly enjoyed everything to do with Lex Luthor in this book including the fact that neither he or Superman were being shown as the true hero or villain. They were simply both men determined to do what they thought was right and doing it in a bad way. I was not particularly crazy about Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen in this book, Jimmy's role in particular didn't make much sense to me but I'll admit this may have more to do with not really knowing much about the character in the main universe either. I LOVED the re-imagining of Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Green Lantern Corps. I enjoyed Brainiac a lot as a character and it really made me want to see more of him, as my only previous experience is the version in the Legion of Superheroes cartoon.

Once again, it's the altered real world history where I have hiccups. Would Superman's reign really have caused Nixon to be elected rather than JFK? Would Nixon have been assassinated in 1963, and would the people have elected JFK afterward? From what I have read it seems like the story is attempting to completely role reverse the US and the USSR without stopping to think about whether it would all logically happen. The one thing I will say I agree with is the idea of the states seceding from the union again in an effort to save themselves. I'm just not convinced that the US would have collapsed so badly to begin with just because the USSR fared better. The book essentially suggests that Superman is the great difference here, rather than the differences between a capitalist democratic republic vs. a communist totalitarian structure.

I will give it this though: It certainly got me thinking. I read it Sunday and I've been debating in my head on various matters presented in the book ever since. The further I get away from it the more its issues don't really matter so much as the concept as a whole. Watchmen, as great a story as it is, fails in its own altered history at times and that doesn't take away from how good it is. While Red Son isn't as earth shattering as Watchmen, it's a great take on the "absolute power corrupts absolutely" theme. The characters are three dimensional and you really feel for them. I even kind of felt bad for Superman at times, believe it or not.

While cold war history buffs may have a hard time with it, I'd still recommend it as a good strong story, particularly if you're a fan of George Orwell or enjoy seeing iconic superheroes presented in a different light.

Bela Lugosi and Edgar Allen Poe

After seeing Bela Lugosi as Dracula and as the gypsy werewolf who bites The Wolf Man, I was ready to see more. This disc provided me with three films which have the bonus tidbits of being based on Edgar Allen Poe works and two of them also feature Boris Karloff.

Murders in the Rue Morgue

I had a hard time seeing Bela as anything other than Dracula for this one. His character, Dr. Mirakle, was very similar in tone and mood to me, even if it's a very different role. He's a scientist who is obsessed with proving that man is descended from apes and plans to mix the blood of a gorilla and a human to prove it. He also has the ability to speak with an ape in its native tongue. Erik the Ape-man is played alternately by a chimpanzee and a man in a gorilla suit. They refer to him as a gorilla and the suit is much bulkier than the chimpanzee, so the effect is rather distracting. I also couldn't help but worry that maybe they were mistreating the chimp to get him to look so upset so often. Perhaps the most interesting part is to see a movie where an ape falls in love with a woman and ends with him carrying her over rooftops a year before King Kong was released.

From a storytelling stand point the biggest issue I had with the movie is that Dr. Mirakle flat out reveals to the characters and a whole crowd his intentions to mix the blood but it takes forever for Dupin to figure out he's the one behind the murders.

The most amusing scene comes when a German, an Italian, and a Danish are all questioned by police and swear that the language they heard the murderer speak is one of the others' languages. They eventually dissolve into shouting at each other in their native tongue and it's quite humorous.

While the story of the movie does not match the original story exactly, I think they did a good job of keeping some of the key points while toning down the violence and adding both supernatural and romantic elements typical of the time period in which the film was made.

The Black Cat

Watching Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff play off each other makes this a must see. It's also really nice to see Bela getting to play the protagonist for once, even if he has a slightly dark side to him. For a character that is reminded of his dead wife by a young woman, you might think this would be him playing Dracula all over again, but it's really not. It's quite good. I really sympathized with his character and it felt like a much different role for him. You also get to hear him speak Hungarian at certain points which I thought was kind of neat.

The plot of the movie is nothing like the Poe story, and the black cat in the movie doesn't even really effect the plot. It's there because Lugosi's character is afraid of them, but there's really no reason why he is. The movie is all about two characters who have a past and one's desire to get revenge on the other for how they've done them wrong. The suspense builds slowly throughout the film and comes to a satisfying conclusion.

The Raven

Your first instinct is probably to think, how could they base a movie off the poem? It's actually pretty well inspired by it, even if it's not the exact story. Bela plays a brain surgeon who is obsessed with Poe and also falls in love with a young woman. When he can't have her, he comes up with a plot to torture and kill her, her father and fiancee. He takes inspiration from Poe's stories to do so, with almost Saw like traps. Karloff gets thrown into it as an ugly man who begs Bela to make him look better, but instead Bela makes him look even worse. The makeup is really quite impressive for the time, even down to the fake eye. Karloff even gives off a Frankenstein's monster grunt at one point in the movie. I really enjoyed this one because it reminded me a lot of modern horror, with a man trapping a group of people in his house and trying to kill them. It was still chilling without showing any extreme violence. Bela's performance is a bit over the top in this, but seeing as how he's portraying a mad man it fits in perfectly.

While this collection put the highlight on Bela Lugosi, I can't deny that I'm becoming a huge fan of Boris Karloff the more I see him in. So far I've seen Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, and The Mummy as well as those above and I just love his performance every time. His voice has that perfect creepy quality to it while also being sympathetic. I can understand why they billed him simply as "Karloff" in these movies.. there could be no one else to replace him.

Bill & Ted Marathon: Conclusion

Well, we've come to the end... for now. There's really not a whole lot else to say.

About the only other Bill & Ted item I haven't touched on is "Bill & Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure" which has been happening at Universal Studios in Orlando and Hollywood since 1992 as part of their Halloween Horror Nights. The description from Wikipedia says: "The main plot involves Bill and Ted being threatened by an evil villain from a popular film of that year, with appearances by a host of villains, heroes, and celebrities. The show usually includes elaborate dance numbers, stunts, and multiple double-entendres." I've never seen the show first hand so I can't really comment on it, but I'm sure you can find videos of differing quality from past years on Youtube.

There were also apparently action figures and trading cards made for the first movie that keep staring at me on ebay and begging me to buy them.

Why are you staring at me like that?

You want me to talk about Bill & Ted 3, don't you? OK.

Shortly after I started this marathon, the internet exploded with MTV's story of Keanu Reeves talking about Bill & Ted 3. Then they contacted Alex Winter and he "confirmed" it. The thing is if you understand anything about how movies are made, someone telling you they have a story idea doesn't mean anything. The possibility of an Indiana Jones 4 was rumored not long after Last Crusade came out and you see how many years that took to actually be finalized and become a reality. Indy has the advantage of having George Lucas and Steven Spielberg behind him, who have enough money and power between them to make any movie they want. Bill & Ted has an actor who's been behind the scenes on smaller budget works for decades now, another who is mostly known recently for having his sad looking picture be part of a meme, and two writers whose other works include Super Mario Bros and A Goofy Movie. One would hope that the fan base is large enough for any studio to want to give it a chance, but you can't count on anything.

As far as what the movie could be about, I'm happy with Alex's comments regarding not recasting Rufus and not setting up the franchise for new sequels with younger players. They could have easily done this with Little Bill & Little Ted, so it's nice to know they won't. I can't remember where anymore, but some site seemed to take the position that the movie would have to involve Bill & Ted looking back on their lives and thinking about "what went wrong" and why they weren't the greats they were meant to be. I don't understand why they came to this conclusion. It seems to be based on the idea that Bill & Ted's future = OUR future. If that was the case, where's my phone booth time machine and why didn't I see their Battle of the Bands broadcast the night it aired? It was only on every television station in the world.

It would be exceedingly easy to keep it so that they did in fact achieve the success that was shown during the credits of Bogus Journey. There are plenty of movie plots that start off with the people on top of the world and in danger of losing their success. Honestly, if the movie doesn't start off that way, I'm going to be disappointed. I'm pretty confident regardless that the guys can do a good job with whatever they come up with. You can tell they've stayed in touch and are still friends after all these years and I think they'll be able to slip back into these roles fairly easily. On the other hand, Wikipedia claims that their original plans for this sequel turned into Biodome. That fact scares me so much I want to believe it's one of those things that Wikipedia has gotten wrong.

I don't really have any particular ideas of what they could do because I thought Bogus Journey did a really good job of wrapping the whole thing up. Do you have any ideas for their next adventure/journey/expedition?

Bill & Ted's Excellent Comic Book 1-12

This post is going to be long and picture heavy. I'm the type that thinks that's awesome, but I have learned that some people on the internet think that length is a bad thing. I suppose some poor souls may still be using dial up as well, so please consider this your warning.

This comic book series ran for 12 issues, one issue a month, and picks up directly where the Bogus Journey comic book adaptation left off. As such all the differences I pointed out in that adaptation apply here. It's a very silly book and in my opinion very fitting for the Bill & Ted mythos. I have no idea how much Chris & Ed were involved in this series, but seeing as how all writing credit goes to Evan Dorkin, I'm guessing not very much. However, I still think it does a good job of staying true to the characters and is over all a very enjoyable read.

These were at least partially collected into trade paperbacks by Slave Labor Graphics recently, but it looks like the quantities of these are extremely limited and may not contain the whole series. So jump below the cut and I will take you through the series.

Not in the face!

In my Horror Wimp/Horror Lover post, I mentioned that while I was no longer as scared as I used to be, my stomach still had its limits. This weekend, I stretched to find out just how far those limits go. A friend invited me to go see Hatchet II and I couldn't resist. It's a slasher film, and after watching the original Friday the 13th about a week ago, I was hungry for more. The fact that this film is unrated due to gore only occurred to me until after I said yes, and when the little wimpy voice in my head told me I must be out of my mind for agreeing, I told it to be quiet and man up. I was going to see my first horror movie in a theater since the day when I walked out of the House on Haunted Hill remake like a chicken. I was an adult now, I could do this!

Since I mentioned not seeing the first one, Dayna was happy to invite me over and let me see it first. I loved it. It's set in New Orleans and actually filmed here, so that's always a win for me. On top of that, it's really funny AND a great throwback to classic slasher films of the 70s and 80s. Absolutely no CGI in this one (or the sequel, for that matter) just makeup and buckets of fake blood. What I'm learning though is it isn't really my stomach that's the problem. It's my face.

I don't have a problem with watching people be decapitated, gutted, having any of their limbs removed, cut in half, having their insides spill out or their brain matter exposed. But you attack someone's face, eyes, or mouth and I will squirm, recoil in horror, put my hands in front of my face, and probably make some kind of cry of pain. In the first Hatchet the most talked about kill scene comes about halfway through the movie and it involves someone's face. My reaction caused Dayna to look over at me and ask if I was OK. I managed to laugh at myself and enjoyed the rest of the movie.

I found out reading an interview today that the filmmaker, Adam Green, didn't like the fact that what people regarded as the best part of the movie came in the middle, so he set out to top that kill as many times as possible in the sequel. No doubt that is a large part of the reason that Hatchet II is unrated and, of course, a large majority of the kills are all about the face. I guess it makes sense for a killer who was cursed to be deformed and died because someone put a hatchet in his head to want to destroy everyone else's, but oh man were my limits tested. There's a scene at the beginning of American History X that makes me squirm every time I see it and you don't even see what actually happens. In Hatchet II, they recreated it and showed everything. At least I'm pretty sure they did, my hands were in front of my face so I didn't actually see it.

I don't want to spoil too much else about the kills because I know for people who enjoy these movies, the big draw is all about seeing these things happen. If you enjoy gore, this is a movie you need to see. The sequel is a bit more serious than the original. The first movie was a group of tourists and the second is a group of hunters who are purposely out to get him so it makes sense for the tone to shift a bit. It does however still have some great funny moments and I really enjoyed the additional background on the character.

I was always very resistant to films that are gore just for the sake of it, but now I'm learning that it's a very thin line between gory stories with value and flat out blood and guts exploitation. The first Saw movie has a lot of really horrible deaths, but the whole point is that it's a guy who is dying of cancer and wants others to appreciate life more. Unfortunately the success of that movie led to sequels which mostly just involved them trying to think of more horrible traps for people to end up in more than any kind of story. Slasher films tend to be fairly thin on plot but personally I think as long as your killer has an interesting origin/identity and your heroine grows and changes you've got a pretty good story on your hands. Many of the classics also liked to make sure that those dying were usually immoral in some way or really annoying so that you felt they were getting what they deserved. The Hatchet films went out of their way to turn this last trope on its head, a necessary twist for fans who have seen these movies so many times. So does that destroy the value of the story, if it's no longer about "evil" being punished by evil? In my personal opinion the answer is no, but I could see how someone could easily debate that. It's not much different than an attempt to define art or pornography. The standards are nearly impossible to define because they are different based on each person's opinions and experiences.

Bill & Ted's Excellent (live action ) Adventures and Cereal

I remember, even at the age of 11, being highly conflicted about the existence of this show. On one hand, it was a chance to see more Bill & Ted. On the other, this was not Alex Winter, Keanu Reeves, or George Carlin, so what was the point? I didn't know it at the time but it wasn't the original writers either.

The first image you see when you start the show is Rufus appearing before the three great ones and I'll give them kudos for doing a good job in recreating their outfits. The set even looks pretty good. The theme song is very reminiscent in sound to "I Can't Break Away," the opening song to the film. Rick Overton does a decent enough job playing Rufus. You can tell the two stars, Chris Kennedy as Bill and Evan Richards as Ted, are trying really hard to mimic Alex & Keanu's movements and way of speech. The images of the circuits of time are directly pulled from the movie. Their outfits are similar, and I can't complain about them not being exact because one would hope the guys would change clothes from time to time. Unfortunately, there's plenty of other things to complain about.

Ted has a dangly, shiny earring. It sticks out past his hair, and reflects the light pretty much every time his head moves. While I know earrings for guys were big in the 90s, I can't imagine that thing looking cool even then.

The guys work at Nail World, a hardware store. Their boss is the stereotypical high strung nerdy balding guy who can't stand them. The entire first episode is built around him, rather than putting the focus on B&T and seeing as how he's not even remotely funny, it's terrible. On top of that they go back in time and see King Arthur.. a mythical figure, not a true historical one. The only good thing about this was that Deidrich Bader played King Arthur, so it was funny to see him in something shortly before he became known for playing Jethro in the Beverly Hillbillies movie. For some strange reason in this first episode, Rufus is trying to convince someone to buy something at the hardware store, and he pulls his sunglasses down and his eyes flash yellow. The person is hypnotized and agrees to buy it. Do we all get superpowers in the future or something? Of course if the next stage of human evolution is mind control, that may explain why an entire civilization could follow the philosophy of a heavy metal band.

I'm assuming that the show is set in 1992, since it says Rufus is in 2692. Of course the events of Bogus Journey happen in 1991 so that's just plain wrong. Even if you assume that the princesses are NOT the same age as Bill & Ted, for them to still be in high school in 1992 would mean that they were freshman in 1988. That's definitely wrong because Ted even says to Bill about Missy "Remember when she was a senior and we were freshmen?" in the movie. Of course there is absolutely no mention of the princesses at all in this series, so maybe we're just supposed to take this as an alternate universe. It's also an alternate universe where Ted still has a mom and their fathers look nothing like their movie counterparts.

In the second episode they do what the second season of the cartoon series did, and jump into a TV show. Rather than a new phone book, they accomplish this by hooking the antennae of the booth up to the TV cable wire. The only excuse I can see for doing this stuff is that it's cheaper to create modern sets rather than period pieces. While I made it all the way through the first episode, halfway through the second my tolerance dwindled. I started basically watching the first clip and then stopping, just to get an idea of the basic premise of each episode. The plots are pedestrian typical bad sitcom fare and the jokes are incredibly corny. The only thing I found funny was at one moment when they go to play air guitar and realize they're out of tune. They stand there and tweak their imaginary head stocks, strum once to check the sound, then proceed again to air guitar triumphantly. Of course the real Bill & Ted can't even tell when they're out of tune, so it's still a bit of a failure.

There were a total of 7 episodes made and they're all up on youtube if you're really curious, but I strongly suggest not seeing these for any other reason. But you don't have to take my word for it...


While promoting Bogus Journey on the Arsenio Hall show, Alex Winter flat out admits that the TV show sucks, and why. Apparently he was not aware of the second season of the animated series at this point since he gives that an endorsement.


Here's part two, where he claims he actually enjoys the cereal.

The coolest thing about the cereal was that some of the boxes came with a cassette tape holder that sort of looked like the phone booth and had the animated Bill & Ted on it. The most heinous thing about the cereal was that it was made by Purina. I never tried it as a kid, though I do remember running into it at the store that is now called Big Lots. All the boxes had been cut with the box cutter used to open the box they were shipped in, and my dad wouldn't buy any for fear that the bag inside was cut too. This was probably for the best.

Just for fun, here's the cereal's commercial.


I have just about exhausted my Bill & Ted theme for you guys. The only thing left is the 12 issue Bill & Ted's Excellent Comic Book series.

Bill & Ted's (not so) Excellent Video Game Adventure

The NES era of games can be described by either using the opening line of a Tale of Two Cities, or perhaps by the ending line of the nursery rhyme about the girl with just one curl. What I mean is, there are some really great games on this system, and there are also absolutely terrible ones. Since the internet didn't exist in the 1980s there were two ways for you to get information about a game before you played it - gaming magazines, mostly Nintendo Power, or through word of mouth via your friends. Nintendo Power wanted you to buy their games, so you weren't going to find a bad review in its pages. There were so many games out there chances are your friends hadn't played them yet. So really you just went to the video store to rent, or maybe you were really lucky and got to buy one, and you hoped for the best.

At the video store, all of the games were lacking boxes with descriptions and most of them didn't include the manuals. So you looked at the sticker on the cartridge and the words and art posted there were all you had to go by. If the game was based on a movie, tv show, or cartoon you liked, chances are you were going to want to rent it. I imagine the kids with more spending money than I also took the leap and purchased these games for similar reasons. Video game companies realized this and jumped on the chance to purchase these licenses and create games off them. Unfortunately, most often the majority of the game's budget was spent on purchasing the license and not on actually developing a good game. These days we get awful licensed games because they are often rushed to release date to coincide with movie releases. In the eighties a lot of times this wasn't really an issue as the game would often come out long after the movie. Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure for the NES was released two and a half years after the movie came out, so there's really no excuse beyond LJN wanting to cash in on the movie's popularity with minimal effort. LJN was notorious for doing this. Scanning the list on this page, I can only find one game I liked out of their entire catalog.

My experience with this game in my youth mirrors a lot of other bad games we rented from this period. Pick it out, bring it home, load it into the console. Watch the intro then attempt to start playing the game with the very little information provided. Attempt to get used to the controls while also trying to figure out what you're supposed to do. End up dying a lot and making no progress until we eventually see the game over screen. At this point we would either 1)Search our Nintendo Power issues for any possible clues to the game, 2)Try again, often with mostly the same results, 3)Go to Dad and tell him we need to bring this one back and get another one. Option 3 rarely worked and mostly resulted in going back to Option 2 and trying to make the most of it for the rest of the weekend, or just flat out giving up and playing something else.



The intro of the game sets up the basic premise, with Rufus telling both Ted and Bill (in separate phone booths) that rebels have misplaced various historical figures in the wrong time periods and it is now up to you to put them back in the right place. That's a decent enough set up for the game. Trying to actually recreate the movie probably would have resulted in you just grabbing historical figures from their own time period, so this little twist helps to make it a little more interesting.


Whenever they talk, you get these cute images taken directly from the movie next to their speech bubbles.


Though they don't always make the most sense..


Bill's sprite looks NOTHING like him at all.


But at least he talks like him.

Rufus' sprite has a face, but the two main characters do not. I've had nightmares about things like that.

The items at your disposal are pudding cups, firecrackers, a textbook, and a cassette tape. While the firecracker is completely out of left field, the others all make sense. You travel through time by dialing a number for the time period, and once you do you'll go to a screen where you travel through the circuits of time to reach your destination.

The problem with this game is all in the execution. After the intro, you'll be brought to the phone book which lets you flip through the pages. Each page contains a different historical figure and their phone number.


Apparently Al Capone lives in Hell. Type his number on a calculator if you don't know what I'm talking about.

At first you might think you can just pick one and dial, but you actually need to flip all the way through to find the one that has a second number in red flashing underneath it. This number is the area they are currently displaced in. You'll need to go there first to find the person.


The place you need to go will always be the same number for each level. But you have to flip through the book anyway because it'll help you to know who you're looking for.

The phonebooth is a pay phone, so if you dial the wrong number you've just wasted some of the few precious coins you're allowed in the game. Inside the circuits of time you'll see the numbers laid out along the path. You also get a red circle that you can move, but there's no kind of instruction whatsoever as to what you are supposed to do with it.


Attempting to select a number or the phone booth by themselves doesn't do anything. You'll just watch the phone booth move from number to number until you eventually reach the last digit and it brings you to your destination. Apparently you can select the phone booth while it's over a number and somehow fling it forward ahead in the numbers, thereby saving you some coins. But if there's a way to control the phone booth's direction when you do this, I couldn't figure it out.

At this point you learn you are playing as Ted. You're in a medieval setting and there's a lot of peasants all around you. Some are standing still, others are walking around peacefully, and still others are running with their arms out. The ones standing will give you some kind of vague hint or an item. After you finish talking to them, they will turn into the walking peasant. The walking peasants are mad that you bumped into them and so they will demand one of your coins. Once you run out of coins, they send you to jail. The running types are already in pissed off mode and out to get you, and if they catch up to you or you accidentally run into them, they will also put you in jail. You're given skeleton keys at the beginning of the level and once you run out of keys to let yourself out of jail with, it's game over. Basically, going to jail is the equivalent of losing a life in this game.


You will see this screen A LOT.

The problem with those standing peasants turning into walking peasants is that logic is going to make you stand in front of them to talk to them and chances are you're not going to move out of the way before they start walking. Logic is also going to make you press B or A to talk to them the first time, but in fact in this game you just bump into them to do so. If you hit A you jump, and if you hit B you will throw an item which will result in the person running away from you. When you jump in this game, 9 times out of 10 you fall on your butt. You then have to watch the character shake his head a few times before he will stand up and you can move again. For the life of me I can't figure out why this happens except to be really annoying. Of course when you're stuck like that, you've got a pretty good chance that the walking or angry peasants are going to run into you and most likely throw you in jail.


This is the second most common sight you will see, with just the background changing.

After no doubt running out of coins and getting thrown in jail at least a few times, you've now figured out that you should approach the standing peasants from behind or the side in order to speak to them. You may have also been lucky enough to figure out what the items do. When you throw the pudding cup the peasants run after it because who doesn't love pudding. When you throw the firecracker, they all run away from it to avoid the explosion. Throwing the textbook will make everyone on screen disappear and throwing the cassette tape will make everyone stop and dance for a short while. Basically, the items are there to try to help you avoid the walking and angry peasants and get to your destination.

You might think that would be a huge help, but the movement controls are not very responsive and it makes it really hard to dodge and weave. On top of that, sometimes it's ok to walk on the grass and sometimes it's not. I found myself jumping frequently just to get Ted to move at all. It's maddening.

Eventually the standing peasants will tell you what direction to find your historical figure in. They will also tell you that "something strange" can be found in a certain direction. Chances are on first run through you're going to try to make it to the historical figure, right? Who cares about the other items, I'm trying to win the game here. Unfortunately, the historical figure is not going to come with you unless you find a specific item that serves as bait to convince them. These can actually be quite funny.. Sitting Bull needs a lawn chair, for instance. But first you have to find the stuff.

There are some buildings you can enter and there will be people inside. You talk to them and you're given usually two or three choices to respond to them. Say something too rude, and they'll throw you in jail. Say something just wrong, and they'll tell you to go away. Hit the lucky string of answers and they'll give you a clue just like the random standing guys outside. Logically you would think you would scroll through your answer choices by either moving the D pad (possibly up and down or left and right) or maybe even pushing select. But no, you scroll through the choices with A and select one with B. If you didn't notice the little tiny 1 next to your first answer, you might not realize you even have a choice in what to say at all.

The peasants kept telling me I could find something strange "in a tree near the stable," "at the last fence," "at the crossroads," "at the four rocks," and even once "nearby." The problem is there's no marker at all for these objects, and all you literally do is walk around and hope you'll stumble on them. You can't use any of the buttons to search, you just have to hope you hit the right pixel marker eventually.


Ok, there's a horse here, is this the stable? I tried touching that tree plus a couple more slightly above it, but didn't find anything.

You can also ride the horse, but it's so hard to control you'll get knocked off him almost immediately.


Someone told me to find the rock by the end of the river. For the longest time, I couldn't find the river. When I finally stumbled upon a body of water, I couldn't walk. So I had to keep clumsily jumping to try to go down as far as I could. If you end up jumping into the water, it will take you all the way back to the start. It turns out I found the wrong end of the river. I painfully jumped through at least 6 screens of river just to find out I was supposed to find the opposite end first, jump into a canoe, and I'm guessing I would have to collide with the right rock in the river and THEN I could finally get the item. Well, after jumping all the way down the very long river, I accidentally jumped over the canoe and it brought me all the way back down to the end.

So, that's it. I did as much as my sanity could take. But I couldn't find a single object and I couldn't find Rembrandt.

Luckily these days there is www.gamefaqs.com and I was able to get the password to the second level. This one is located in the old west, and you get to play as Bill.


Look, it's different!


Oh, wait. No it's not.

So that's as far as I got. Perhaps with a larger amount of time, I could have gotten further, and had I used save states via a ROM I could have tried and tried again and reduced some of my frustration. But I wanted to recreate the experience you would have originally had playing this game back then. I wasn't completely authentic because I did check a walkthrough to help gain some extra knowledge. A huge shout out to Wilson Lau for compiling this walkthrough 9 years ago because I wouldn't have been able to do as much as I did without it. If you're crazy enough to want to give the game a try yourself, I highly recommend consulting that to help you with talking to the people in the houses and knowing what bait you need for each historical figure.

Another small note: The music in the game is ok, even if it's not the power metal you hear in the movie. The strange thing is it doesn't loop. It will play for a set time, then leave you to do the rest of the level in silence. I'm not really sure what that's all about.



There were also B&T games for the Gameboy, Atari Lynx, and the PC. The gameboy game seems to be actually loosely based on Bogus Journey (and I do mean loosely) because it mentions DeNomolos as the main villain. Apparently the object is to collect orbs on a screen while dodging enemies, so sort of like the original Mario Bros game, I guess. The Lynx game seems to be very similar in set up to the NES one, except that you collect music notes and for some strange reason the plot is that Death has kidnapped the princesses. The PC game actually followed the plot of Excellent Adventure and required you to locate the historical figures in their own time periods. Since I don't have access to these games, I can't review them. If you have any experience with them, please share it in the comments.

Next up: I'll be reviewing the live action TV series and I'll also touch on the cereal. No, I'm not going to eat any, don't worry.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures Season 2

When I first got the idea to do this marathon, I thought it would be a lot of fun to talk about and go over the various B&T appearances. I enjoyed the movies as much as I always have, and I'm excited about going over the comics as I imagine that's an area that most people definitely don't remember or have never seen. What I didn't bargain on is that there's also a bad side to this as well.

Between seasons 1 and 2 of the animated series, Fox purchased the rights to make a live action Bill & Ted TV series. The deal apparently also included the rights to the animated show. They used their versions of Bill & Ted to do the voices and created 8 episodes.

Apparently, traveling throughout all of history and even possibly into the future was just not enough of a storytelling engine for them. They felt the need to change it up a bit. In the second episode Rufus shows up to give them the new phone directory which allows them to travel into movies, books, video games, and etc. Literally, ETC. is a separate category. It apparently includes the ability to shrink down to mini size to enter a guy's body. Here's the show's new intro which shows this new change, along with the new voices for the characters, new theme song, and the slightly different animation style.


I can't decide which song is more annoying.

The problem with this is that they mainly choose to enter TV shows, and without the rights to them, we get parodies like "Leave it to Badger" and "Mr. Radish's Condominium" the latter of which is a stand in for Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. They really should have gone with more books, seeing as how many of the classics are old enough to be public domain. I guess they thought kids don't read enough to get it.

You would think with only 8 episodes, it would have been easy for me to make it through this. The fact is I just couldn't, and generally halfway through an episode, I had really had enough. I'm starting to wonder how many other cartoon shows I watched as a kid that were this awful and I just didn't have the maturity yet to realize it.

The voices don't sound anything like the original movie cast. I don't care for the art style changes, which add colored collars to both their outfits for no reason and overall just look a little more cutesy. The situations they get into are very similar to the ones from the first season, and they still included a lot of their trademark speech and even some quotes straight from the movie. But without using Alex, Keanu and Carlin, it loses its charm rather quickly. Add to it that each episode is trying to instill some kind of lesson and it gets really old really quickly. There's also no continuity here from the previous season, as the former "don't interfere in your own lives" rule is completely ignored as they go and babysit themselves one episode.

I really can't recommend this to anyone unless you just have a strong curiosity for how bad it could be. This is definitely one of those shows that deserved its very short run.

Next up: The NES game. It was made by LJN. If that doesn't mean anything to you yet, you'll see.