Loonatics Unleashed - The Music Villain (Snark)

Here we go with the kickoff to the finale of Loonatics Unleashed. Technically they consider the finale to be a two-parter, and that’s the two after this one. But forget that. This episode leads straight into the last two and has events you need to know about for those to make sense. It’s a three-parter.

This episode’s called “The Music Villain,” eh? As in the stock member of a superhero rogues gallery with a music motif?

The Loonatics are at Zadavia’s little underwater house where she’s praising how much more formidable they’ve gotten, like Bugs with his magic sword and Wile E. in the “non-technology hero department.” No idea what she was watching to make that assessment, since if anything the show relies on his inventions even more now than the last season. In fact as she says that we clearly see footage of him using his turn-things-to-water gun from “Cape Duck.” “I’ve been trying to get out of the lab more” indeed.

Right after this they’re interrupted as Zadavia gets a talking email saying she and guest are invited to the show at the Cosmic Abyss that night, but it’s only from “a friend.” Lexi says that’s apparently a mondo venue, and despite being some kind of super vague important dignitary/law enforcement official, Zadavia’s curiosity’s greater than her caution and she decides to see who sent the tix.

Daffy acts as if he’s obviously going to accompany her to this, but she comeidcally picks Wile E. instead. At least she didn’t pick Bugs. Daffy shows up anyway, since it’s hard to keep teleporters from gate-crashing these things. He even acts like a jerk and tells Wile E. to get them some drinks, and Wile E. does. Hey, if he’s a jerk, you’re a doormat.

Check the reactions on the crowd.

The generic music act ends, and introducing the next act is none other than Mr. Leghorn, almost unrecognizable yet somehow more recognizable than ever because of how much more Doug Dimmadome-y he became in between seasons.

Meet Bootes Belinda, an annoying funk musician OF THE FUTURE! He sounds a lot like the guy who talks over the intro sequence, actually, because, well, it is the same guy, Bootsy Collins. Dang, went all out for a name for his character, eh? He constantly says “Hit me!”, and I’m inclined to humor him.

After a minute Zadavia recognizes the music the band’s playing, and Bootes calls out to “Zadie” before he starts blasting lasers from his stupid future guitar into the stands

The entire band starts destroying the stadium, and despite having energy powers sufficient to go up against fighter ships, I have to notice Zadavia’s content to do nothing more than blast a few pieces of falling debris before they hit her and her escorts. Not other people, just her, Daffy and Wile E. This leaves the two Loonatics present to try and subdue the militant musicians. Granted Zadavia was just talking about how much they’ve honed their skills, but is this really the time to promote their personal growth?

Daffy and Wile E. aren’t much use and get flung into the stands, and the band fly away on their floating stage, having achieved…something.

Back at Loonatics HQ (and not the underwater house) Zadavia’s still sure she heard that short bit of music before, and right then Bootes easily hacks their communications and taunts Zadavia that they do indeed have a shared past even though she claims to have never seen him before. Flexing his Batmanesque Detective Skills™ once again, Bugs suggests they “do some snoopin’ and see where handsome and his funky band play next.” Which will work! Because after collapsing their previous venue and attacking the attendees, he’ll show up to play wherever he’s booked next and WON’T be intercepted by legions of police and/or military waiting for the guy to show his face. Besides, he’s obviously interested in Zadavia, so even if the Loonatics do run into him at his next gig, what are the odds it’ll just be a distraction so they won’t be around to stop flunkies from grabbing her? I’m going to go with high to very high.

But we don’t even have to wait. Retiring to her underwater house, Zadavia’s flabbergasted to find “the Lumarius Flower of Freleng” floating in her room, since “it can’t be, not here.” When she touches the bloom, it sucks out her rainbow powers. Bootes was hiding and comes out to explain how the flower’s “the black dwarf daisy, a cosmic light sucker. No photons escape its petals.” And since her powers are apparently light-derived, she’s badly weakened. Although if she was able to recognize the flower you’d hope she’d know that and know better than to touch it.

And remember Bugs’s plan to check where Bootes’s band will be playing next? They’re not calling around or checking booking records to find that out, the Loonatics are out randomly hitting nightclubs hoping to find one he’s playing at. I just…wha…why…how did…<deep breath> We went from Bugs solving mysteries with his master detective skills to randomly throwing out lines hoping for a bite? Why nightclubs when he was big enough to get booked at a huge stadium? And perhaps best of all, the Loonatics aren’t out checking different clubs, so as to make semi-effective use of their time with this gambit. All of them are together for some reason as they do this.

Daffy apparently got a bit of action while they were in there, though, leading Bugs to declare “You’re hopeless, Duck.” Consider who came up with the genius plan he’s not sticking to before you remonstrate anybody, oh Great Leader.

Bugs’s watch goes off then, and he automatically can tell that Zadavia’s in trouble and they speed to her underwater house to the rescue. You see?! I told you, you were just leaving her ripe for the picking, but noooooooooooooooo!

They run in and find the place trashed, which I guess Bootes did just to be a dick since obviously no struggle took place.  “Looks like the maid’s in for a butt-kicking,” Daffy opines. “Uh, I don’t think a maid did this, Duck,” Bugs replies. And I don’t think he was serious, ya big-eared twit.

Wile E. plays back the security cam footage, showing Zadavia touching the flower and getting sucked dry before Bootes himself calls them on the holo-phone. He shows them he’s got what’s-her-face hostage, but is willing to let her go for “a little cosmic guitar” that Wile E. can “funkenstein up.” Wile E. traces the signal (which Bootes was expecting him to do), but first it’s off to funkenstein up that cosmic guitar. And that’s all they’re telling us about this thing for now. Cosmic guitar.

Zadavia put a security camera in her ow bedroom?

Upon arriving at the rail yard to meet up with Bootes, Bugs asks if everybody knows the plan. You’re only asking now? Everyone says yes while brandishing progressively larger weapons. Yeah, that’s not gonna turn the situation ugly. Bootes shows up and quips, “if it ain’t a blast from the past!” He does ignore all their weapons, though, and just wants the guitar.

As soon as he has it, the band attacks the Loonatics but proves more than a match for the varmints’ firepower. That is, until Wile E. gets them with his trusty jello gun. Somehow being trapped in jello exposes the band members to be robots (or “mannequins”) except for the keyboard player, who somehow uses his keyboard to set two trains on a collision course with the car where Zadavia’s being held. Gotta say, it’s actually pretty clever for this show to have the real villain trick the heroes into thinking one of his flunkies is the leader to take them by surprise. Even if none of them noticed how he was suspiciously absent before.

The Loonatics stop the trains just in time, but Zadavia proves to be a holographic dummy, and this gives the keyboard player time to free his puppets and make off with the cosmic guitar. And none of the Loonatics bother to think of pursuing with those jetpacks they got there with.

Back at his hideout, the keyboard player siphons Zadavia’s rainbow powers, which she still has somehow despite the thing with the flower, into the cosmic guitar which makes it truly cosmic, I guess. Zadavia wakes up and remembers seeing him before, back on Freleng, this menacing personage proving to be one Rupes Oberon.

The villains to come from Freleng have all been insultingly one-dimensional, but this one’s just painful. Rupes, or as the credits call him and so shall I, Keyboard Man, became embittered and joined a cabal for universal domination because…Zadavia ignored his composition for a new Frelengian national anthem (How can a planet have a “national” anthem? To quote one of the masters, “Doesn’t the fact that it’s universal make it international?”).

Although as usual Zadavia hardly comes out smelling like a rose. “But Rupes, we already had a national anthem. One that had words.” That’s why you turned him down? Because of the existence of lyrics??

She’s only explaining this now, by the way. The way it plays out in the flashback he’s serenading her, then Deuce whispers something in her ear and she gets up and leaves without so much as a “thanks but no thanks.” Yeah, he’s a maniac for becoming a force of evil over that (I almost said lunatic). No doubt. Who knows what might’ve happened if she’d been polite about it instead of getting up and walking away, though?

At Loonatics HQ, the varmints are actually taking time trying to figure out who the band’s puppetmaster was. Clearly not the guy it obviously was in the last scene!

Look at this guy. He does not look like a cool, butt-kicking, crime-solving hero. Sorry.

Wile E. finally deigns to explain the significance of the cosmic guitar, and that it ties into string theory. To hear him tell it, “Think of the universe as a galactic orchestra. The Keyboard Man knows that if he can channel Zadavia’s energy into his guitar, he can use that power to control the universe.” Simple enough, not that he’ll ever do anything of that magnitude, but what does that have to do with your description of the universe as an orchestra?

Bugs magically intuits that what Keyboard Man wants above all else is attention. That’s right, but how does he know? Anyway, it means he’s going to try whatever he’s going to try at Galaxy Fest, the biggest music fest ever. Which has nobody there when the Loonatics go there and when the band attacks them again.

As before the Loonatics prove a poor match for the band and get knocked all over the place by their musical energy blasts, even without the bad guys busting out the cosmic guitar. As usual Wile E. has a device to fit the occasion (Really getting to strut his non-inventor stuff, isn’t he?), a satellite dish to reflect the band’s attacks. Bugs goads them into shooting by insulting Bootes’s mama, which works even though he’s just a puppet being controlled by Keyboard Man.

Where is that coming out of? Is he Inspector Gadget all of a sudden?

The mannequins are handily destroyed by their own reflected attack, but Keyboard Man appears to be all too happy to be rid of them, as it’s only then he busts out the cosmic guitar and uses it to drop the de-powered Zadavia off the stage and open a portal that’ll take him to meet some other powerful baddie he can join up with to complete his grand scheme.

Unfortunately Roadrunner catches Zadavia, who moans. “I’m afraid the guitar isn’t the only thing he’s taken,” Zadavia moans. “He’s also taken my powers.” Which you were getting so much use out of, with the way you make them do all the dirty work.

By the way, Bugs tries to console her by saying they can always get the guitar back. Even though he himself said before it made Keyboard Man invincible, and it gives a deranged musician control of the fabric of the universe. Please be in a hurry to do something about this, Greatest Action Hero of All Time! Man, this show was never that great, but it’s gone downhill fast the last couple episodes.

Who should Keyboard Man be paying a visit to but Optimatus! Who’s chained to a chair even though he wasn’t last time we saw him. I do hope they’re going to explain that.

But I ain’t betting on it.

And now...back to the two-part series finale.

Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Revenge (Real Review)

When last we left Roger Wilco, he’d managed to pry the power of ultimate destruction from the hands of the ruthless Sarien mercenaries despite his status as a mere janitor and become the hero of his home planet of Xenon.

But before too long the furor over his heroics died down and Roger became yesterday’s news. His hard work did get him promoted to the spot of head janitor on one of Xenon’s space stations, which is small consolation as he’s the only member of the sanitation staff and most of the rest of the crew can’t stand him. Xenon has moved on.

But even if the rest of the universe no longer remembers what Roger did, one man hasn’t forgotten. Unfortunately that man is Sludge Vohaul, the mad scientist who hired the Sariens to steal the Star Generator and use it for evil. As arch-villains are wont to do, he not only cooks up another scheme to bring the galaxy to its knees (to turn the citizens of Xenon into jelly with an army of cloned life insurance salesmen). But also has his flunkies kidnap Roger to exact some payback for thwarting his previous scheme. Fortunately the bad guys forgot to gas up the hovercraft and Roger manages to escape onto the dangerous jungle planet Labion.

And I seem to be one of only a few people who consider this a step down from the previous installment. For one thing, perhaps the biggest one, the sense of humor isn’t nearly as strong as in the first game. Off the top of my head I can only think of two real jokes: when one of Vohaul’s guards insults another one by calling him “Gorf breath,” and when Roger passes out while hanging in a snare trap and dreams he’s Leisure Suit Larry. Maybe you’re willing to count the thing with the parody of Alien. I don’t know if I am. You walk one screen off where you start in the next game and you’ll see that many gags.

There’s also the villain’s evil scheme not being something that sounds like something out of a straight sci-fi premise, I guess.

But anyway, Roger finds himself stranded on a hostile jungle planet and needs to find some way off it. Kind of like Kerona, except it’s a jungle and not a desert. But again, the wit just doesn’t seem as prevalent even compared to the original version of the first game. Case in point, there’s not one but two of that easy fallback plan game designers use when they can’t think of anything else: mazes.

The first is actually the tendrils of some kind of plant monster that paralyze Roger if he touches them, and then it’s chow time for the monster. And you have go through it both ways to get something you need. I will admit that when the game got an icon-driven remake like its predecessor (a fan-made one, some twenty-four years later), they did include an alternate solution to make this part much less of a pain in the ass. Like with the magnet and the slot machine from the remake of the first Space Quest game.

The second one’s a little less frustrating, although that’s mainly because you don’t die if you touch the walls. Although you do die if you take too long to find the way out/wander into the wrong dead end; I never really found out which, but I think it’s the second one.

Besides two mazes in one game where mazes aren’t the whole point, the puzzles do seem a little more arbitrary than they did in the first game and approaching them with the same mindset I managed to adopt then (the hero’s a janitor who knows as much about surviving in a hostile environment as my flabby suburban ass) didn’t help that much.

Some are kind of obvious, though.

At one point you cross a swamp, and there’s a certain deep spot where you need to dive. If you just dive, though, and don’t specifically tell the game you’re holding your breath before you do, you run out of time and drown before you have any chance of finding out where it goes. Because you, who have intelligence to type well enough to use the text parser and operate a computer in the first place, wouldn’t automatically hold your breath before diving to the bottom of a body of water. And you need to do this because there’s, of course, an all-important item to be had.

That’s assuming you even walk across the swamp at the right part of the screen to find out there’s a deep spot at all and it’s not just there to make you figure out a way to keep from being eaten by a monster that hides underwater.

And I would of course be remiss if I didn’t point out how two later games make a point of killer robots coming after Roger because he didn’t pay for a FREE whistle he sends away for in this game.

It gets better when you end up back at Vohaul’s space base (not entirely by choice), as he like any cheesy villains has a number of death traps protecting him from meddling dogooders, and the proper solutions involve some fairly basic, if slightly cartoony, logic. Then again this is supposed to be a comedic adventure.

“Vohaul’s Revenge” doesn’t destroy the series, but it’s still something of a step back. That’s okay, though. The next little Space Quest odyssey more than makes up for it.

RIP Harold Ramis

I'm sure a lot of us are upset to hear about this. I've heard about the demises of lots of actors, but nothing has really upset me, personally, the way this has. Ghostbusters and my worship of it made up a significant part of my childhood, of course.

But more than that, Harold Ramis lived in Highland Park, Illinois, which was two towns south of where I lived for most of my life, and I always thought it was so cool living and going to school relatively close to one of the Ghostbusters. A couple years ago I went to a Q&A panel at the Highland Park Library and like many of the people in attendance brought Ghostbusters merchandise to see if I could an autograph, and ever since once of my most prized possessions has been my copy of Pumpkin Patch Panic. For a few minutes, I was close enough to touch one of my childhood idols. I didn't even mind that he kept the marker.

Goodbye, Harold. You'll be sorely missed.

Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter (Real Review)

Ah, when adventure games realized they could be funny.

It seems that far off in the depths of space, the life-giving star of the populous planet of Xenon is growing cold and weak. To prevent their extinction, a team of scientists aboard the research ship Arcada are tasked with finding a solution. And by god they do in the form of the awesome Star Generator that can restore a dying star to health or, in the clammy hands of evil, turn a planet into a charred crisp in an instant.

Which is exactly what the ruthless Sarien space warriors have in mind as their battleship bears down on the unsuspecting Arcada. Soon they’ve slaughtered the scientists, stolen the Star Generator and set the ship to self destruct. The only crew member they missed was you, Roger Wilco, sanitation engineer second class, and only because you were, as usual, slacking off on the job and napping in a broom closet when the Sariens were purging the crew. But if you don’t watch your ass they might just catch you during their final sweep while you try to find a way off the doomed ship.

To tell the truth, Space Quest was actually the first Sierra series I discovered. When I got around to King’s Quest I’ll admit there was a little disappointment that it was a series of mainly straight fantasy quests, and not what Space Quest was to its genre: a raucous parody that tended to have fun at your expense whenever you did something stupid, which usually resulted in a hideous death. If not, it just made it impossible for you to win the game.

The parodic nature of the game also answers what I thought was one of the weaknesses of the earlier examples of the King’s Quest series. Namely, why would the finest knight in the kingdom on a desperate quest to save it embark on his adventure completely unarmed and unequipped. Well, our so-called hero’s very nature explains that here. He’s not Strong Bod Space Captainface, he’s a janitor. And not even very good at that. So basically the great hero charged with keeping the evil aliens from unleashing galactic devastation is you, the everyday schmuck. And I was mostly okay with that. I relate more to Dave Lister than Jim Kirk anyway.

And frankly if you're the kind of person who runs away when you see the bad guys, you're probably the kind of person who ignored the magic sword in the Zork books too.

As annoying as the taunts I earned when I got killed could be, it just drove the point home even further that me, the guy sitting at the keyboard, literally had as much idea what he was doing as my character should’ve. When I started thinking about it like that I felt pulled into the game to a higher degree and the things I was expected to do seemed less arbitrary. And playing further involved common sense behaviors like not taking the first offer when someone wants to buy your air car, don’t leave the keys in the ignition, don’t follow a sketchy-looking guy into a dark alley. Not so much if I was up on my bedtime fairytales or not.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t some annoyances, and some big ones. One is present in the first part of the game, where you need to escape that Arcada and not just dodge the Sarien soldiers looking for survivors but do so before the ship explodes. There’s an all-important item necessary to get the most successful ending in the game you need to get while you’re there, but with a clock ticking down to your doom it’s a little counterintuitive to be in an exploratory state of mind and to think doubling back is a good idea.

The biggest annoyance is, of course, once you escape the Arcada and manage to make your way to some semblance of civilization, you need to scare up enough money to buy a spaceship. And since you’re a janitor who has no idea how to fly a spaceship, a robot to handle that for you. The only way to get money is a slot machine in the local bar. And if you get three skulls, you don’t just lose your money, you freaking die.

Fortunately this was one of a few mercies the game designers took when the game was revamped a few years later with Sierra’s new icon interface. While you’re on the Arcada you can find an item that lets you cheat the slot machine. You even get puzzle points for doing that, and only get to kill an afternoon saving and reloading if you do it the hard way. Thanks, Sierra!

They got sued for this later. But you knew that.

Another comes in the form of making the coupons for local businesses actual inventory items. You got actual physical pieces of paper that came in the box of the original game, and apparently quite a few players couldn’t figure out you could walk into the bar or robot store and “redeem coupon” to reap the rewards.

Despite throwing players those bones, though, a couple of things were made nastier. Like when you’re about to launch your escape pod in the first game, it politely reminds you to buckle up before you blast off. Forgetting to do so in the remake kills you automatically.

Mostly the updates to the original were good, though, like taking advantage of the extra space to cram in more silly sci-fi references. It’s a shame the remake didn’t do better, though, and we had to wait until after the turn of the century before fan developers were a thing and other old games in the Sierra library might start to see rerelease with a less clunky interface.

But all in all this is a fine start to a series willing to have a sense of humor about itself, even if it’s willing to have some fun at the player’s expense quite a few times too. I’ve always preferred a game that was willing to be weird over one that wasn’t anyway.

Adventure Begins Here 2 - Dragon's Deep (Real Review)

Didn’t think I’d see the day, but since I did, Adventure Begins Here: The Renegade Wizard, supremely clichéd story of unlikely hero Toby the squire, evidently did well enough to go to sequel.

A little time has passed. Toby’s apprenticing under a new knight and the kingdom’s facing a new threat, this time from a massive rampaging dragon. And the only weapon in the realm capable of slaying such a ferocious beast, the legendary Dragon Spear, has been filched from the royal repository. So you find yourself on another quest, not just to retrieve the spear but to then use it to slay the dragon before it incinerates the entire kingdom.

Unlike the first book, this one begins with a part where Toby’s recounting how he got to a certain point that’s told in first person. Since it’s a flashback, you have a nominal amount of control but if you die the narration stops and says that’s not what really happened, and you get sent back to pick another course of action. Reminds me a little of the do-over feature in the old Zork books, except as far as I remember it never tried to catch me cheating.

It was a little confusing though, since as a direct sequel to the previous book you’re expecting to be able to carry over the stuff you got in the first one. And you can. But it’s only once the “tutorial” part ends and you have to start actually rolling the dice that the game brings that up. Importing your character isn’t even mentioned in the rules. So you can, you just aren’t given any reason to think so until you’ve been reading the book for ten minutes, which got the book off on kind of a weird foot.

Which brings me to how when you do import you stuff, you can also say you’ve leveled up since the last book. While filling in your character sheet with the stuff you plundered from the first book, you can spend Hero Points to buy skills or spells relevant to the one you picked before going after Maudilus in the first book. It’s an interesting dilemma that represents since a having certain skill can feasibly make the adventure easier, but at the same time if you break the bank you won’t be able to reverse a roll that could mean game over. Although those of us checking this out because of being longtime Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf readers, like myself, are used to not having Hero Points to fall back on anyway.

Oh, and you probably did, but if you picked the reading runes skill, hope you picked the wizard’s spell book as your prize. Otherwise the selection of spells for sale will be awfully limited.

Unfortunately, the writing and plot are still as pedestrian as can be. One particular thing that doesn’t make any sense is that when the story begins, Toby’s the squire to a new knight. After the flashback portion ends and he’s rescued by a group of knights who plan on venturing onward to slay the dragon, he asks to come along, but they demur because a prophecy says only a knight can do it. He says they can just knight him and he’ll be good. And they do. And that’s it. He’s a knight, just like that.

Kinda anticlimactic, don’t you think? Or worse, delayed. Something like killing an evil wizard, one who foiled every bounty hunter, assassin and army of knights of the realm sent to dispose of him, seems like it’d merit a promotion, but no. It’s not even that nobody else knows about it and doesn’t believe Toby when he claims responsibility. When Toby and his new benefactor go to the capital city, the knights there have already heard the story of how he kicked Maudilus’s renegade wizard behind and give him a hearty slap on the back for it. Why is Toby still apprenticing when the book starts?

Speaking of a prophecy, here it is: “A knight the slayer will be, but the Dragon Spear is the key.” As prophetic verse goes, that’s pretty nickel-and-dime stuff there. Try this one on.

“When the full moon shines o’er the temple deep,

A sacrifice will stir from sleep

The legions of a long forgotten lord

When a fair royal maid on the altar dies,

The dead of Maakengorge shall rise

To claim their long-awaited reward.”

The rhyme’s not the best, but it does tie into the plot (of Lone Wolf 4, The Chasm of Doom) and it’s a little unnerving if you think about what it means is at stake. The one in this book just tells you the one to kill the dragon must be a knight, which as I already said was handled poorly, and gives a nebulous clue.

There are also Greek mythology motifs in here, with talking idols of the gods offering you magical artifacts if you can prove yourself worthy. They feel out of place, but I get the feeling they were put there to make something else feel less weird. You see, one of the guardians of the dragon’s lair is no less than Medusa. It seems she was only put in there so the player could have an easy way and a hard way to kill the dragon, and the author was inspired to put the easy way in by seeing the Clash of the Titans remake.

And in the end, this book seems even more hopeful than the first of another installment. Those artifacts you get from the gods? You’re told about one thing they do, but it’s made pretty clear they probably have other powers you have yet to discover. And the spear wasn’t stolen by the dragon’s thralls to protect their master, it was stolen by a cult of elves for reasons of their own, which the author was probably hoping to build up in another story. With where the creativity starts and stops on the premises of these books, not sure I’m looking forward to that.

But I’ll probably review it anyway.