Transformers 1986 first-draft script

Uh, so, apparently, Ron Friedman sold a copy of the first draft of the 1986 Transformers movie to members of the Transfandom, or something. It is available here:

http://boltax.blogspot.com/2010/12/heritaage-auctions-transformers-movie.html

This is A Very Big Deal to all Transformers fans. Big ups to David Willis (creator of the webcomics Shortpacked! and Dumbing of Age) who made me aware of this piece of Transformers legend.

Holy cow.

Why manga is cheaper.

As a former comic store owner, one of the questions I get asked the most is why manga is so much cheaper than American comics.

I'll preface this by saying I have done absolutely zero actual research into this answer. I've just used some common sense.

First off, manga tends to be printed in black-and-white, and on low-grade paper. American comics are printed on high-grade, glossy stock paper, and in full-color. Oftentimes, nowadays, with full bleed, meaning some of the artwork goes off the edge of the page.

Go to your nearest photocopy shop. Ask them to reproduce something in black and white on the type of paper used in manga, and then ask them to reproduce something in full color with full bleed on American comic paper stock. Notice how the American comic reproduction is going to be at least three times as much, because of the higher-quality product.

Secondly, let's look at what companies are putting out: Manga publishers are re-printing translated material. American comics publishers are creating 20-24 pages of original, brand-new content, every single month. Now, both types of publishers are paying for printing, advertising, distribution, etc. But what different things are they paying for?

Manga publishers are paying for the licensed rights to reproduce already-created material and translations. Sometimes they pay for newly-designed covers.

American comics publishers are paying for original scritps, artwork, inking, coloring, cover design, editing, continuity checks (in many cases, as ignored as they may be), and, sometimes, even licensing. And every single person along that line needs to be paid enough to make a living doing their job.

Hey, reproduction is cheap. Don't believe me? Compare the amount of advertising found in most American monthly comics with the amount of advertising found in their trade paperbacks and hardcovers. That's right - Montly comics will have 8-12 pages of ads for 20-24 pages of comic, while the TPBs and HCs have NO ADS. Why? The creators have already been paid for the original work, and, until recently, very few comics creators had royalty clauses built into their work-for-hire contracts.

Once the work is created, reproducing it is cheaper than creating new work. As a result, manga and American comics reprints actually end up being about the same price, when you consider the differences in paper stock and color versus black & white.

This isn't to say that either is BETTER. I only bother to read stories that I think are good stories, regardless of their country of origin, or, in some cases, even the cost, if the story is good enough.

So, manga is cheaper than American comics because, in the United states, manga costs less to produce. That's all.

Interrobang!?

From Dictionary.com:

–noun
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
Also, interabang.

Origin:
1965–70, Americanism ; interro(gation point) + bang1 , printers' slang for an exclamation point

Retail Horror: Part 3

Today, a story from Toys "R" Us!

This one, of all my retail horror stories, is the only one that could be considered at all my fault. This lady came up and bought a lot of small items. I don't remember exactly how many, but it was over a dozen items, and the total retail value was over 100 dollars. It was only my fifth or so day at the job, and the woman asked for gift receipts for each item, as most of the gifts were for a lot of upcoming birthdays.

Gift Receipts are receipts that don't include the price, so that a person may return an item without knowing how much you spent on them. Which is kind of stupid, because you can just look up the price of something online. But I digress.

Now, at TRU, in 2004, there were three options we were presented with, when it came to gift receipts. The first was No Gift Receipt. This was the most frequently-used option, as most people were just buying things for themselves. The second option was Single Gift Receipt, so all the items would be placed on one receipt with no prices listed. This was the Gift Receipt option that I saw used the most that wasn't none. Finally, there was Individual Gift Receipts, where one Gift Receipt is printed for each item being purchased, resulting in a multitude of receipts at the end of the transaction.

Also, it was totally still my first week, and this particular TRU store, at least at the time, did not do a very good job of training. I had three half-days of working with another employee, who showed me the basics of everything we do in the "R" Zone (video game section), and on my fourth day (which was my first full day), I was left alone to run the "R" Zone all by myself. I think this particular event took place on my first solo Saturday. Obviously, there were other people in the store, but not as many as you'd think.

The woman, in addition to asking me for individual gift receipts for each item, also asked me to hurry up. Apparently, she had left her child at the nearby Chuck E. Cheese's, and wanted to quickly get back to him. So, in my attempt to hurry, I accidentally hit the No Gift Receipt option, out of the habit I'd already formed after just a few days on the job. And the lady freaked out about this mistake, and demanded that I fix this situation, and re-do the entire transaction so she could have her gift receipts. Also, I had to hurry, because she had abandoned her child.

For the record, the only Chuck E. Cheese's nearby was one that was on the other side of the shopping center from the TRU at which I worked. Like, her kid could've walked over to TRU and it wouldn't have been a big deal at all. So it's not like she left her son very far away.

Now, why the heck this lady was paying for a dozen or so toys in the "R" Zone is beyond me - I was not the only register open, and you had to go completely out of your way to get to me, over any of the regular registers. Secondly, after exiting the "R" Zone, you had to go past all the regular registers, anyways, before leaving the store! So this lady thought that coming over to me, way out of her way, would be faster. Of course.

In addition, in order to void out her previous transaction, I had to call over a manager. But the store was always understaffed, because TRU corporate didn't give us enough hours to go around. So it took something like 15 minutes for a manager to get over to me, even though I had a walkie-talkie unit that I used to radio them, directly.

And, of course, by this time, there was a line of people who just wanted to buy one or two games lining up behind this lady, who was still complaining about the fact that she left her child alone at Chuck E. Cheese's.

LISTEN, LADY: YOU ARE THE MORON WHO ABANDONED YOUR CHILD. That is NOT *my* problem. Yes, I made a mistake. But if anything happened to your son, that's your own damn fault for being a fucking moron and leaving your kid unattended.

PLUS! I don't know what kind of sissy she raised, but if I was left alone at Chuck E. Cheese's for an extra 20 minutes, I wouldn't even have noticed. Or I would've considered it extra time to play Whack-A-Gator and Air Hockey. Or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, if this story took place back when I was a kid. You know, back in the late 80s, when there were a LOT more skeevy people wandering around places like that, and security was nonexistent. And, uh, I turned out fine.

Which leads me to a thought about the media: There are SO MANY stories of child molestation and/or abduction out there right now. What about the 99%+ of the kids out there who are absolutely fine? This isn't to make like of things like that happening; They absolutely do, and we need to all be aware of such a thing happening to not only our own children, but everybody else's kids, too. But the fact of the matter is, these particular Toys "R" Us and Chuck E. Cheese's locations were in the nicer part of town, and both places were always totally crowded with loudmouth kids on Saturdays. So nothing was going to happen, and if anything did, they wouldn't have been quiet about it.

And, hey, look, I'm not saying my hitting the wrong key wasn't my fault. It absolutely was. But this lady went to the "wrong" register in the first place, while leaving her kid alone. And one of those was far more of an issue than me accidentally not printing her up some gift receipts.

So, anyways. The manager on duty comes over, helps me get through this whole fiasco, and then GIVES THE LADY A $20 TOYS "R" US GIFTCARD FOR HER INCONVENIENCE. THE INCONVENIENCE OF HER BEING AN IDIOT?!?

I could not BELIEVE that when it happened.

Hey, if something happened to that kid, I'm really sorry. But since we never received any complaints, the kid was probably just playing Skeeball for an extra 20 minutes and didn't even notice. And she was rewarded 20 bucks for being an asshole in every metaphorical sense of the word.

Meanwhile, I got yelled at by her for 20 minutes, and basically scolded by my manager, who told not to make that sort of mistake again.

I quit Toys "R" Us two weeks later, and shortly afterwards got employed in a cafeteria to clean tables, which was a FAR better job.

The moral of this story? Don't get jobs in places you like to shop, because the other customers are fucking insane.

Retail Horror: Part 2

Continuing some of my more memorable retail horror stories from my days at Blockbuster and/or Toys R Us...

It's absolutely amazing how angry people can get over four-dollar late fees. After two and a half years, I had been called every single name you could imagine. But there was one day that will always stand out in my mind.

This lady who thought of herself as very well-to-do (you could tell, because her earrings cost more than my entire outfit... and her fur coat probably cost more than my house) was mad at me because she returned her movies something like two days late. The entire time I worked there, Blockbuster's late fee (or, "Extended Viewing Fee") policy was that if the movie was late, the renter had to pay for a full extra rental period. The fees weren't pro-rated or anything; After the movie was over 2 hours late, it was an extra four bucks (I have no idea what Blockbusters EVF policy is, now, but I know they've changed it a couple of times since).

But this one lady, man...She was SO MAD about the fact that she couldn't remember when to return movies, she took out her Blockbuster rental card, and tried to rip it in half, right in front of me. And when she couldn't do that, she THREW IT AT ME, and it hit me, RIGHT IN THE CHEST!

Not like it hurt or anything, as it was just a 2" x 3.5" laminated card, but still - That lady ASSAULTED me, because SHE couldn't be bothered to return her movies on time!

She demanded that I cut her card in half, and proclaimed that she would never do business with Blockbuster, again. So I charged the late fees to her credit card on file, and deleted her account.
In hindsight, 9 years later, I see that I may have acted a bit hastily in deleting her account, but, seriously...

Retail Horror: Part 1

A good friend of mine (who shall remain anonymous for the time being) is considering starting a blog that contains his daily adventures in working retail. This has inspired me to relay some of my favorite retail horror stories, from my days working at Blockbuster and Toys "R" Us, over the next several days. 

Hey, horror stories are appropriate for October, right? It's almost Halloween.

Let me first express that I hold no ill will towards Blockbuster or TRU for my experiences. These are the kinds of things can that happen at any retail location, and even though I ended up leaving both jobs (Blockbuster in 2003, and TRU in 2004), it was because I was leaving to do something else, not because of anything at the companies.

(And now that my paranoia of saying anything libel is satisfied...)

I started working at Blockbuster ten years ago, and left in 2003. So it's been a while since these things happened, but the one that will always stick with me happened on my 2nd or 3rd week. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon (we rarely have any other type of Saturday in the Phoenix area), and this woman came in to drop off her movies. As soon as you walked in the door, there was a drop slot for the tapes to go in, so that we could check them in pretty quickly. But this one woman decided that she was apparently too good to put her movies where they went, and she left them on top of the counter -- 

Which, by the way, is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea, because those tapes could get confused with ANYTHING ELSE that we put on the counters - Movies already checked in, movies other customers are renting, movies we're about to run back on the shelves... Just a bad deal, overall. 

But, myself and a couple of the managers were up front that day, and we saw her put the movies there. Which would have been fine, except for one thing; The movies belonged to Hollywood Video. You could tell, because they were in the black-and-white-and-red cases that Hollywood Video used to rent tapes in, rather than the blue-and-yellow-and-white cases that Blockbuster tapes came in.

So I looked up at the woman, and said, as kindly as I could, "Excuse me, miss, these aren't our movies."

"WELL I DIDN'T EVEN RENT THESE MOVIES!!! I'M RETURNING THEM FOR MY FRIEND SO DON'T YOU DARE YELL AT ME!"

I was shocked and stunned; The only time I'd ever been yelled at, previously, was by my parents when I was little, and did something seriously wrong.

I later found out that she had actually called the store that night and complained about the way that I'd treated her. The manager on duty that night couldn't believe what he was hearing, and the following Saturday it came up at the store meeting. Fortunately, the managers that were there with me stuck up for me, and I wasn't in trouble for doing nothing wrong. But, still!

All I was trying to do was help this lady get her movies back to the correct store so that she wouldn't incur any late fees, and I was basically treated like I was the scum of the earth for it.

This was just the beginning.

Why comic books cost $3.99

The biggest complaint I hear, as the co-owner of a comic book store, is about the rising cost of comic books. Why can't comics cost 1.25, like they did 17-20 years ago? Well, I'm going to break the fourth wall, as it were, and explain several of the key factors as to why comics cost $3.99.

First of all, when you buy a comic, you're paying at least four businesses: The comic store, Diamond comic distributors, the print shop, and the publisher.

The publisher wants to keep costs down as much as possible while maximizing profits. Each comic has a minimum of four people working on it: The writer, penciller, inker, and colorist. Sometimes these duties are doubled up by one person, but not often. Plus, sometimes inkers and colorists will have people do some of the more tedious tasks for them; For example, inkers will often have somebody do "blacks" for them, where they just fill in all of the large black areas. Colorists, similarly, will have someone do "flats," where they fill in large areas with a base color, over which the credited colorist will work their magic. And then there's the editor, who needs to oversee an entire line of books and make sure there aren't glaring inconsistencies amongst them (for example, if a character gets their left arm chopped off in one comic, it had better not be the right arm in another comic!), plus the Editor-in-Chief, who oversees the entire company's books to make sure that the editors didn't miss anything.

Already, we're at 8 people, amongst whom $3.99 has to be divided. If it were divided evenly, they're each getting just under 50¢ apiece, per copy. But that's not how it works. More on that later.

So, presuming everything goes smoothly, a single comic book issue is created. But it needs to be printed, so that everybody who wants one can buy a copy! This means the comic needs to be run through a printer. As a professional graphic designer, I've spent my fair share of time in print shops. The presses used to print big jobs like comics take at least two people to run them properly. This does not account for the people in shipping and receiving, to make sure the comics go out on time, or the people who keep the presses and building operating quickly. 

Suddenly, our 8 people went up to over 20 people responsible for your comic, and, even though this isn't really the way it works out, let's continue to presume everybody's getting an equal share of the issue at hand. Now everybody's getting about 20¢ per copy of a $3.99 comic.

And then there's whatever shipping service gets used to transport the printed books back to the publisher, who need to make sure they got printed correctly. Those comics then need to be shipped to Diamond Comics Distributors, who will distribute the comics to the comics retailers. Diamond employs hundreds of people, but let's look at the bare minimum of who has to be involved in your $3.99 issue: There's the Diamond Representative who helps the stores decide what to buy (my Diamond Rep has always been absolutely fantastic with me, incidentally, and without giving out names, I appreciate everything she's done for me and my store). 

And then there's the local rep, who swings by every few weeks to make sure everything is going okay, and inform the store of any new stuff coming out that we may have missed in the Previews catalog, or to let us know about any upcoming deals each retailer may have coming up, if they have any.

 And then there's the people in their main warehouse, which, I believe, is now in Kentucky. When a store orders X number of comics, someone in that warehouse has to grab that many copies of a comic, put them in a box, and ship that to Diamond's local distribution center. Our is in Los Angeles.

So then the guys in the Los Angeles Diamond hub have to find out exactly how many copies of a comic we've ordered, put those in a box, and ship them to our local post office. And then, depending on the deal each store has with the post office, either they send someone to deliver the comics, or the store sends somebody to pick them up.

I've lost count of how many people have been involved in getting your monthly comic in your hands, but we're not done, yet.

Now that the store has the comics on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, the store employees have to open the boxes, check the orders to make sure it's the proper quantity, check for anything that got damaged in shipping, and put them on the shelves.

Okay, so that's a VERY QUICK view of what each comic takes to get to you. By my quick math, we're down to less than 5¢ per copy per person involved, assuming there's only one person working at a comic store, and they don't pay for electricity, air conditioning, heating, insurance, telephone, internet, or rent.

But the money you pay for each issue isn't distributed evenly. Here's how that breaks down:

Diamond Comic Distributors takes all the orders for everything from every direct market comics retailer, and, based on a formula that has never been explained to me (I'm sure it's out there, somewhere; I've just never bothered to look for it), they determine a level of "discount off cover price" that each retailer gets. As far as I can tell, the discount is based on some combination of longevity and quantity ordered; the longer you've been a customer, and the more you order per month, the higher your discount.

If I remember my numbers correctly, the minimum discount Diamond offers is 35% off cover price. So for each copy of a $3.99 comic, a retailer with a 35% discount pays about $2.59. The maximum discount Diamond offers is 53%, meaning those retailers pay about $1.88. But MOST stores get a discount of about 50%. So, for the sake of easy math, let's call each $3.99 comic $4.00, and assume a store has a 50% discount.

When my store wants to buy a copy of NEW AVENGERS, we need to pay Diamond 2 bucks per copy. Which means that the store only makes two dollars for every copy sold. I don't know how the other two dollars gets distributed, but IF it gets distributed evenly (which I doubt), that's 1 dollar for Diamond, and 1 dollar for Marvel.

Which means, when you buy five comics (and let's say you're in New Hampshire or Oregon, so there's a 0% sales tax), you're giving $20 to the retailer. $10 goes to the retailer, $5 goes to Diamond, and $5 gets divided up amongst whatever publishers you just supported.

And when you buy five $2.99 comics, cut all of those values by 25%: $7.50 goes to the store, $3.75 goes to Diamond, and $3.75 goes to the publishers.

And this doesn't take into account licensing (IDW has to pay Hasbro in order to keep using the TRANSFORMERS brand name, for example).

And as a retailer, I'm far more inclined to suggest a $3.99 comic to a customer than a $2.99 comic. That's an extra 50¢ per issue that I'm getting.

Hey, I love getting as much bang for my buck as the next guy, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how comic stores stayed in business in the 80s and 90s with comics that cost under 2 bucks, using this model.

So, to everybody who wants to go back to the $1.25 price tag of 1993, thank you for wanting to bankrupt the entire comics industry. You're doing us all a huge favor with that one.

Fighting in the Street Part IV: The King of Fighters?

While all the hype behind MKII and SSFII was overwhelming US gamers (The two games were basically all that my friends and I would talk about at summer camp that year, outside of the X-Men), SNK released a game that would be more important to the evolution of fighting games than anybody realized. The King of Fighters '94 offered a unique gameplay experience, where players chose 3-on-3 teams, mostly made up of characters from other SNK fighting games; Ryo, Robert, and Takuma from Art of Fighting comprised one team, while Terry, Andy, and Joe from Fatal Fury were another. 

This meant that the SNK games were all part of a shared world, something not really ever explored in video gaming up until this point. Sure, Mario appeared in the original Donkey Kong game, Pin Ball and the Super Mario Bros. games, but that wasn't necessarily a shared universe; it was Nintendo re-using a character design for multiple games. King of Fighters was the first time we saw game characters in a shared world, like in comic books!

And not only were these characters in the same game, characters from different games were on the same teams; Yuri and King from AOF teamed with Fatal Fury 2's Mai Shiranui, and Kim Kaphwan from Fatal Fury 2 teamed with original characters Choi Bounge and Chang Koehan. 

In addition to characters from Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury, KOF '94 

featured the lead characters from the Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier games; So it wasn't just the SNK fighting games that were a part of this shared world. It was potentially SNK's entire game library!

Unfortunately, the hype behind Super Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II was so huge, The King of Fighters '94 got left in the dust. All of us serious fighting gamers knew it was there, but it wasn't making the US gaming magazine headlines.

And, really, why should it? Art of Fighting was a piece of trash game. It had some great characters and cool ideas, but the actual gameplay was crap, and we all knew it. Fatal Fury was pretty okay, but nobody could find it in any arcades. Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier were both games whose days had come and gone - The inclusion of those characters was more of a fun bonus than anything else. And despite having 24 playable characters (the most in any fighting game up to that point), there were only 8 teams, and you were stuck with all 3 team members.

The King of Fighters was a fantastic idea that got held back because of its legacy and limitations. At least that year.

But by the end of 1994, Capcom's Street Fighter would be the first to do something that neither Midway nor SNK was really prepared for - Release a feature-length film!

Street Fighter starred martial arts movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, in his quest to defeat M. Bison (played by Raul Julia), once and for all. The film was considered a financial flop, mostly because it sucked. Why was Chun-Li a news reporter? Why were Dee Jay and Zangief working for M. Bison? And why wasn't Balrog? Where was Ryu's trademark red headband? AND WHY WASN'T ANYBODY FIGHTING?! For a movie called "Street Fighter," there was WAY too much talking. 

I remember my dad taking my brother and I to see the film, and FALLING ASLEEP in the middle. I have to say, I wasn't much more impressed with the movie, myself. And for a 12-year-old kid to be disappointed in a movie based on a franchise he loved, that's saying something. I mean, there were parts of it that I liked, but it seemed as if the producers hadn't even TRIED to make a good movie.

I have a much fonder appreciation for the movie, now, as the tongue-in-cheek, campy ride that it was probably intended to be. My friends and I will often make daft references to it while playing games over XBox Live (the "Each Bison Dollar will be worth FIVE British Pounds!" line, and basically anything Dee Jay said being amongst our favorites to quote). I own it on DVD, but I only paid five bucks for it, because I refused to pay any more. It did, however, introduce me to Kylie Minogue, who has become one of my favorite pop singers.

But with the two-hit combo of the film and the release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which introduced even more moves and a new secret boss character into the SF world, Street Fighter was undisputedly the true "King of Fighters." At least for the next several months...

Fighting in the Street Part III: Super Kombat

MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAAT!

By the time September of 1993 rolled around, EVERYBODY had played Street Fighter. And those of us who stuck with it had all learned how to throw Hadokens with our eyes closed. We were Hundred-Hand Slapping the controllers fast enough to create Sonic Booms, and there were enough Tigers to shake a forest of sticks at.

So when Mortal Kombat came out on Mortal Monday, we were ready for a change. And what a change we had! Not only did a gallon of blood fly out of your enemy's head with every hit, at the end of a match, you could literally KILL your opponent! 

MK definitely inspired a faster style of gameplay - There were only two punch and two kick attacks, and a block button. But, unlike in Street Fighter, when you blocked in MK, you still took a bit of damage. But there was something lacking. MK had seven playable characters, five fewer than SFII Turbo, but everybody was completely different... Or did they?

See, the thing about Mortal Kombat was that, while everybody LOOKED completely different from each other (outside of Scorpion and Sub-Zero, who were yellow and blue versions of the same ninja outfit), everybody played basically identically. So it wasn't like you could get really good with Liu Kang and then have to re-learn how to play to master Rayden. You really just had to be good at Mortal Kombat, and learn which moves did the most damage and had the most priority.

And Sub-Zero was so incredibly overpowered in that game with his Freeze Ball and a slide attack that could hit opponents on the ground, that any high-level MK matches just came down to who hit the first Freeze Ball.

But by the time anybody really figured that out, Mortal Kombat had made its money, and a sequel was announced. Mortal Kombat II would feature twelve characters - Five returning, and seven brand-new fighters. Each character would now have TWO Fatality moves, and the entire game had been given a facelift; Not a single graphic from MK1 was re-used. The game was faster, bloodier, and more violent than ever. And gamers ate it up.

So, for fear of losing ground in the fighting game community that they started, what did Capcom do? Announce a new version of Street Fighter, of course! Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers introduced four new characters: Dee Jay, a dancing Jamaican kickboxer; T. Hawk, a native American powerhouse; Cammy White, a teenage British intelligence officer; and Fei Long, who looked, sounded, and fought just like Bruce Lee. In addition, the background stages and character portraits had all been completely re-drawn and looked better than ever, every character got at least one new move, and the four boss characters all had their non-special attacks completely re-animated.

It's hard to say which game was the "winner" in 1994, but one thing's for sure - Whatever was coming next from either company had some huge shoes to fill, or there was going to be trouble.

But was there enough room for a third entrant in this battle for fighting supremacy? Around the corner loomed a game that claimed to be the KING of fighters...

Fighting in the Street Part II: The Art of Fatal Kombat.

It took me just over a year, but I'd finally played and beaten Street Fighter II.  And there were already TWO new versions in the arcade; Street Fighter II: Champion Edition which included a couple of new moves, varied the speed and range of some of the previous moves, and allowed a character to face him or herself in a new color. It also re-colored all of the backgrounds, to allow for easy visual distinction. Champion Edition also allowed players to use the four boss characters; Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison. Finally, all 12 characters would be playable!

But by the end of 1992, we also had Turbo Street Fighter II: Champion Edition - Hyper Fighting, which replaced everybody's original color with a new 3rd color, and made the original colors the 2nd player color. It also increased the speed of the game by 15%, as well as introduced even more new moves, such as Chun-Li's fireball and Dhalsim's teleport.

In late 1992, Capcom announced that Champion Edition would be coming to the Sega Genesis (known as the Mega Drive in every non-US country ever), making the Genesis seem like the ideal console for SFII playing. Except that its controller only had three buttons, and SFII required at least six. And then in the late spring of '93, Capcom announced  Street Fighter II Turbo (a shortened title for the 3rd installment of SFII) for the SNES. In the summer of that year, SFII Turbo came to the Super Nintendo as announced, and SFII: SPECIAL Champion Edition came to the Genesis. What made this edition so special? It had all the same features as SFII Turbo on the SNES. So Capcom basically marketed the same game with two different titles.

Also, to make up for the lack of necessary buttons, Sega designed a six-button controller, and several third-party companies began designing 6-button arcade sticks, specifically to cash in on the popularity of Street Fighter II. Otherwise, players could press the Start button to swap the A, B, and C buttons between punches and kicks - Not ideal, but probably the best solution Capcom could've come up with that didn't destroy the integrity of SFII's control scheme.

I remember the first time we rented SFII Turbo on the Super NES, I was up until 3:26 am trying to beat the game as Vega. Even before I grew my hair out, I was intrigued by long-haired dudes. I think my early days of watching wrestling may have had something to do with that, as mullets were super-popular in the WWF during the early 90s. Plus, Vega had a claw similar to Wolverine from the X-Men comics, and had a cool sash. Besides, he was always the hardest character for me to beat in the original SFII, so he must be the best, right?

Anyways. I defeated all 12 characters that night, and didn't do anything besides play that game, outside of go to school and homework for the rest of the rental period. Oh, summer vacations...

In October of 1993, my brother got Turbo on the SNES for his birthday, the first copy of SF owned by somebody in my house! It was super-exciting. But by that time, Street Fighter's reign of excellence seemed to be coming to a close.

Midway, the company responsible for games like Smash T.V. and Arch Rivals, had released a competitor to Street Fighter II. Japanese company SNK had tried, but all of their games were only available on the Neo-Geo console.

Now, the Neo-Geo was a wonderful piece of machinery; It had all the power of an arcade cabinet, and hooked up to your home television. The controllers it came with were two arcade-quality joysticks, and the cartridges were the size of video cassettes. The games found in these cartridges were arcade-perfect realizations of SNK's games. The problem? The Neo-Geo cost $500. That's what consoles are released for today, but back in the early '90s, the SNES debuted at $250. Not to mention, due to the high quality of the Neo-Geo cartridges, the games were all priced at around twice what SNES, Genesis, and NES games cost. Sure, I could have my arcade-perfect port of SF-competitors Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, but not at a price anybody that *I* knew could afford.

But Midway did something else. Rather than try and beat Street Fighter at its own game, they used the cutting-edge technology available to them. Rather than create a fighting game with anime-inspired, hand-drawn graphics, as SNK's Neo-Geo games were doing, Midway used real people, and digitized the footage of these characters into game sprites. The lead designers for Midway's project, Ed Boon and John Tobias, also decided that SF wasn't violent enough for their tastes; They couldn't understand why, when Blanka dizzied an opponent, he didn't just eat their head. So ultra-violence was the theme of their game. Arcades had been abuzz of this smash hit for a few months, but in September of 1993, console gamers were told to prepare themselves...

Fighting in the Street: Part I

It began in February, 1992.

My mom had only recently moved into her first apartment after she and my dad separated. My brother and I spent the weekends at her place, and most weekends we'd go to the Blockbuster Video that was about a mile from her house. My bro and I would each pick out a video game to rent and then we'd get a couple of movies. But something different happened this particular Saturday. Blockbuster had a single magazine up by the checkout, called GamePro, and it featured what was the biggest craze in the world at the time - The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I begged with my mom to please get the magazine for me. I wanted-- No, NEEDED-- to know about this new Ninja Turtles video game coming out! She conceded, and I was happy as a pig in shit.

The magazine was awesome. Not only did it have a two-page story about the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project on the NES, it also had reviews on a bunch of other games. I remember one for Megaman II on the Gameboy, and one for an arcade game that I'd never heard of before: Street Fighter II.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this game, but it had a very unique premise: You could select one of eight brightly-colored characters, each with their own look, fighting style, and attacks. And this game had SIX attack buttons! SIX!!! As an NES owner, I was used to two buttons. My cousins had gotten a Sega Genesis for Christmas, and they kept bragging that those controllers had THREE buttons. But six?! This was unheard of!

The next month, not only was Street Fighter II featured, it was the COVER ARTICLE. I enjoyed the previous month's GamePro, I had to get this next issue, too. Thankfully, mom obliged me yet again, and I went home with this magazine dedicated to SFII.

Now, don't get me wrong. The Street Fighter II preview in that initial issue didn't really do very much for me. I have only the vaguest recollections of looking at the article, reading it, and moving on to something far more interesting. And even when the March issue came out, it still wasn't a huge deal, but I figured the game had to be important if it got to be on the cover. After all, the month before, the NINJA TURTLES were on the cover! So SFII had to be at least almost as big a deal as a new TMNT game.

The subsequent months had articles and special insert pages telling the coolest moves and combos for each of the characters. Oh man, this game looked SO COOL! I couldn't wait to play it!

But wait was exactly what I would have to do. 

See, the Super NES had JUST come out, so there was no way I was going to get my parents to buy me one so quickly. Plus, I had managed to talk my dad into buying me TMNTIII on a rainy Monday evening in the spring, and an entire Sega Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog the very next day. Not only that, I had somehow managed to rack up something like 7 or 8 NES games at Christmas - Codename: Viper, Clash at Demonhead, NARC, and a new copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 to replace my broken one were just the tip of the iceberg. I had enough new games, so my dreams of a Super NES and the forthcoming Street Fighter II home release would have to wait.

I think it was October of the following school year, one of my new friends in 4th grade (whom I never saw again after that year) had gotten a Super NES for his birthday, and invited a bunch of us over to play  games with him. If I remember correctly (you have to understand, 1992 was 18 years ago for me), his parents were going to be at work late that night, and his older brother was okay with people coming over to play video games. He was telling us that he'd gotten Super Mario World, Final Fight, Contra III, and Street Fighter II.

Humminabwah!? Street Fighter II?! The game that I had been reading about in GamePro for A YEAR?! Yeah, I was gonna be there for that, I don't care what kind of trouble I might get in (turns out it was none).

I totally sucked at the game and lost every match, but holy crap, did I have fun! People were impressed that I knew all the special moves, even though I'd never played the game. I remember being pretty good with the manbeast, Blanka, although the fact that he turned around to do his crouching Roundhouse kick kind of threw me off.

That Christmas, Santa was kind enough to get me and my brother a Super Nintendo (along with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time...But more on that game in a future entry!), so the FIRST CHANCE I GOT, I rented Street Fighter II. AND HOLY CRAP WAS THIS GAME AMAZING!!! By this time, I had even memorized the code to play character vs. same character (Down, R, Up, L, Y, B at the "Capcom" logo screen), and I just could not stop playing.

As a ten-year-old kid, this game had been building up in my brain for a year. That was 1/10th of my entire life -- There was NO possible way that this game was going to be bad. None, period.

My first favorite character was Guile, because I could do the Sonic Boom and Flash Kick. I liked that he was an All-American "army guy," and his funny hair intrigued me. Plus, he had that weird upside-down jumpkick attack, and nobody else could do that.

It took me forever to finally beat the game, even on the lowest difficulty setting. But I was so proud when I finally did. I felt like I could do anything in that game, now that I'd toppled the evil M. Bison, and crushed his crime syndicate.

After a year of build-up, I had finally played and conquered Street Fighter II. But that wasn't the end of the journey, my fellow Geeks. No, it was only the beginning...

You don't like that I like wrestling?

First off, thank you to Blogger for finally allowing us to upload our own background images. I'll have something slightly more exciting in the near future, but getting to use the background from my personal site is far better than anything that they offered as a default image.

Secondly, I noticed that a few people who read yesterday's entry about my journey into pro wrestling decided to misinterpret some of the end of my entry, and think that I said TNA Wrestling was some sort of flawless entity. Not so; In fact, far from it. There's a lot of things TNA has done in the past that are inexcusably bad. But over the last several months, I think they've regained their focus, and I honestly feel that TNA is doing a much better job than either of the WWE's programs of keeping their World Championship as the most important thing in the company.

I don't care what wrestling company it is - WWE, TNA, ROH, indies, whatever! - If the between-match shenanigans aren't building towards a particular match either later that night or by the next PPV, then I'm not enjoying that segment, and it is a waste of my viewing time. For example, the entirety of Kevin Nash's recent storyline, about what happened in WCW over ten years ago? I don't care for these segments. I was watching WCW at the time, and rather enjoying the product (but, then, I've always been less cynical and far more forgiving than most wrestling fans on the Internet seem to be). And the biggest drawback to Nash's current storyline is that it's all based on backstage BS that never made it on to TV.

How is this relevant to any of today's fans? Bischoff and Hogan and Jarrett are calling Nash out on, what... the fact that he likes to get paid, in a capitalist society? And, really? Hulk Hogan is giving somebody shit about making money?

I think Ric Flair's "Fortune" stable vs "EV2.0" is being played backwards; Fortune should be presented as the young guys who have been with TNA for a long time, making their own name. Meanwhile, EV2.0 should be presented as the assholes who are coming in and taking up the young blood's valuable television time, despite having already had their chance in the spotlight.

What good is it to TNA's fanbase to have them booing the guys who will be with the company at the conclusion of this storyline, and cheering the guys who will all be gone by the end of 2011? This makes about as much sense as WCW's New Blood vs Millionaire's Club angle, which was basically the exact same thing... and when THAT version of this story was over, the New Blood was all that was left. But audiences had just spent the last year hating all the young guys, and had no reason to stop... probably driving a lot of the viewership to the WWF's product. And if the Fortune vs EV2.0 story isn't handled carefully, it COULD outright kill TNA.

However.

TNA is still doing a far better job of keeping the TNA Championship as the central focus of the company. Everybody is there with the intention of either winning that title, or helping to build its legacy. EV2.0 stuck around to hang out with TNA Champion Rob Van Dam. Fortune are a bunch of guys who think that EV2.0 don't deserve to be anywhere near the belt. Hogan, Bischoff, and Jarrett vs Nash & Sting is all about letting the young guys have their day in the sun, and not hogging the Championship on top of a glass ceiling. Meanwhile, Jeff Hardy, Kurt Angle, Ken Anderson, and D'Angelo Dinero have been setting up for the finals of the championship tournament at TNA's biggest PPV of the year, Bound For Glory.

The entire Knockouts division has been focused around Madison Rayne and her Knockouts Championship, for the last several months.

The Motor City Machine Guns and Beer Money, Inc. just had an incredible series of matches for the TNA Tag Team Championship.

Doug Williams has brought some attention back to the X-Division Championship with some unique championship defenses.

And AJ Styles winning the Legends Global Television Championship from Rob Terry and RE-re-naming it brings a LOT of attention to that title belt.

Again; In TNA, the focus is on the championships. On Raw, the focus is on mystery GMs and celebrity guests who do nothing to contribute to the actual matches, and just distract from the fact that half of the roster couldn't put together anything more than a basic match to save their careers, and a handful of rookies who can barely even put together a basic match. Smackdown, meanwhile, has never had a central focus since it began in 1999. It's always been the "B-show" that creates stars to feature on Raw.

One of my friends once described the WWE's product as "all sizzle and no steak." And I find it hard to disagree with that.

Which isn't to say that TNA is all steak. They've got plenty of sizzle, themselves. But of the two companies, I very much prefer what TNA is putting on television.

Or, at least, I did. I'm three weeks and a PPV behind. I could completely change my mind based on what's happened between The Whole F'N Show and No Surrender. Plus last night's episode.

Also, because I don't want this to become just another wrestling blog, this is the last thing I'm going to be writing about wrestling for a LOOOOONG while. For everybody else, back to your regularly-scheduled geekiness on Monday.

Finally, next time you have a comment about something I write, please at least have the decency to say it directly to me in my own comments section, rather than hiding behind somebody else's Facebook page. Let's all be adults, here, hm?

You don't like wrestling. part 2.

Alright, so yesterday I pretty much just bitched about what I didn't like about UFC, which is exactly what I complained about them doing with pro wrestling. So today, I'll instead not talk about what I don't like, and try to focus more on what I do like about wrestling.

First things first. I'm a child of the 80s in basically every sense. I was born in 1982, so I'm young enough to still be in my 20s, but old enough to actually remember the world in the 80s. And what I remember was violence.

Not in the sense of wars; the Vietnam War had been over for almost two decades by the time I had ever heard about it. Not in the sense of gangs; I turned 8 in 1990, and lived in rural or suburban New England for a lot of my childhood. The violence I remember was on television.

I'll often describe The Transformers as "my first favorite thing after Sesame Street and/or Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Transformers was a show about good robots who turned into vehicles battling evil robots who turned into vehicles. Before Transformers, I have vague recollections of watching He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, where an evil warlord is trying to overthrow the kingdom of Eternia, and battles with its defenders, the Masters of the Universe. I recall Voltron, where an evil sorceress and a twisted prince would send robot beasts to destroy worlds they wanted to rule, and they would be fought off by a quintet of robotic, Lion-shaped vehicle gestalt.  G.I. Joe combated Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world. The Thundercats defended Third Earth from an evil, ancient Egyptian wizard. The Silverhawks confronted an intergalactic mob. The Real Ghostbusters would battle evil apparitions. The Super Mario Brothers were always trying to stop King Koopa from kidnapping Princess Toadstool. Link was in conflict with Ganon over the Triforces in the Legend of Zelda. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fought evil ninja.

My childhood was filled with violent entertainment. As far as I was aware, that's pretty much all there was for kids to watch - Action cartoons with heroes in brightly-colored outfits fighting against villains in secondary colors.

I was aware of professional wrestling, thanks to a few neighborhood kids having the video games, or my cousins inviting me to watch WWF Superstars of Wrestling with them when I'd visit on the weekends. But it wasn't until the morning of Monday, April 5th, 1993 that I would give it much of a second thought.

I was ten years old, and had only been living in this particular city for about a year. I'd made friends with some of the kids in my neighborhood, and we'd all walk to school together, a lot of mornings. We'd usually talk about any of the aforementioned action cartoons, or what video games we were playing (Street Fighter II on the SNES being the most popular bit of our gaming conversations). But not on that morning.

The night before was the World Wrestling Federations ninth annual Wrestlemania program. And, as my friends explained to me, in the main event, Bret "Hit Man" Hart was defending the WWF Championship against Yokozuna, the winner of January's Royal Rumble match, the first time the winner of the Rumble faced the champion at Wrestlemania.

At the conclusion of the match, Yokozuna's manager, Mr. Fuji, threw salt in the eyes of Bret Hart, blinding the "Hit Man," allowing Yoko to take advantage and take not only the win, but also the WWF Championship title. The omni-present Hulk Hogan came out to help Bret from the ring, but before he could guide the now-former champ to the backstage area, Mr. Fuji got on the microphone. Fuji claimed that Yokozuna could beat anybody, anytime, anywhere, and Fuji challenged Hulk Hogan to a match for Yokozuna's newly-won WWF Championship. Hogan reluctantly agreed, having had already competed in a tag team match, himself, earlier in the night.

As the second WWF Championship match of the night commenced, Mr. Fuji tried to throw salt in the Hulkster's eyes, as he'd done to Bret Hart, just moments before. But the Immortal One saw what was coming and ducked. The salt hit Yokozuna in the eyes, and the Leader of Hulkamania quickly scored a win (in under one minute), becoming the first-ever five-time WWF Champion.

Now, put yourself in my shoes. I knew Hulk Hogan was the ultimate hero in the land of the World Wrestling Federation, and I had just heard a tale of him overcoming what sounded like the ultimate in evils to re-take the title of the greatest warrior in the land.

To put it bluntly, that sounded awesome.

It was the exact kind of story I would expect in one of my action cartoons, except these were REAL PEOPLE. And I was ten years old, so I was a double-digiter. It was time for me to phase out those silly kid's cartoons and start watching something with real people; After all, that's how I understood the world to work, at the time. Cartoons were for children, live-action shows were for adults.

And WWF television sounded like the perfect transition.

I'm pretty sure it was that night (although, honestly, it could have been the following week) that I tuned in to my first episode of Monday Night Raw, back when it was still being broadcast from the Grand Ballroom in the Manhattan Center.

The first match I saw was a six-foot-eight, three-hundred-pound man in orange-and-purple spandex with the RADDEST blond mullet I'd ever witnessed in my entire life (also, remember, it was 1993, and mullets were just beginning to become popular. And, yes, in 10 years, everybody will laugh at you for combing your hair in front of your face the way people laugh at mullets, today). This wrestler was named "Crush," and that's exactly what he did; He CRUSHED his opponent, with seeming ease.

Crush quickly became my favorite of all the WWF's Superstars (They weren't just wrestlers. They weren't just stars. They were SUPER-STARS!), but over the next several weeks, I became intrigued by the egotism of "Mr. Perfect," the all-business attitude of Bret Hart, the youthful courage of the "1-2-3 Kid," and the cockiness of the Intercontinental Champion, Shawn Michaels (the Intercontinental Championship was the 2nd-tier title in the WWF).

I was also just getting into comic books at this time, and the parallels between the Marvel Universe and the World Wrestling Federation were rather astonishing. Both featured overmuscled men in bright, colorful tights covered in intricate designs, fighting for what they felt was right.

Every week, I would try to stay up to watch Monday Night Raw, and then I'd watch WWF Superstars and WWF Wrestling Challenge on Saturday afternoons at 1 and 2pm, respectively. WIthin a couple of months, I was even watching All-American Wrestling on Sunday mornings at noon, as well as WWF Mania on Saturday mornings at 10am. The WWF was the absolute coolest thing I had ever seen, and somehow I had never been privy to this world of excitement. And the best part was, it seemed like all of my friends already knew a lot about wrestling, so they could explain to me who guys were and what other wrestlers they'd had matches with before, and who'd they'd beaten.

Over the next several years, I began watching as much wrestling as I could, exploring into the WWF's rival promotion, World Championship Wrestling. WCW had a very different product, but a lot of their roster was made up with wrestlers who were leaving the WWF when I started watching the "sport," so it was cool to get to witness them all again.

Somehow, I recall knowing that wrestling was "fake," right from the beginning. I don't at all remember how I knew this, but I know that I knew things weren't entirely legitimate. After all, if everything in the WWF was on the up-and-up, then Crush would surely at least be Intercontinental Champion, right? He was the best guy in the entire company!

And, really, I think that's what I like best about professional wrestling - It appeals to the ten-year-old boy in me who is fascinated by people striving to be the best there is at what they do (even if what they do isn't very nice).

Somewhere along the way, the WWF/WWE's writers lost sight of the fact that everything in the company is supposed to be about becoming the best of the best, and everybody should be striving for the championships. And as a result, I have progressively lost more and more interest in their product.

However, leading up to their pay-per-view event in October of 2009, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (with the unfortunate acronym of "TNA") really started to focus on making the TNA Championship the most important thing in their company. And when that happened, I was immediately attracted to their world in the same way I became obsessed with the WWF, 17-and-a-half years prior.

And that leads me up to today. The TNA Championship is still the most important thing in TNA, and, behind-the-scenes, the promoters and writers are still dedicated to putting on a new, exciting show every Thursday night, with fresh matches and exciting action.

Meanwhile, the WWE has this unspoken caste system amongst their "Superstars," resulting in endless tirades of rematches, and everybody builds their matches in basically the exact same way, using a lot of the same basic maneuvers and defenses. And there is far too much "ga-ga" between the actual matches for my tastes.

Now, I understand why the WWE operates the way it does; They're trying to get away with doing as little as possible and make a living off of not putting the folks they have under contract in any more danger than is necessary. It's a very smart business decision on their part, and as a businessman, I don't disagree with that decision. What is unfortunate, though, is that, at the end of the day, their product eventually becomes completely predictable. And if I see where a story is going before it gets there, I tend to find that rather tedious and boring.

And the bullshit they fill the shows with between the matches is abysmal dreck. A comment was left in yesterday's entry about how the storylines of pro wrestling are much like a male soap opera; "the invented stories of each are equally as stupid and trite." And I ABSOLUTELY agree. I wish it wasn't there.

I know a large percentage of the population apparently gets off on it, but I just don't care for the out-of-the-ring shenanigans. The "You hit on my wife and now I must kill you!" or "You're a smelly butthole and so we shall fight!" bullshit really doesn't do anything for me. 

I just want to watch two guys get in the ring and beat the shit out of each other to prove which of them is the best. Right now, TNA is giving me that. The WWE is not.

But I still like watching brightly-colored violence, and there are few better places to get it than in a wrestling ring.