Moving on from the end of the Action 52 review, we meet back with The Nerd as he prepares to play the final game on the cartridge – Cheetahmen. A game that in and of itself is as infamous as Action 52 on a whole, it was supposed to be a major franchise, in the same vein as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Instead it’s become a running joke in the gaming world.
Indeed, Action 52 had a Cheetahmen comic book that came with it (including quite the brutal opening page, at least for a comic aimed at kids) and plans for action figures and even a TV show based on the characters. Hey, the early 90’s were a pretty wild time, you could get away with at least trying pretty much anything.
Opening up, James expects the game to possibly be good, as they may have spent all their energy on this one game. Nope. It’s a little bit better, and even has a (very poor) story, but that’s about the best aspect of it.
It’s quite the trip to see, really something better to experience in the video than to just read a description of. The game has a blend of side scrolling an isometric-3/4th view play styles, but both are terribly broken – including an “infinite jump” glitch that can be exploited to some benefit.
Over the course of playing James actually finds a bonus room, gets an extra life and even skips to another level.. which happens to be “level 3” again. Did I mention the game is buggy because it is very very buggy. I will give Cheetahmen credit in one spot — the music, as odd as it is, isn’t all that bad. Take that for what you will.
Eventually, of course, James reaches a point where he just can’t play any further. Given the poor quality of the game on all fronts he moves on and begins telling a story of another game that was so bad it wasn’t even released — its game cartridges were found stored in boxes in a warehouse, or so the story goes. This game was Cheetahmen 2.
Yes, a “sequel” was made. Basically being new levels on the same Cheetahmen engine, with a new story and some minor design changes, it carries many of the same flaws, but is even worse.
Just like the first game, it really has to be seen to be believed. It’s horrible, and even contains the same “level 3” bug as in the original game!
In the end, James reaches a point where the game “soft locks.” He beats a boss, but the game won’t proceed, nor can he kill his character in any way, so he’s stuck at that screen forever. As far as he’s concerned, the game is over, but he has one more Cheetahmen game to try, and this one is contained in Action 52 on the Genesis. Something of note is they re-used the same art for the NES Action 52 which includes an NES style controller! A bit ironic, after all, seeing as this is a Sega Genesis game.
Action 52 on the Genesis is moderately different from Action 52 on the NES. There are still some space shooters, but far fewer here. Instead, you have many more puzzle games, including a Minesweeper clone, a Simon clone (no joke) and even, one of the last games is literally Pong! There is more going on here, a better variety, but none of them are anything of note. Just poor clones of games that already exist. Again, it’s something you just have to see to really take in.
Now, however, we have to look at Cheetahmen on Genesis. This game is an absolute joke. It’s cartoony, the music is inappropriate, and the difficulty is completely unfair. As you’d expect, it controls terribly and the level design is pathetic. James can’t even totally figure out what to do, but even then it doesn’t matter — he can’t finish the first level, regardless of how much he tries.
In the end, rather than get enraged, he goes on a small rant and then realizes the best thing about all of this: He’s done with Action 52.
Final Rating: 4.5/5
When this episode originally released I was expecting a look at just the NES game. Instead, I got the original game, it’s “sequel” and even a look at Action 52 on the Genesis, which at the time I didn’t even know existed. It was a hell of a fun episode, and is still a joy to watch now.
The episode has a fine balance to it in both information and absurd comedy and really feels like a nice “coming home” point after all the wild stuff that had come up in 2009 to early 2010 AVGN. Action 52 and Cheetahmen especially were the kinds of games the Nerd was created to cover, and I feel James did them justice here.
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