killjoy217

KEP-2D: This is an endurance run [several full runs] of the twenty-sixth game on the original NES multicart of Action 52. Here the player controls a cowboy in some kind of "Red Meatball Space" riding a rocket & corralling space cows while warding off rustlers riding their own rockets. Not a hard game to play - all you need to do for the two levels is to position yourself in one area & simply blast anything coming at you. The game does get awfully boring as there really isn't any depth to the gameplay at all - it is as simple as it gets. I simply played the two levels over & over until I decided I've had enough & let a rustler get to me to end my run. The Killjoy: Mile Sipka Remember My Advice: Don't be a Masochist, Winners Use Cheats [in single player games only]

KEP-2C: This is a full run of a ladder platformer where the player controls a baby that has to defend his multistory house from ambulatory dolls, creepy old men & onions with legs. The player's only means of attack is by squirting his milk bottle, but this has a very short range, necessitating the player to get in close to use it. The only way to travel between floors is by climbing up & down furniture, although some are actually stationary hazards which will make the baby cry, thus losing the game [the identity of these hazards is obvious to anybody who has small children]. For my playthrough I used a Game Genie hacking cheat code for infinite health that you can discover at the start of the playthrough if you're the observant type. Remember My Advice: Don't be a Masochist, Winners Use Cheats! The Killjoy: Mile Sipka

AR-0031: An interestingly daft direct-to-video post-apocalyptic B-actioner from veteran director Sheldon Lettich & starring Dolph Lundgren as a military officer who has to protect a small group of survivors in what remains of California after The Big One's arrival from a prison full of inmates who use the bodies of the dead as fertilizer for their opium crops & who have resorted to drinking their own piss. The only reason Lundgren & Lettich signed onto this project was on the condition the writers rewrote their stupid script, but they refused [they were also the producers] & the Swedish Beefcake was trapped into a no-win situation. But at least he gives a good performance here, as do the rest of the cast [surprisingly enough]... "The Last Patrol" isn't a very good movie - in fact it is pretty damn bad - but it has at least one scene that will give you something of a shock [in the climax, but I won't spoil it here - watch this review for that particular piece of info] & the one positive I can give a rather low-rent post-apocalyptic flick like this one is that it has a rather nice Christian morality to it, so this one has an appeal to families who want something safe for their kids... My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

I guess you can consider this something of an 8-bit version of "Jaws" in some esoteric manner... Anyway, this is a game on the NES multicart of "Action 52" where you play a diver armed with what could either be a harpoon gun or an underwater blaster [whichever the case, it has infinite ammo] which you use to blast away any shark that shows up. There are grey sharks & white sharks, which makes this a bit of a challenge as they come from both sides & while you can turn in either direction, take care when moving yourself into the right position to make a kill. Other than that, this is a pretty dodgy game as the sharks you need to kill to clear each level is pretty significant & they take ages to spawn in, making this something of a test of the player's patience. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

KEP-2B: Another run-&-stomper from the original NES multicart of Action 52, this has the player control some bloke with big feet who has to run a marathon where the objective is to stomp everything in his way... Except for the thumbtacks & other pointy hazards in his way. The eyeball creatures are enemies & must be stomped out to win. A very simple & crudely formulated three-level game, this game loops upon itself infinitely [once you beat Level 3, it brings you back to Level 1 to start all over again, except for your score kept intact so you can keep building up your score until you get tired]. With the aid of a Game Genie hacking cheat code for infinite energy [which you can discover for yourself at the start of this playthrough if you're observant], I made three full runs in a row before deciding to end my run at 13,800 points. Recommended for Masochists who enjoy 8-bit NES pain. The Killjoy: Mile Sipka Remember My Advice: Don't be a Masochist, Winners Use Cheats! [but only for single player games...]

KEP-2A: This is a triple-full-run of the 42nd game on the original NES multicart of the infamous "Action 52". In this particular game, you play Dracula [looking more like an 8-bit version of the Dracula featured in the original 1922 movie "Nosferatu"] who must assert his dominance over all the other spooks & ghouls in the graveyard while out on his nightly walk... Mainly by stomping on them, that is... This is a very simple run-&-stomper with no frills in the gameplay department. With the use of a Game Genie hacking cheat code for infinite energy [which you can discover for yourself at the start of this playthrough if you're observant], I made three full runs in a row [this game loops upon itself endlessly - beating the final level brings you back to the first, with your total score being unaffected, thus allowing you to continue to boost your score]. Recommended for Masochists with a preference for 8-bit pain. The Killjoy: Mile Sipka Remember My Advice: Don't be a Masochist - Winners Use Cheats! [for single player games only].

Compared to some of the other games on this original NES multicart of Action 52, "Space Dreams" is a complete 180 degrees in design, as this one is pretty much "My 1st Space Shooter" designed for children too young to actually be able to use an NES console properly. A vertical space shooter, you control a flying pacifier [or what we Aussies refer to as a "dummy"] that fires shots to take down teddy bears, letters, numbers & safety pins. Again this feels like the devs had dropped some serious acid before setting out to make this game. Anyway, just a standard entry on this multicart, although not entirely too terrible. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0030: The very first American film to feature the Yeti [or "The Abominable Snowman" for some people - ironically enough, Hammer Films made an excellent film about the same topic a few years later with Peter Cushing in it, but this review ain't about that one], directed by Billy Wilder's "dull son-of-a-b***h" brother. A team of researchers encounter a Yeti [partially due to some (Japanese-speaking) Tibetan locals forming a vigilante mob to rescue one of their women from being abducted by the Yeti] resulting in the Yeti being captured & shipped over to the USA in a portable refrigerator unit. Tired of waiting for the customs people to determine whether it is an animal or a person [imagine if this were to happen today...], the Yeti breaks out to sneak down into the sewers & head to the Los Angeles meat packing district to get some beef while harassing locals from time to time... A pretty poor start to the Yeti Amok subgenre, although it isn't completely awful with some halfway reasonable for the time writing but overall this one's a bust. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

Another of those space shooters on the NES multicart of Action 52 that makes you shake your head & wonder what exactly was going through the minds of the Action 52 Dev Team when they composed some of the sprites. The player avatar could either resemble an 8-bit lobster shooting energy balls from its claws, or a simplistic but very accurate 8-bit representation of a woman's reproductive system, shooting energy balls from the ovaries... Yeah, I'm sitting here wondering the same thing myself - those devs were on some seriously messed up stuff when they made some of these games. Anyhoo, this one is pretty simple to play, although all the enemy sprites use the Action 52 Boss AI [if you've been watching these videos to this point, you already know what that means] & thus getting a bead on them is a challenge. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0029: In the same year he saved Earth from a mutated space gorilla ["Night Fright"], John Agar took on another space invader in this el cheapo telepic remake of the classic Roger Corman original from director Larry Buchanan. A dictator from Venus smooth-talks its way to Earth by making buddies with a rather gullible scientist, letting the creature to hitch a ride on a US Military space probe back to Earth to take over, the gullible egghead feeling just like those leftists who watch too much CNN. Good thing for us, John Agar is on the case, using his brains & some brawn to send this three-eyed space bat back to Hell before it can make a campaign run to the White House. The original "It Conquered The World" version was far better, even though the alien dictator in that was a space zucchini. This remake is CRAP!!! My Grade: D- [Atrocious] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

KEP-1: This early-1990s NES run-&-gun platformer was one of a series of games made for various consoles of both 8-bit & 16-bit generations based on the classic 1984 science fiction action horror movie of the same name. As is the case with the movie it is based on, "The Terminator" consists of a battle-hardened soldier from the Future War of the 2020s named Kyle Reese [the player character] who has to battle the mechanical A.I. despot named Skynet & head back through time into the past to protect the mother of his commander from an indestructible cyborg known as The Terminator who has the ability to blend in with humans undetected & has a seriously bad attitude with the compulsion to kill but cannot otherwise be killed by conventional 20th Century weaponry. In this game, which I completed over four days in September 2022 [the playthrough is edited together from all the successful level runs] using save states to keep my progress & also using a cheat code that is not widely known - on the second controller [if you have an actual NES console] or by binding a second controller's input if you're using an emulator, press the following: B, B, Up, Left, A. This will give you infinite continues, allowing you a fighting chance to beat the game. Surely a better option than to attach a wrench to the controller's B button to lock the player in a firing position & waiting half a day to collect enough points to obtain all six lives... This particular game has attained a very bad reputation as the very worst Terminator game ever made & I personally agree with that - it is indeed the worst one I have come across. Hope you enjoy the playthough & Remember My Advice: Don't Be a Masochist, Winners Use Cheats! Game Playthrough completed in September 2022 The Killjoy: Mile Sipka

AR-0028: The second of Tim Kincaid's first-wave DTV [direct-to-video] schlockers I am covering here, this was a bargain basement $2 shop version of "Blade Runner" with a mercenary out to protect his old friend's sister from a nasty group of cyborgs that have been taking drugs that are giving them a nasty appetite for killing people. A load of utter bullcrap, this lo-fi synthetica was also the very last film issued onto VHS by Charles Band's Wizard Video label that was responsible for filling videostores with this kind of dreck. My Grade: D- [Atrocious] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

This is a rather unusual style of platformer where the player is in a series of tunnels where they have to fight Viet Cong soldiers [represented by giant diagonal heads] & killer birds. The enemy sprites have infinite respawns so the player's only primary objective is to simply get from one end of the level to the other. Killing the enemies only adds to the score & this can be mined for as long as possible. As I state in this video, this game seems to be an [perhaps unintentionally but who knows what was going through the minds of the original Action 52 Dev team] 8-bit NES representation of the Vietnam War, particularly the tunnel combat that the war was infamous for. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0027: The third & last of a series of DTV [direct-to-video] sequels made in the mid-to-late 1990s designed to extend the appeal of the original Jean-Claude Van Damme cult classic martial arts flick to the 1990s DTV market. Unlike the previous two, which were decent films, "The Dark Kumite" was an absolute dumpster fire of a film, although the mismatching elements do provide some degree of WTF amusement to professional Bad Movie Masochists, and the fights are interestingly staged. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this video.

In this bad space shooter on the original NES multicart of "Action 52", you play a space jockey who must corral up his cattle in space, making sure to take out any enemy cattle rustlers who try to stop you. This is a bad choice to pick on the multicart, but it is relatively easy to beat, although using the appropriate Game Genie hacking cheat code for infinite energy can boost your enjoyment factor if you're the masochistic type [like I am]. Otherwise, give this a miss. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this video.

AR-0026: 1940s femme fatale Veronica Lake made her final acting appearance as a mad scientist with a serious axe to grind against a certain infamous WWII figure [I'm kind of semi-spoiling the film's twist here but believe me, spoiling it will actually get many out there to seek this film out & watch it, just for the meme value, especially how this maniac gets wasted!] in this low-budget horror schlocker that was one of the small genre of Naziploitation flicks that reached back as far as the late 1950s & eventually bred a badass subset of zombie flicks. Anyhoo, "Flesh Feast" is a woefully impoverished production in both storytelling, budgetary resources & the quality of what little effects were used. The story could have made for a somewhat decent film, although some parts were ultimately obsolete by the time the decade ended. At the very least, Veronica Lake played her part pretty well although she honestly deserved much, much better than this... My Grade: D- [Atrocious] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video. Note: Not to be confused with the debut horror film of Herschell Gordon Lewis - that film is called "Blood Feast", just so you know...

One of the more childish-oriented additions to the NES Action 52 catalogue, this is a simple ladder platformer based on "Illuminator", but with the player controlling a baby who has to defend his multi-story home from creepy men, nasty dolls & ambulatory onions with legs. The baby's only means of defense is by squirting his bottle of milk, which has a very short range, prompting the player to get in close to use it. While the infamous Action 52 falling kill code doesn't apply here - the only way to travel between floors is by climbing furniture so no place to fall from - but some of the furniture are stationary hazards [they are pretty obvious to anyone who has raised children]. There are no glaring technical goofs on this game to speak of, only that the subject matter isn't exactly appealing to anyone old enough to actually play an NES game competently & it does get rather monotonous after a while. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0025: Some of the old-timers out there who have been around the videostores of the 1990s [like I was doing] might remember the joke about the blonde actress who was so dumb that she had signed on to do "Die Hard" in a building. Well, the joke came from real life as infamous gold digger Anna Nicole Smith had signed a two-picture deal with PM Entertainment [the kings of the 1990s direct-to-video B-action market] to make a couple of direct-to-video action flicks, one of which was... ...basically a blatant bootleg version of Die Hard, only with Anna Nicole Smith [& her massive boobs] playing the Bruce Willis part. I can hear some of you out there having either your jaws drop to the floor so hard they require an industrial forklift to be lifted, or laughing so hard you'll be in stitches... Here, ANS plays a pilot working for "Heliscort", a limousine service for rich dudes, only using a helicopter to escort customers to their destinations instead of the usual stretch limo. One day, she is called to carry a pair of weird blokes to a building, unaware these blokes are professional terrorists looking to collect pieces of some kind of electronic MacGuffin, but when the bad guys lock down the building, ANS & her massive beach balls provide the only means of protecting the world from those Shakespeare-quoting jackasses... An absolute laugh riot from beginning to end, this isn't exactly so-bad-it-is-good since the badness isn't translating to genuine goodness, but it isn't exactly terrible either, just an already below-average effort made even lower by a lead actress who really could not act to save her life... although she could do her own stunts [probably because no stuntwoman has the body shape to pass off as her]. The rest of the film is a pile of steaming crap, although the action scenes provide some entertainment. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

A side-scrolling platformer where the player controls Johnny Jawbreaker, a bloke with a big lollipop which he uses as a club to whack down some rogue candy. Assuming you can get past the obstacle on the first level, the successive levels are pretty much on the same page as the first, although on the final level, the soundtrack changes to a rather creepy soundscape that resembles an old modem being executed in an electric chair & if you don't take any of the doors on that level, you're stuck there for good. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0024: An absolutely uncalled for sequel to the equally-uncalled for 2010 remake of the notorious 1978 sexual assault revenge thriller, this has a rather naive New York model getting kidnapped & shipped off to Eastern Europe where after being viciously assaulted & brutalized by a family of degenerates, she is left for dead but somehow survives [presumably by Divine Intervention] so she can get her brutally nasty revenge. An utterly awful piece of garbage, this sorry flick ended up being a massive box office bomb & there is nothing worthy to find here. My Grade: D- [Atrocious] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

You're a marathon runner with big feet who has to run through the streets, but with only bare feet - your objective being to jump over obstacles which will hurt you badly if you step on them. But there are enemies you can safely give a good stomping. A pretty bad side-scrolling platformer with very little entertainment value... unless you're a masochist, in which case this will provide some easy to beat masochistic enjoyment. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0023: One of only three films released by short-lived DTV [direct-to-video] studio Triad Films, this happens to be one of a number of movies made throughout the 1990s & 2000s by former dancer turned filmmaker Serge Rodnunsky, who developed a reputation for turning out professional-looking but soulless B-films on a tight budget. This 1995 effort has Joe Lara play a drug-addled cop who is forced by the CIA to try to bargain with his old mob boss nemesis over an ancient artefact that is possibly an alien device that can terraform whole worlds. Just another bad mid-1990s sci-fi actioner with CGI effects that were just barely adequate for the time. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video. Thumbnail features the front cover of the Australian DVD from Payless Entertainment, once the country's main public domain $2RRP budget label.

You're Count Dracula [the Nosferatu kind] & you're out for a walk in the graveyard neighbourhood. But the other spooks & ghouls are not eager to join your evening so you decide to teach them a lesson - by stomping the crap out of them... So begins a pretty dull & boring side-scrolling platformer where you have to stomp every single spook in your way, by jumping onto them. If they run into you, you're done for so you have to strike hard & first. Professional masochists might like this for a lazy Halloween's afternoon or Friday the 13th playthrough but for mere mortals give this a miss unless you're desperate. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0022: A rather bizarrely original take on the werewolf genre, with Saw villain Costas Mandylor playing a Wall Street broker going apesh!t on a clan of were-hyenas who can change from human to [CGI] hyena at will [although they need to take their clothes off in order to do so] and who are led by an alpha female whose rival sister shacks up with Mandylor as a means of securing herself a chance of taking the leadership for herself. This is an atrocious movie in the way it is executed, but the central concept is undeniably interesting & would make a pretty decent film if done right. Oh & the film's nude scenes have some CGI masking done to them to fit in with hyena biology, although they didn't go far enough. This junker was released direct-to-video in 2011. My Grade: D- [Atrocious] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject please leave in the comments for this particular video.

One of the two games that don't load up on physical copies of Action 52, this is a pretty [crudely] simple platformer where you play a chef dressed up in a rabbit onesie going through a very long kitchen swatting rogue pasta & ravioli. Only two levels long & has an interesting glitch exploit where if you fall down a death pit, by repeatedly pressing the attack button you can reset the falling kill code & even use this to fall forwards past obstacles onto safe land behind them. Aside from that, this is pretty bad. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.