#it's such a great concept: taking a memorable part of each comic rather than listing by title

[liskantope]

Some not-so-brief reactions to major Disney films 1968-1988

A little while ago I wrote another collection of quick commentaries on major Disney films (which I’m watching one by one through Disney+) from their inception with Snow White in 1937 to The Jungle Book in 1967. I was planning to round off my next collection at another 30-year mark, but the little mini-reviews I’ve been writing are beginning to look so long-winded in aggregate that tonight I decided maybe I should stop at this point. Also, last time, without fully being aware of it, I stopped at the end of what is considered Disney’s Silver Age (coming after Disney’s Golden Age, also included in the last set of commentaries), and apparently 1968 to 1988 is considered Disney’s (Bronze and/or) Dark Age (the Disney Renaissance kicking off with The Little Mermaid in 1989), so there’s another reason it makes sense to cut it off here.

I’ll keep watching the major Disney features, one a day, through the 90′s works, but whether I’ll find time to keep writing about my impressions of each film I watch, I can’t guarantee anything.

The Aristocats, 1970

This is a beloved favorite of mine. I got the video in later childhood, having previously admired the main number “Everybody Wants To Be a Cat” (still the highlight of the movie, from my adult point of view) and having read the story in a Disney book. After seeing it many times in childhood, I rewatched it only a few years ago when it showed up on Netflix. Around that time (or maybe just afterwards), I noticed that my favorite cartoon/Disney reviewer YouTuber Phantom Strider occasionally mentions that he dislikes The Aristocats -- he doesn’t put it on his top 10 worst Disney movie list or anything, but he’s made some disparaging remarks without going into detail. Watching it once again this month on Disney+, my verdict is that, yeah, it’s subpar in quite a few ways, but my more critical adult sensibilities will never override the fond feelings I have for this movie.

Since this is the next movie on the list after The Jungle Book, I couldn’t help constantly comparing the two, and I did see some parallels. In both cases, the story is pretty weak: this time, a family of cats gets kidnapped and stranded far from home by the greedy butler villain and have to pass through several adventures to get back to their owner. In both cases, the plot is a very linear one involving small adventures and minor characters having little bearing on the overall arc (this is perhaps slightly less the case with The Aristocats, where the new acquaintance Thomas O’Malley stays with them the whole time, and at least Scat Cat’s gang makes a return at the end -- minus the unfortunate and entirely unnecessary character of the Chinese cat -- to fight for the protagonists). In both cases, the voice acting is great and includes Phil Harris and Sterling Holloway. In both cases, the villain’s motives are rather flimsily stated -- the butler villain is more comical and slightly more rounded out, and the fact that his motive doesn’t make a lot of sense is perhaps meant to be part of the comedy. The Aristocats has far more filler material, including a useless but somewhat amusing and ultra-cartoonish sideplot about our butler villain losing his hat and umbrella and having to return to the countryside to get them (it’s more amusing than it sounds, trust me).

The Aristocats is simply weaker in almost every way than The Jungle Book. Although I like all the music, including “Scales and Arpeggios” which I only just learned was written by the Sherman Brothers and I appreciated a lot as a kid who practiced the piano every day, the only truly memorable song was “Everybody Wants To Be a Cat” (not written by the Sherman Brothers), whereas in The Jungle Book there are multiple numbers of that caliber written by the Sherman Brothers at nearly the top of their form. This film can also be compared to One Hundred and One Dalmatians and again comes out looking worse -- Dalmations sort of perfected the whole “animals coordinating a rescue” type plot, and The Aristocats only seems to make a feeble attempt at it.

One interesting thing about the pacing of the film that as an adult I’m a bit taken aback by is how quickly the ending of the movie runs. I was shocked when I rewatched this for the first time as an adult on Netflix, got to the ending of “Everybody Wants To Be a Cat”, and saw that there were only 15 minutes of running time left: that includes the late-night discussion between the romantic leads, the arrival at their home, Edgar re-kidnapping them, Roquefort going for help and nearly getting himself killed by Scat Cat’s gang, the whole action sequence of the actual rescue, a final scene with Madame welcoming O’Malley and rewriting the will, and the final song. We don’t even get to see Madame’s reaction at seeing her beloved cats alive and well, which is one of the ways this movie compares unfavorably with Dalmatians. There is some real artistry in The Aristocats, but the amount of effort put in is clearly not up to the standard of Disney’s finest.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 1971

I mainly knew this movie through the song “Beautiful Briny Sea” growing up. Eventually I did watch the film one time; I also read the book it was based on (I can’t remember which came first). I remembered very little outside of that one song, the fact that the characters travel in a bed, and David Tomlinson (who I knew well as Mr. Banks) being in it as an jarringly un-Banks-like character. I had entirely forgotten the fact that the story takes place during World War II and that this is crucial to the plot. I knew this as the Disney movie that tried to be Mary Poppins and failed to be anywhere near as exciting or resonant. However, I was still very curious to rediscover, two decades later, what the movie was really all about.

The story is really quite good on a level that appeals to grownups as well as children -- not as deeply as Mary Poppins, mind you, but distinctive and captivating. (I think this has something to do with the story being as much to do with the adult characters as with the children.) The acting is also solid. It only increased my respect for David Tomlinson’s versatility as an actor, in fact, and it was fun to see the likeness of the dignified and proper George Banks display so much awkward vulnerability and eventually get himself into so many slapstick situations. Unfortunately, the only memorable song is “Beautiful Briny Sea” -- I mean that quite literally, as sitting down to write this a couple of weeks after watching, I’m finding it hard to remember much about any of the other songs.

Also unfortunately, the song “Beautiful Briny Sea” is sort of a beacon in a murky area as, halfway through the film when we switch to the animated portion, the movie suddenly gets... quite bad. The live-animation hybrid is consistently done to weak effect, first of all. For some reason, only Mary Poppins made this effect believable, ahead of its time. Secondly, I understand that we have to suspend our disbelief to enjoy a children’s fantasy film, but having the group plunged into water without themselves or their book appearing wet or having any issue breathing is pushing this a bit far. Thirdly, the writing gets rather silly. As soon as they come across an animated codfish who welcomes them to the area, the oldest kid Charles (always the skeptic) says, “Now I’m hearing things! Fish don’t talk.” Nor do fish “walk” along the bottom of the sea with a cane while fully clothed and smoking a cigar, Charlie, so what was your first clue that you’re in a story where things you thought impossible are happening?

The whole crew later gets up onto the animated island of Naboombu, where Mr. Banks Professor Browne is forced to referee a soccer game between teams of anthropomorphic animals as part of his efforts (somehow) to get his hands on the lanyard of the island’s arrogant monarch (who rather resembles Prince John from the next film on this list) which winds up evaporating as soon as they get back to their own world anyway. The ensuing soccer match is by far the most bizarre part of the film, or of any of these films really -- it feels much more like some wacky Saturday morning cartoon than Disney animation. Browne the referee winds up getting (literally) dragged into the game; the live/animation hybrid is done especially poorly here. Once the characters get back to the “real” world, however, the movie becomes good again, with a fantastic climactic conclusion that left me smiling at the overall effect of the film despite its weaknesses.

Robin Hood, 1973

This was a Disney classic that we owned from the time I was fairly small, and that I watched more times than almost any other one, with Alice in Wonderland being the only possible rival I can think of. I went what was probably close to a twenty-year period without seeing it or missing it until a couple of years ago, on a transatlantic flight when it was one of the movie options on the plane. I was taken aback on that rewatching by the fact that... Robin Hood just isn’t that good. When I later saw my parents (I think this was on the way to visiting them), I told them of this revelation, and they told me, “We never thought it was that good either, but you seemed to like it.” I guess I can see some of the appeal to my much younger self, but less easily than I can see the appeal of the some of the other so-so films like The Aristocats -- there is something about Robin Hood that is eye-catching on the superficial level but ultimately shallow. At the same time, I’ll always have to feel a bit sentimental about this one because of the role it played in an early period of my life, introducing me to words like outlaw and in-law and taxes (I vividly remember thinking in early watchings that Taxes was just the name of the unpleasant wolf character), helping to develop my understanding of what poverty looks like, and also introducing me to the concept of political satire (under an anti-free-speech monarchy no less. The scene shown in the video just linked is my favorite scene of the movie, by the way.)

I think my main criticism of Disney’s Robin Hood could be summarized by saying it oversimplifies what could have been a nuanced story, way more than it needs to. This shows most starkly in its clearly-marked division between good characters and evil characters. Naive Good-vs.-Evil plots are very much part of the Disney brand, but I can’t think of any of their other films which takes that aspect to this much of an extreme in developing the characters, so that the entire cast is very openly divided between the white caps and the black caps and (this is the most important part) to the detriment of individuation between the characters. The personalities of all the characters on the Good Side seem pretty much interchangeable throughout the film. Oh sure, Robin Hood has Plucky Hero stamped on him with Designated Sidekick Little John, and Maid Marian has Love Interest stamped on her, and so on. They get into different situations because they all play different roles in the community. But there are no deeper differences between them. Friar Tuck, for instance, is the local religious leader, and you think he might present a more thoughtful, pacifistic, and spiritual point of view to his comrades and enemies. But no, he shouts at the Sheriff and chest-bumps him out of the church and engages him in physical combat just like all the other characters do. All of the people on the Good Side are in complete lockstep throughout, and this makes their part of the story deeply uninteresting.

King Richard is never developed as a character; he is a faraway abstract entity throughout the film, which makes his sudden appearance at the end (which is what really saves Nottingham and finishes the story) very ineffective. (Let’s not get into the fact that he’s described as heroic for going off to participate in the Crusades -- “While bonny good King Richard leads the great crusade he’s on” -- talk about sugarcoating history!) This is part of what I mean about oversimplifying: they could have injected some complexity into the political story beyond “usurper taxes all the money out of the people because of his personal greed until the real king returns and makes everything lovely again”. I strongly believe it is possible to present real issues in a way that is both mature and engaging to children and that it has been done even in other Disney features. Disney didn’t try very hard to do it here.

I’ll give the writers credit in that the three main bad guys, Prince John, Sir Hiss, and the Sheriff of Nottingham, are somewhat individuated, partly I think out of necessity because the Bad Side of any story has to consist of people who quarrel amongst themselves. Prince John is actually well enough developed as an insecure, petulant child with no idea what it means to lead a country that I enjoy watching him even as an adult. The parallels between him and President Trump are unmistakable, and I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more memes about this. Still, by the end of the film, even he was starting to wear on me.

Another aspect of the movie that bypassed my attention as a child but bothers me as an adult is its blatant American-ness in retelling a very old, extremely British story. As in One Hundred and One Dalmatians, all of the accents, except for those of two of the main bad guys, are American. The rooster narrator of the story sounds particularly American and plays folk music throughout of a style that strikes me as the epitome of American.

The way the script and animation deal with bodies and obesity is particularly interesting in this one. Four of the characters I can think of are portrayed as fat, including one of the main bad guys (the Sheriff “Old Bushel-Britches” of Nottingham) but also three of the good guys. Minor quips are made about this by some of the characters, but overall it could arguably be considered a rather positive, good-natured treatment of this issue for its time. It is the source of some physical humor, and some of the body-related physical humor in general slightly raises my eyebrows as an adult -- there is a boob grab, for instance (well, fake boobs as part of a disguise, but still).

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, 1977

I had avoided watching any Disney rendition of Pooh for a long time before watching this one last week. I got to see a lot of Pooh in earlier childhood because of videos given as gifts by other kids’ parents, which my mom (who loves the original books by Milne and hates Disney’s interpretation of them) let me watch only with great reluctance. I soured to the Disney Pooh franchise as I got older and remember in high school getting sick of how many things were decorated with animated Pooh characters, and how few people knew the original books.

Starting to watch this film, I had no idea which of the Pooh stories would be included or whether I would remember seeing them before. As it turned out, I remembered almost none of it: I knew the theme song well and was slightly familiar with the early song about Pooh climbing the honey tree (it must have been on one of the Disney Sing-Along videos) but didn’t remember anything else until vaguely recalling some of the later Tigger stuff (I remembered, before it happened, that Tigger escapes from the tree by sliding down a paragraph of text in the book, one of many instances of extreme fourth-wall-breaking that runs as a theme throughout). As it happens, although The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh seems to go along pretty smoothly given that it makes no pretense of having a unified story arc -- something I give it credit for -- it is actually composed of four short films produced throughout the decade beforehand. This explains why I only remembered the Tigger stuff near the end: we must have had the quarter-length film Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too at my house for a while, but not the other three. (What I actually watched the most, I think, was a video of TV episodes called “Newfound Friends”, which I’ll look up on Disney+ out of curiosity but probably won’t include in this list.)

I remain anti-Pooh[Disney_version], but this anthology film wasn’t as bad as I had thought it might be. The first story about Pooh and the honey tree was actually pretty good. I am not opposed to Sterling Hollaway’s portrayal of the title character. Eeyore’s voice is way too flat, but otherwise most of the characters are portrayed okay. I distinctly remember reading Rabbit as a female character as a kid, and on hearing his voice again I suppose I can understand why. Tigger is the most offensively adapted: he is one-dimensional in a very obnoxious, not-so-amusing slapstick way. His portrayal would have come off better if they had given him more of a child’s voice, which is more appropriate to the book version of his character anyway. The gopher character is pretty annoying as well; he’s rather useless and unnecessary given that he’s not in the books (he even has a fourth-wall-breaking line about not being in the book). Some of the stories from the book are meshed together in a way that does a disservice to each of them, and the movie might have been better if it had committed to adapting fewer of Milne’s chapters. The story about Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit’s front door is done in a distasteful way, with Rabbit turning the back half of his body into part of the upholstery (an idea that Walt Disney had himself when he first read the book!). The songs weren’t great, and I wish that some of Pooh’s poetry from the books had been adapted to song instead.

Leaving those details aside, this is an earnest attempt at turning Pooh into an animated feature which turned out to be not too terrible given my low expectations.

The Rescuers, 1977

I remember watching this once as a kid and almost nothing sticking with me apart from the fact that the main villain (who I remembered nothing about, not even really the gender) had two pet crocodiles. I watched it a second time on Netflix a few years ago, I think within the same week of watching The Aristocats on Netflix.

I have one word for this Disney animated classic: weak. The story is not all that interesting. Having watched Dalmatians and The Aristocats in the few weeks before hand, coordinated animal rescue plots were starting to wear on me. There is no music except for a few forgettable songs not sung by the characters. Eva Gabor makes Ms. Bianca a beguiling character, but the rest of the characters are completely forgettable. The main male character, Bernard, has the blandest voice ever. Even the little girl being rescued, while sympathetic, is not very unique or interesting. (There is something subtly heavy and haunting about having her teddy bear as her best friend through most of the film, though.) At the time of writing, I’ve already halfway forgotten what the villain’s sidekick was like. There are a bunch of other animals who are fun to watch in animation but don’t stick in my mind, apart from Pat Buttram’s drunken rat character (because it wouldn’t be a Disney film of the 40′s-80′s without some alcoholism in it).

The villain, Medusa, is a particular fail here. She is basically a lame Cruella de Vil 2.0: modern, non-fairy-tale-ish, greedy and materialistic, drives like a lunatic, etc. After watching, I found out that the story writers initially thought of simply bringing Cruella back as the villain in this movie, but decided against the idea of it being in any way a sequel to Dalmatians (remember that at this point no Disney sequel had ever been done -- the 1990 sequel to this film was the very first!). I think they should have gone with that idea: bring back one of the most celebrated Disney villains, rather than come up with a new one who is a lot like her but with subtly less pizazz.

Random observation: this has to be one of the only classic Disney stories where the animals can talk to exactly one sympathetic human (the girl) but no other human. If I remember right, I don’t think even Cinderella can understand the words of her mouse friends.

Anyway. Some people say the sequel is much better than the original here. I haven’t seen The Rescuers Down Under yet, but I hope it’s true.

Pete’s Dragon, 1977

This is the first movie on this whole journey that is so obscure that I don’t think I’d even heard of before, let alone seen, and that’s despite the fact that there was a remake in 2016. (The one thing that rang a bell for me while watching was the idea of a dragon playing tic-tac-toe on its belly, an image I possibly saw in an isolated context.) I questioned whether I should watch yet another 1977 Disney film at all, when it would be mostly live-action and was obviously so obscure. In the end, I’m glad I watched this, partly because the story did grip me on some level, but mostly because this film is so very entertaining in how badly done it is.

Pete’s Dragon, in almost every way, is bad -- hilariously bad -- the sweet spot of Bad: the kind of bad that’s actually interesting to examine and yet also shallow enough to make for good Bad Movie Night watching. It’s hard to know where even to begin. The consistently terrible acting of almost everyone, especially in every single line of the boy protagonist (I hate to trash a child actor like this, and part of it was probably bad direction: for instance, someone should have taught him to go easy on the pointy finger). Almost none of the right emotional notes are hit at the right time in what is a very heartfelt story. Only Helen Reddy as the female lead and Jim Dale as the charlatan doctor strike me as good actors doing the best they can with a terrible script and bad acting around them. Then there are the cheesy, poorly-written, often poorly-sung songs. (Did I mention that in one song, each of Pete’s main abusive guardians continue to sing, each in an unperturbed, full-throated voice while being flung in the air by an invisible dragon and plunged into the water?) The awkward choreography. The weak visual effects (as with Bedknobs and Broomsticks, they really didn’t know how to pull of hybrid animation well. I’d go easier on them for this if Mary Poppins hadn’t nailed it 13 years earlier.) I could go on and on.

It made a lot of sense to me when I read afterwards that Pete’s Dragon was originally written as a stage musical, because there is something unusually stage-musical-ish about how the songs are written (for instance, having subsets of the ensemble throw out response lines in unison) and the way the choreography is done. I’ll say as someone who has been in stage musicals that these elements can feel a bit awkward even on the stage; they look to me more awkward in the medium of film; and they’re especially awkward when the songs, choreography, etc. is as poorly written as it is in this film -- someone who hates musicals wanting to teach a friend to hate them too might well choose to show their friend this movie and pretend that it’s a representative example.

Even through all this, I was able to appreciate that the story is pretty good, and I came to care for the sympathetic characters, however badly acted they were. I also enjoyed the atmosphere of a small coastal village in northeast US (called Passammaquoddy, apparently a real bay in Maine). So, by the time I was partly through watching this (fairly long) movie, I felt very committed to continuing, enjoying it as I was just as much for its entertaining badness as for anything else.

I want to end by mentioning one musical scene in the movie that took me by surprise because it was actually good, and funny and catchy and overall entertaining. It’s our introduction to the charlatan Dr. Terminus, and so it’s self-contained. If you want a taste of a part of the movie that I think is head and shoulders better than the rest while reflecting exactly what I mean by a stage-musical-style musical number (not making any claims about how good in absolute terms this scene is, though), here is a YouTube video of it (the song “Passammaquoddy”) (warning: mildly off-color taste on body type and disability stuff). I would actually enjoy leading a song like this in a musical.

The Fox and the Hound, 1981

These more obscure Disney films are getting more and more interesting. I distinctly remember knowing about this one as a kid, seeing VHS boxes of it at friends’ houses, etc., but I never had much interest in actually seeing it. I watched it for the first time on Disney+ with great curiosity, coming in knowing literally nothing about what the story would be about except “a fox and a hound are friends”. I was pleasantly taken aback by the new setting of backwoods American farmland and by unusually quiet, low-key tone.

The main thing I can say about this movie is that it’s far and away the least Disney-ish of the animated ones I’ve seen so far. If nobody had told me which company made this movie, it would never even occur to me that it was done by Disney, except for the presence of Disney icon Pat Buttram’s very recognizable twangy voice (perfect for this movie, not really appropriate for the setting of Robin Hood). It’s hard to explain just why I feel this way. Maybe it’s something to do with the pacing and the sort of quiet story. Or maybe it’s the fact that none of the animals seem to be drawn in the traditional Disney fashion (that is, we’ve seen fox and owl characters before in Disney, and for some reason their counterparts in The Fox and the Hound aren’t recognizable to me.) Or maybe it was the almost complete lack of songs. Honestly, trying to write this, I can’t quite pin down what made this a slightly offputting Disney-watching experience.

Despite feeling affection for the characters from the get-go, I actually found myself rather bored throughout the first half of the slowly-progressing movie. Then I perked up in the middle, actually thinking there might be a death, and of a rather morally ambiguous character too (this didn’t feel like a Disney film, so it might break the rules?). After that I felt enthralled to the point of breaking down and finishing it after having previously decided to leave a bit left over for the next day. I’m really not used to not having any idea how stories will end when going through Disney movies, and I guess I couldn’t handle even that small bit of suspense.

In the end, I thought the story, and how the story was rendered, was pretty good -- not stellar, but genuine. I don’t know about how overly-neatly everything was wrapped up with the main antagonist Amos Slade doing a complete 180 at the end, but after all this is Disney even if it doesn’t particularly feel like it and I shouldn’t be surprised at a happy ending.

Random side note: I wonder if Big Mama (the owl character) could be criticized as sort of an African-American stereotype and thus what Disney+ would call an “outdated cultural depiction”, or if it will be in another ten years.

The Black Cauldron, 1985

We continue with our sequence of more obscure Disney flicks. I guess this era is called the Dark Age of Disney for a reason, and one could say that this movie epitomizes such an era both in its role in the evolution of Disney and in its actual content. I don’t recall even hearing about this one as a child. I’ve heard it referred to as an adult only in the context of its successor being advertised as fun to provide a contrast with the overly-dark box office failure that had just come out, so I came in expecting a not-very-worthwhile movie that would be uncharacteristically dark and un-fun.

All I can say is, wow! The Black Cauldron, while indeed uncharacteristically dark (in ambiance at least, less so in subject matter), is genuinely, seriously good!

Within literally the first two seconds of the film, I knew that I was in a Medieval setting (not having known anything whatsoever about the story prior to watching) both from the music and from the backdrop. This remained the case throughout the movie. Everything in its style is boldly, wholeheartedly Medieval, not like some other Disney movies where the Medieval setting is watered-down and phony *cough*swordinthestone*cough*robinhood*hack. The only other movie on this list so far which comes close to succeeding at this was Sleeping Beauty, but that is such a different type of film, with such a different animation style, that comparing the two is like comparing apples to oranges. Honestly, I don’t think that the flavor is so thick even in Sleeping Beauty. The art of The Black Cauldron actually feels closer to that of Magic the Gathering than anything else I can think of from Disney. The effects of the animation are absolutely gorgeous -- in a rather dark way, mind you, not bright and colorful like what is usually associated with Disney.

The story is complex by Disney standards and I had zero familiarity with it beforehand, so for the first time I actually had to check myself to make sure I was paying attention. The characters are reasonably developed with engaging dialog (though slightly hesitant and sparse, with unusually little humor). It was a little jarring to hear “the Forbidden Forest” mentioned by one of the characters and remember that Harry Potter wouldn’t be around for over a decade. The main villain is one of the scariest ones of Disney and I would imagine may have been somewhat influenced by Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor, who had made his debut only a couple of years earlier.

I said that the last film on this list seemed distinctly un-Disney-ish, and I can say the same about this one in its own way -- maybe this was an experimental trend at Disney studios during the first half of the 80′s. The Black Cauldron has even less music in it than The Fox and the Hound and may be the only animated feature I’ve seen here with nothing resembling a song at all. One strong impression I got throughout, especially when the dungeon sequence started and the princess was introduced -- and this isn’t exactly a compliment -- is that something about the pacing, dialog, body movements, etc. seriously makes this movie feel like I’m watching a video game. (For personal context, I’ve never been a gamer, and most of my exposure to video games comes from watching college roommates play during the late 00′s.) I can’t justify exactly where I get this feeling. Also, the princess is strangely voiced and feels particularly like a non-player (video game) character somehow. I’m now curious as to whether there have ever been any games based on this movie or whether it had faded too much into oblivion by the time gaming reached the right level of progress.

Anyway, The Black Cauldron may not be especially fun or enjoyable to kids, but for an older person in the mood for some spooky Medieval fantasy animated entertainment, I recommend it as a fine movie.

(Fun trivia: I had believed that the successor on this list was the first animated feature to use computers to assist in animation, in the clock/gear sequence, but apparently this one actually was. Also, to date it was the most expensive animated film created.)

The Great Mouse Detective, 1986

Now for a classic that I had been greatly looking forward to. We didn’t have The Great Mouse Detective at my home growing up, but I know I saw it a number of times and later remembered liking it so much that on a whim in college, around the time I revisited Mary Poppins, I borrowed it from the local Blockbuster. I distinctly remembering feeling a little sheepish checking it out, but the young guy at the register actually said something like, “Yeah, that’s one of the best ones.” Years later, one of my best friends during graduate school was hanging out at my place and the conversation went to us agreeing on how excellent The Great Mouse Detective is and musing over the fact that nobody ever seems to talk about it, and we decided to watch it together as it was on Netflix at the time. We didn’t bother to log out of my roommate’s Netflix account to watch it, and he was later very irritated at me about the fact that Netflix was now constantly offering him children’s animated features. Anyway, it seems I’m far from the only one who has often viewed this one as perhaps the most underrated Disney classic of all time. (Further evidence: it comes second in WatchMojo’s list, with their winner being its predecessor!)

The Great Mouse Detective was billed as “All new! All fun!” to assure audiences that it would be a departure from the heavy seriousness of its predecessor, and in this it generously delivers all the way through. It’s based on the just-silly-enough-to-be-delightful premise that in late Victorian London there was a mouse version of Queen Victoria living in Buckingham Palace and a mouse version of Sherlock Holmes (our title character) living under the human Holmes’ flat in Baker Street. Our villain, the dastardly Ratigan, is hatching a plan to take over all of Mousedom via a plot which is incredibly silly, but the movie, which is consistent in its unpretentiousness, is able to pull this off just fine. All of the characters are nicely fleshed out (there’s a case to be made about Fidget’s character reflecting ableism but let’s leave that aside). Ratigan is the juiciest villain we’ve seen since Cruella de Vil. The plot is actually pretty complex, not at all like the predictable fairy tale / fantasy type plots we’ve often seen, yet not so complicated that it would lose the audience (or if it loses some kids, they will still be entertained by the great voicing, music, and animation). The action is, bar none, the very best I’ve seen so far on the animated movies of this list, and the movie is somehow packed with action -- every single sequence of it is superb, and the climactic scene inside of Big Ben is a revolutionary masterpiece of animation (by the standards that existed at the time). The abrupt transition to that scene, beginning in near-silence, is one of the more delightfully, deliciously chilling Disney moments for me.

This is not one of the great Disney musicals, but all three of its three musical numbers are still very enjoyable. I remember learning in college that the same person wrote “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind” and “Goodbye So Soon”, but I only just now internalized that the composer was Henry Mancini who I love from The Pink Panther and Victor Victoria. There is a certain type of wit and humor in the lyrics of both of those songs which I don’t know how to characterize in words except to say that it’s sprinkled with phrases either containing self-contradictons (“You’re the best of the worst around”, “You’re more evil than even you”) or redundancy (“No one can doubt what we know you can do”) or just plain wordplay (“Even meaner? You mean it?”, “With time so short I’ll say so long”). None of it makes a pretense of being extremely witty or anything; it’s just mildly dry. I don’t know what to call this kind of humor and can’t think of another example of it, but it consciously (though subtly) influenced the vibe I was going for with the section headings in certain of my earlier Wordpress essays.

Perhaps Lady and the Tramp can make a case for winning the Most Underrated Disney Animated Feature prize, as it seems more mature and elegant, but I’m not ashamed to say that I find The Great Mouse Detective every bit as enjoyable and that I still have enough inner child in me that I can rewatch the movie in my early 30′s and come out of it smiling broadly.

Oliver and Company, 1988

The first major Disney feature that came out in my lifetime! As with The Fox and the Hound, I always knew about this one growing up but was never really interested enough to watch it (even despite the fact that it was somehow loosely based on Oliver Twist, whose musical adaptation I was raised on pretty heavily) -- at least, I don’t think I ever saw any of it until one day in my young adulthood cable days when I caught it on TV. By “caught it on TV”, of course I mean that I probably didn’t see all of it, and it was interrupted by commercials and I was probably doing something else at the same time and not paying much attention. Literally the only thing I could remember was the line “Don’t want to mix with the riffraff?”

It’s just as well because in the grander progression of Disney creations, Oliver and Company turns out to be pretty skipable. Now I will say that I appreciate the variety of locations and cultural backdrops in Disney films and the amount of effort the creators put into carrying them out (something that was mostly lost on me as a kid). In this case, we are transported for the first time to contemporary New York, and it’s clear that the writers, voice actors, and animators went full throttle on making everything seem as in-your-face New-York-ish as possible. I don’t fault them for doing this, but it’s all done in a slightly brash way that doesn’t at all attract me to late-80′s New York culture.

I was struck in the first few minutes by a change I don’t quite know how to describe in words, except to say that the animation and even more the music feel palpably distinctly more modern than anything I’ve visited so far. The animation is simpler and more generic (luckily I have a fondness for kittens and they do succeed in making Oliver look adorable, but otherwise the visuals left me cold), and the music is a sharp reminder of the blander forms of pop music I remember growing up hearing. “Why Should I Worry?” triggered a recognition of the song that I had long forgotten -- apparently I used to know it very well but I’m not entirely sure how. The other songs are forgettable enough that I’ve already forgotten them. Interesting to find out that the principal voices were done mainly by Billy Joel and Bette Midler, marking another step on Disney’s road towards featuring more big-time celebrities in their voice acting (culminating in Robin Williams’ role in Aladdin several years later).

The story is very watered down compared to either the book or the musical version of Oliver -- understandable, I suppose, but I didn’t find it very interesting. The characters were lackluster, and the main villain Sykes managed to be even more forgettable than What’s-her-name from The Rescuers. This movie normalizes hitting on women by making catcalling noises, as done by two of the non-evil characters -- I wonder if this was put in because it’s considered a distinctive feature of New York culture, but either way I found its presence in the film obnoxious. I will say that the character of Georgette (played by Midler) stood out as very funny, and I enjoyed all of her scenes, but I don’t have much else positively positive to say about this one.

[aion-rsa]

50 Best Fighting Game Final Bosses from Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and More

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When it isn’t about rage-quitting against your best buddy sitting next to you on the couch, or some guy playing against you across the country, fighting games are all about beating the arcade mode. Doing so means defeating the pesky final boss.

We’ve fought so many final bosses over the last 30+ years. Whether they’re godly megalomaniacs or bloodthirsty loners out to prove they’re the best, there are pleny of cheap-ass villains standing in the way of character-specific epilogue cutscenes.

So I’ve decided to rank the 50 best final bosses in fighting game history. This ranking includes both default final bosses and special secret bosses, but they have to be the last guy you fight. That means characters like Goro, Cervantes, Apocalypse, Vega, and Antonov don’t count. I’m also not counting games like Street Fighter Alpha and Vampire Savior where there’s no real set boss and different people have different final opponents, which is why Jedah isn’t on the list.

Now let’s face it straight!

50. JINPACHI MISHIMA

Tekken 5

I think this is the moment when Tekken’s story started going off the rails. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the lore of the series, but after doing a game about Heihachi vs. Kazuya vs. Jin, they decided to go further and bring in Heihachi’s dad. And he’s possessed by a demon because why the hell not.

But really, the reason he’s possessed is because otherwise he’s the one member of the bloodline who isn’t a jerk. That doesn’t make for a good boss design. In Tekken 5, he takes over the Mishima Zaibatsu and sets up a new King of the Iron Fist tournament ASAP just so somebody strong might be able to kill him before he completely loses control and wipes out all life on the planet. His ending cutscene even has him cry blood over this because he’s that hardcore.

The tragedy is that, in the end, he was killed by his great-grandson Jin, but Jin came out of it learning the wrong lesson. Jin, suffering from his own possession problems, went and took over the Mishima Zaibatsu and started a world war as part of an elaborate plan to commit suicide by putting a giant target on his back. It took two more games for him to finally get his head on straight.

49. SILBER

Buriki One

SNK shamelessly ripped off Akuma, but at least the studio did it with style. Coming from the lesser-known fighter Buriki One, Silber is a Victor Creed-looking urban legend who is obsessed with increasing his power and challenging worthy opponents. At the end of the game’s big MMA tournament, when the player is ready to face his fellow finalist, your opponents’s busted carcass is instead knocked through the entranceway like a punted football. The mysterious Silber takes their spot.

Win or lose, Silber’s response is to just quietly jump off and exit the arena. The endings are mainly about the winners being asked by the press what the hell that was even about. And if you unlock Silber and beat the game with him, he just leaves the press hanging by jumping off into the distance.

Silber also appeared as a hidden mid-boss in King of Fighters XI, but his fighting style lacks anything really bombastic. No fireballs or energy explosions or anything like that. Just brutal karate with his flashiest move being a flipping legdrop.

I do really get a kick out of how one of his King of Fighters intros has him throw a non-descript martial artist to the ground before jumping into the fight, like it’s his regular thing to kick some schmuck’s ass and take their spot in a tournament.

48. SHANG TSUNG

Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat’s attract mode sold the game by going, “Yo, check out this huge claymation beast with his four arms and topknot! He will break you in half if you even blink!” But this unstoppable monster was actually second to some floating geezer. Surely, that at least had to mean that Shang Tsung was a special kind of threat in his own way.

Indeed he was. A shape-shifter was a fantastic gimmick for a final boss, especially since it jibed with his tendency to eat souls. Even though he was turning into other playable characters, the insinuation was that you were more or less fighting all the dead warriors from the years that he had absorbed into his being. Then Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa played the HELL out of him in the movie and his legendary status was solidified.

While lesser on the totem pole in later games, Shang Tsung regaining his youth made for a good trade. It’s just too bad that once games were on discs and had loading times, Shang’s tendency to morph mid-match took a powder. As one of the final bosses in Deadly Alliance, it just didn’t feel the same. He was just some guy.

47. SOUL EDGE/INFERNO

The Soul Series

As far as I’m concerned, the Inferno concept peaked in the first game. Cervantes was an evil dude, but he was still just a pawn. As shown at the end of that fantastic CGI intro that still holds up to this day, the swords were really running the show. So after taking down Cervantes, the swords came to life to fight you as a more powerful version of Cervantes with a flaming skull head.

The development of Siegfried wielding the Soul Edge and being transformed into Nightmare was a wonderful twist and selling point for the sequel’s storyline, but it made Inferno look a little redundant. The flame body was neat, but he was just Nightmare with a weaker design. Inferno never really had a personality of its own. Then Bandai Namco started having Inferno adopt random movesets, but there are like a dozen characters like that in SoulCalibur.

The concept of Inferno did translate well in SoulCalibur V where they showed that the Soul Calibur sword has its own counterpart in Elysium. It appeared in the form of a scantily-clad Sophitia in order to manipulate Sophitia’s son, Patroklos. Man, Inferno may be evil personified, but at least it didn’t try to seduce Siegfried by turning into his dad in a speedo.

46. MISS X

SNK Gal Fighters

The Neo Geo Pocket Color game SNK Gal Fighters features an all-female roster in a comedic story about a mysterious Miss X putting together a Queen of Fighters tournament, with some kind of wish-granting talisman up for grabs. When you reach the end of the game, you discover that Miss X looks an awful lot like Iori Yagami wearing a mask and a dress. While many of her opponents aren’t fooled, nobody outright says Iori’s name, and Miss X insists she isn’t who they think.

But also, please don’t tell Kyo about this.

Of course, she still fights exactly like Iori Yagami and is flanked by Iori’s former King of Fighters partners Vice, Mature, Billy Kane, and Eiji Kisaragi. Miss X is REALLY committed to the act, but it’s never really explained why she’s created this whole disguise.

Miss X made a few more appearances too, including when Dimitri performs his Midnight Bliss attack on Iori in SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos and as a DLC character in SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy.

45. SAGAT

Street Fighter

As the boss of the first Street Fighter game – which nobody really cares about – Sagat being on this list is more of a courtesy. While a difficult opponent, Sagat’s position as a final boss isn’t really that memorable. If anything, he’s defined by his defeat here. It’s why he has that cool scar on his chest, why he suddenly has a Dragon Punch knockoff in the sequel, and it’s the crux for his redemption story and frenemy relationship with Ryu.

Sagat’s spot as the original Street Fighter boss actually helps build up M. Bison and Shadaloo in general. He returns in Street Fighter II, scarred both physically and mentally, while physically stronger and more driven. Yet he is still only the penultimate boss, showing that this time he’s outranked by a big-chinned dictator.

44. ZEUS

World Heroes 2 Jet

World Heroes 2 Jet doesn’t have any character-specific endings. Instead, the endings are based around Zeus, a jacked behemoth who watches your penultimate victory from a balcony, acts jazzed about finding a worthy opponent, then makes the grandest of entrances by flexing off his suit (revealing body armor underneath), walking down some stairs, and kicking the doors off the entranceway.

A regular old pain in the ass, Zeus’ reaction to his defeat is decided by how much health the player has left. If it’s a close match, he’ll berate you until realizing that it was a fun fight. If the player has half a life bar left, he’ll threaten to kill them the next time they meet. If the player has almost all of their health, Zeus will mope as his henchman Jack tries to cheer him up. He insults the player, then cartoonishly cheeses it across the image of a map.

What makes this so golden is the iffy English translations. Here are some of Zeus’ lines from his endings:

“Why you, you, YOU… YOU CRAZY FUNSTER! To think that you were this strong!”

“YOU FILTH, YOU SLIME, YOU LAWYER! To think you had such power… But, heh, heh, heh…it was a crazy, hip time!”

“Hey, you. Still can’t walk and chew bubblegum at the same time? Oh, nooooooo!”

Classic.

43. DARK KAHN

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe felt like a joke someone made about Marvel vs. Capcom that someone else took as a serious suggestion. Quality of the game aside, the two worlds meshed well together, which is why we’ve seen the two parties meet up again a few more times. Mortal Kombat and DC, for the most part, didn’t so much match up as they complemented each other.

One pairing in particular matched up perfectly. Darkseid and Shao Kahn were both evil overlords, two peas in a pod. Rather than fight each other or team up, they did one better: they merged.

Dark Kahn isn’t exactly better than the individual characters but this modern Amalgam design still kicks ass. Darkseid’s stony flesh mixed with Shao Kahn’s skull face to create a lava beast who lives to blow up the multiverse.

Dark Kahn IS…OUTSTANDING.

42. MISTER KARATE

Art of Fighting

Just because someone is designed as comic relief doesn’t mean they can’t have their moments of serious competence. See also: Deadpool, Mankind.

Mr. Karate started as the original Akuma type. In Art of Fighting, Mr. Karate was a mysterious mob enforcer who happened to look and fight just like protagonist Ryo Sakazaki, but with a different head and more damaging attacks. In another light, Mr. Karate’s tengu mask could be seen as silly, but considering how brutal he was, it was easy to see it as a threatening symbol of martial arts dominance.

After that game, where it was established that Mr. Karate was Ryo’s father, Takuma Sakazaki, who’d forced to work for the mob, he became a secondary character. He showed up in King of Fighters regularly as just Takuma, but became something of a joke. When he appeared in the Mr. Karate mask, he acted like a total goof and everyone rolled their eyes at his lack of self-awareness. But comedic or not, there were still moments here and there that made him look tougher than the rest of his family combined.

But it was SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos that revitalized him. Depicted as Akuma’s SNK counterpart, Mr. Karate was given both a silly base version and his “serious” boss alter-ego, who reminded the world of what kind of force he was in his Art of Fighting days. Right on.

41. ASMODEUS

Mace: The Dark Age

The Nintendo 64 was lousy when it came to compiling a fighting game library, so we had to do the best with what we had. Mixed in the shallow pile was Mace: The Dark Age, which was like if the guys who made Mortal Kombat were tasked with making a SoulCalibur game. The basic story was roughly the same: an insidious, medieval weapon of ultimate power falls into the hands of evil and everyone wants a piece. The difference was that while the Soul Edge brought demonic chaos in its wake, with its wielders just wandering around destroying stuff, the Mace of Tanis brought demonic order, as its wielder used it to rule Eurasia and its corrupt council.

This created a conflict where everyone wanted a shot at holding the Mace. Not just the heroes, but also conniving members of the Council of Seven because they’re evil and power hungry. And wielding the Mace of Tanis? None other than Asmodeus. His name popped up in exposition dumps but he didn’t even have a pre-fight profile image. You didn’t get to see him until you actually faced him in the final battle and, all in all, he met the hype.

For all of the limitations of the Nintendo 64’s graphics, Asmodeus looked amazing. He appeared as a gigantic, reptilian demon so big that only his upper half was peaking out of a portal. His offense wasn’t much to talk about, as it was mostly just swiping attacks and pounding at his prey, but damn if he didn’t look like how a final boss should look.

40. MUKAI

King of Fighters 2003

The 10th and 11th King of Fighters games released in the final days of the franchise’s classic art style, and included some great designs, like Oswald. But while the bosses in these games looked and moved exceptionally, they were mostly really lame otherwise.

Mukai from King of Fighters 2003 provided a great balance, though. He didn’t have much going on besides being the harbinger for lesser villains, but he looked totally sweet and his stone-based motif led to a fun boss fight that wasn’t too hard to figure out. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for the glowing lava design usually reserved for rock creatures, but making that classic design monochrome feels fresh and absolutely badass.

Too bad he died like a punk in a random cutscene several games later.

39. KULL THE DESPOILER

Way of the Warrior

It’s disappointing to me when a ridiculous and/or stupid fighting game doesn’t have that final boss that just pushes it further into hilarity. I’d love to discuss ClayFighter here, but it’s not like N. Boss or Dr. Kiln were anything to write home about. Tattoo Assassins is a total trip, but there’s not much to say about its big bad Koldan. Death from Time Killers is just lame and ugly to look at.

Way of the Warrior is an extreme piece of garbage and sweet Jesus does that translate to its final boss, Kull the Despoiler.

This 3DO classic is one of several Mortal Kombat knockoffs that tried to cash in on digitized graphics and bloody violence. Other features included a White Zombie soundtrack, hideous backgrounds, a character who just a regular guy’s sprite but enlarged to look like a giant, and a couple boss characters brought to life by mid-‘90s CGI.

After the player has gone through the main cast and a CGI dinosaur named High Abbott (with another CGI dinosaur watching from a throne in the background), we take a trip to the citadel graveyard stage. There’s a memorial statue of the great warrior Kull that suddenly breaks apart to reveal that his living, 8-foot-tall skeleton is inside.

“Not even death shall keep my name from the Book of Warriors!”

You must fight this silly skeleton warrior, who is armed with a bloody hammer and iffy voice-acting, all while the guy who made Devil’s Rejects is singing. A fitting finale for such a game.

38. HEIHACHI MISHIMA

Tekken Series

In terms of pure power, Heihachi is one of the weakest boss characters in relation to his series. He’s played the final boss a few times in the Tekken series, but these fights are always less about him being the ultimate force of destructive evil and more about his importance to the story as a scheming bastard with the occasional redeemable moment as a human being.

It’s also about how he measures up to his son, Kazuya, the would-be protagonist who is ultimately more evil than Heihachi. The first game’s plot focuses on Kazuya as a vindictive monster who smiles at his father’s assumed murder, and Tekken 4 finally brings the three-way generational conflict between Heihachi, Kazuya, and Jin to a head for the first time. Then in Tekken 7’s story mode, Heihachi gets his final battle with Kazuya in a war that’s been ravaging the whole world.

Despite being hilariously unkillable in the past, Heihachi appears to be dead for real now and it’s solidified his true purpose as a final boss: to pass the torch to his son, who is both stronger and straight-up worse as a human being.

37. ATHENA

SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos

If there’s anything resembling a story in SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos (not counting the completely bonkers Hong Kong comic adaptation), it’s that all the street fighting going on in the world has caused havoc on time and space. Beings from the past and future have ended up in the present. By the end, it gets so out of control that by defeating Shin Akuma or Serious Mr. Karate, you create a rift that sends your character to Heaven or Hell.

(Let’s rock!)

If you’re in Hell, you fight Capcom representative Red Arremer from Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins. If you go to Heaven, it’s SNK’s Athena, but not the annoying pop star from the Psycho Soldiers team in King of Fighters. It’s the original SNK Athena from the sidescroller where she’s a bikini-clad goddess. Funny enough, despite there being pre-fight dialogue specific to each pairing, none of the King of Fighters crew pay any lip service to this.

Rather than annoying you with constant screams of, “PSYCHO BAAAWWWWW!!!” this Athena uses lots of summoning and shapeshifting powers to get the better of you. If King of Fighters Athena brought out a giant baby chick to destroy her opponents, I’d probably choose her more often.

If you lose the fight, she transforms you into an animal specific to the fighter. If you win, you get to meet God. Either way, it’s a pretty eventful day.

36. ABYSS

SoulCalibur III

I was thinking of putting Algol on this list before realizing that I have absolutely nothing to say about the guy. He was fine. Nothing especially memorable about him.

In terms of end bosses wielding both the Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, Zasalamel’s final form, Abyss, is where it’s at. Mainly because Zasalamel is one of the last great SoulCalibur characters (along with Grizzled Owl and Harley Quinn Gollum). He’s a fantastic neutral warrior who ironically uses a Grim Reaper scythe despite being cursed with immortality and wanting a permanent death.

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After Zasalamel is transformed into Abyss, you actually begin rooting for Zasalamel to come through. This is his chance to put a stop to his endless cycle of resurrection, but it’s unfortunately turned him into an uncontrollable demon.

In the end, Zasalamel comes out of it better. During the experience, he sees a vision of the future (our present), and after reverting to his normal self, he goes from, “I must use the two swords to kill myself for good!” to “I have to prevent the two swords from ever killing me because the future looks fun as hell!”

Which reminds me, where’s my Zasalamel in Tekken, Harada?!

35. ONAGA THE DRAGON KING

Mortal Kombat: Deception

After Shinnok disappointed Mortal Kombat fans, Midway decided to introduce a new final boss who was a Shao Kahnier Shao Kahn. Fortunately, Onaga worked.

Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance made an effort to clean the slate and start fresh, removing Liu Kang, Shao Kahn, and Goro from the board. Having Shang Tsung and Quan Chi share the final boss spot went against that attempt for freshness, but Midway made up for it by planting the seeds for the sequel.

The whole plot was about introducing the Dragon King – the most Mortal Kombat villain name possible – who ruled Outworld before Shao Kahn. They built up anticipation through the game’s lore without showing him or even outright naming him, and we just knew the heroes were on a collision course with something monstrous. Reptile’s ending, in which his body was possessed and mutated by the Dragon King’s soul, made it definite.

Deception revealed that Shang Tsung and Quan Chi defeated the heroes, but it didn’t matter. Onaga was back and he made the two look like jokes. Things were already dire after the good guys lost, but now there was also this 10-foot-tall tank covered in scales with gigantic dragon wings just sauntering around.

Unfortunately, he got stuck being archenemies with Shujinko and that dude straight-up SUUUUUCKS!

34. NECROSAN

Primal Rage 2

The holy trinity of almost-to-completely-finished fighting games that didn’t get released are Thrill Kill, Tattoo Assassins, and Primal Rage 2. Primal Rage 2 is a fascinating unreleased game that not only had action figures, but a novelization that I would love to read one of these days. It’s always crazy expensive on eBay, though.

The first Primal Rage didn’t have a final boss, but legend has it that Atari Games originally planned to introduce Necrosan in an updated version. Instead, the studio saved him for the sequel, and while the game never saw the light of day, he simply rules too much for me to ignore. Much like King Ghidorah, Necrosan is an alien invader in a world of Terran kaiju. An extremely well-animated winged dragon skeleton coated with muscle tissue, Necrosan looks metal as hell. His backstory complements his look too: he singlehandedly kicked the asses of all the beasts from the first game.

Also cool is the twist that the big meteor that caused the first game’s post-apocalyptic origin was actually an egg housing Necrosan who planned to conquer the planet for his race.

33. KRIZALID

King of Fighters ’99

After spending several years doing the Orochi storyline, King of Fighters finally moved on to something different: mad scientists. The NESTS Cartel was a neat idea in theory, but the further the story went, the more they revealed themselves as dorks. In other words, don’t expect to see Zero or Ignis on this list.

Krizalid had a great look…er, well, his first look. That coat with the fur top covering his jaw was great. The more flexible S&M garb from when he burns it away, not so much. He made for a great first threat in this new story, especially due to how the endings painted him as a tragic figure and made NESTS look like bigger dicks because of it.

For all his posturing, he’s just a deranged clone, pitied by the heroes and exterminated by his bosses at the first opportunity. Then again, maybe they were also annoyed that he got rid of the coat.

32. SHINNOSUKE KAGAMI

Last Blade

The Last Blade games are some of the most underrated titles in the SNK library. Despite only having two installments, the series features plenty of interesting moments, including a redemption arc for its initial villain, Kagami. Originally guard of a portal to evil and darkness, the high-and-mighty Kagami lost his faith in humanity and decided to use that portal to wipe out life on Earth and purge mankind completely. Using his refined swordsman skill and ability to wield flame, he killed a lot of people to help pull off his scheme.

In the end, he was defeated by the hero character Kaede and banished himself into the portal to be tormented. But was resurrected to fulfill his original role as guard of the portal as well as help take down Kouryu, a former victim of his whose reanimated body was possessed by evil from within the portal. This made Kagami second guess his role in the initial adventure, deciding that humans aren’t bound to evil after all and may even be good.

I always liked how he’d have a normal stance in the first round, but after taking a loss, he’d levitate half a foot off the ground. It’s just ominous enough without having to completely change his style.

31. SUPERMAN

Injustice: Gods Among Us

“Evil Superman” has been done to death. It can be used well, but a lot of the time you just end up with Brightburn. Injustice: Gods Among Us did a decent enough job by taking an interesting episode of the Justice League cartoon and leaning harder into it. The main difference between the two Supermen was that, while the animated version was driven, he wasn’t as mentally cracked as his video game self.

The animated Superman still had Metropolis and Lois, but Injustice Superman lost them both at the hands of the Joker. As shown in the better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be comic book tie-in, Superman began his reign of terror by killing the Joker in a fit of anger, and bitterness, time, and betrayals caused him to become obsessed with order and a world where there was no war because he said so. It didn’t help that so many of his superfriends sided with him.

Superman is so regularly pushed as the top guy at DC that it’s not that surprising he’s the final boss in a DC fighting game. In fact, the only way to beat him was to get the good version of Superman to do the job.

30. NU-13

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger

When I played through BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger’s arcade mode, I made sure to use Ragna the Bloodedge last. The fact that he was the protagonist, yet very rarely appeared as an opponent for everyone else’s arcade mode path made him seem special. This ended up being the right way to play the game as his dialogue with Nu-13 hit me like a train.

BlazBlue’s plot of, “Wait, I think I understand, but… No, you lost me,” means I can’t fully explain what Nu-13’s story is but the gist of it is that she’s some kind of experiment gone wrong and she’s showing up around a portal that’s messing with the time-space continuum. Everyone comes across her in arcade mode and she usually greets them with extremely dry robot talk throughout the boss fight. When she meets with Ragna, she suddenly acts like an excited schoolgirl who has been pining for this guy and writing his initials in her diary. It’s extremely off-putting and unexpected.

As a boss, she’s a great fit for the game, which takes place about 200 years into the future, but Nu-13 is the only one truly diving headfirst into the futuristic look. Even the game’s resident cyborg Tager comes off lacking compared to all the crazy sci-fi shit Nu-13 has going for her.

29. KARNOV

Fighter’s History Series

There is a holy trinity of ’80s video game asskickers who are remembered fondly due to a mix of genuine nostalgia and internet irony: Abobo, Mike Haggar, and Karnov. The latter fighter is a fascinating bloke. Not only did he star in his self-titled platformer game, but developer Data East also decided that this dadbod adventurer should just show up in several of their games like a mascot. This is why Fighter’s History is treated as a sequel to the original Karnov game in which the bored treasure hunter holds a fighting tournament with lots of his money on the line.

Fighter’s History is such an obvious Street Fighter II clone that Capcom tried suing Data East. The game’s only real saving grace is the use of Karnov as the carrot to lead you to the end. And while the sequel/update of the game is just the same cast with the bosses playable, Karnov looks completely different. In the first game, he’s completely jacked, albeit extremely short. In the next game, he’s taller and fat with a nasty stomach scar and has moves that allow him to morph his body like Jake from Adventure Time.

I suppose if it wasn’t weird, it wouldn’t be Karnov.

28. PYRON

Darkstalkers Series

When the gimmick of your game is that all your characters are Japanese takes on classic monsters, it’s only logical that the biggest threat is extraterrestrial. Pyron is far from the best alien in a video game, but he does the job here as both Silver Surfer and Galactus wrapped in one.

Seriously, look at his ending. If he can turn as big as the sun, he probably could have saved time by leading with that. But what do I know? I’m just a human who hasn’t been murdered by a vampire with stupid hair.

Pyron gets by with his design, which looks absolutely beautiful in that mid-‘90s Capcom arcade animation. The rippling energy waves of cosmic flame almost make you forgive him for what he was like on that terrible Saturday morning cartoon show.

27. MASTER HAND

Super Smash Bros. Series

Chucking a bunch of Nintendo icons into a game and trying to make a narrative out of it is a fool’s errand. Luckily, Nintendo didn’t overthink it too much and just decided, “They’re figurines or something having an imaginary battle.” It’s Lego Movie meets Secret Wars.

And after so many dream fights like Mario vs. Link and Kirby vs. Yoshi, who would be at the top of the ladder to threaten the heroes? Bowser? Ganon? Andross? King Slender?

No. It’s a hand. Just a big, disembodied glove dead set on crushing the player. I suppose Nintendo didn’t need to have a recognizable final foe. The four-way Nintendo slugfest was enough. So why not have a big hand that can do silly big hand attacks? It’s just the bizarro icing on the cake at this point.

I love how random Master Hand is. It’s a boss fight version of the Toy Story toys revolting against Sid the bully. With every new game, Nintendo had tried to add needless context, and this has caused Master Hand to expand into transcendent final boss concepts like Crazy Hand and Tabuu. That’s just a special kind of weird. Imagine creating a giant hand as your villain and then in each sequel thinking to yourself, “How do we build on that?”

26. KRONIKA

Mortal Kombat 11

Despite rebooting the series’ winding and convoluted storyline, Mortal Kombat 9 ended on a low note. Sure, Shao Kahn was dead, but so were most of the heroes just as Shinnok was preparing to make his own move. Meanwhile, Mortal Kombat X, while not having the happiest ending, culminated with most of the major threats taken off the board. Kahn was still dead, Quan Chi was dead, Shinnok was just a head, and Onaga’s resurrection was prevented. Things were looking up for once!

But in Moral Kombat 11, a cosmic Tilda Swinton appeared as not just Shinnok’s mother, but as a meta representation of video game designers at odds with the story. Kronika wants good and evil to war with each other on equal enough footing forever. The status quo doesn’t allow enough juice for what she wants, so her plans include bringing back dead characters with a hand wave, reverting characters who have developed farther than she cares for, and even rebooting the franchise itself.

Even her kind, the Titans (higher up on the chain than the Elder Gods), play into this. Scorpion’s ending shows that reality simply won’t exist without the backstory that his wife and child were killed, all because the Titans deemed it so. These games are getting dangerously close to the fourth wall.

Meta or not, Kronika is a fantastic addition to the Mortal Kombat mythos. That endless time-reverse Fatality of hers is one of the highlights of that game’s many kills.

25. ULTRON SIGMA

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite

Despite its huge roster, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 didn’t have much in terms of Capcom-based villains. Plus, the big boss was Galactus. Where do you even go from Galactus in a sequel? For Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, bringing Galactus back was a no-no due to Disney being stingy with the Fantastic Four property at the time.

But Capcom had a pretty good solution. First, introduce Sigma from Mega Man X into the world of fighters. Second, bring in box office superstar (at the time) Ultron. Third, take a page out of Dark Kahn’s book and merge the two into one being. They’re robots. Robots love that shit.

For the record, the most hyped I got for this game was the stinger on the announcement trailer where they showed a shadowy Ultron sitting on a throne with Sigma’s glowing eyes appearing on his torso.

Not only do you get each meatbag-hating robot on their own and in merged form, but then there’s the over-the-top design of their final form. Transforming into a nightmarish and gaudy final form is Sigma’s MO, so it’s nice to see Ultron just go with it.

Yeah, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite didn’t have staying power, but it did have a giant Sigma head with Ultron’s body sticking out…as well as that head-scratching plot point where Thanos made a gauntlet powered by Ryu’s inner evil for the sake of throwing fireballs at Death. See, that’s why you need arcade mode endings in games like these. Let your crossover freak flag fly.

24. VICTOR ORTEGA

Ring of Destruction

Saturday Night Slam Masters is remembered well enough, partially due to its SNES port, but few talk about its sequel Ring of Destruction, which had more of an emphasis on fighting game mechanics. Players of only the first game would still recognize Victor Ortega, as he’s the Billy Graham/Hulk Hogan guy in the intro, tearing his shirt off. Though not part of the game’s roster, his identity is revealed if you’re able to beat the game without losing a single match.

This mountain of muscle was a previous CWA champion who was so dominant in the ring that he left out of boredom. Getting the first game’s best ending has Ortega return to challenge your wrestler, ending in a cliffhanger.

The sequel is about the Capcom Wrestling Association being invaded by heels representing the Blood Wrestling Association. This situation piques Ortega’s interest, as hewants the last man standing to challenge him for the title. He proves to be a pain in the ass to take on — not only can he uppercut so hard that fireballs fly out but he was busting out jumping Yoshi Tonics all the way back in 1994!

23. ZANKURO MINAZUKI

Samurai Shodown Series

In fighting games, having a katana means getting some extra range and damage. In a series like Samurai Shodown, what does one do for an extra range advantage when everyone is armed with a sword? Easy. Create an 8-foot-tall Brock Samson samurai guy with a katana befitting of his size.

Zankuro is one of the rare examples of a character who talks about “the demon within” but isn’t actually possessed by one. Ryu is a good person despite having a magical dark force inside him threatening to turn him into a rage zombie. Zankuro is just an asshole. He slaughtered villages of people because killing people is his vice. And really, who’s got the skill to get in his way and tell him to stop?

But the outcome is inevitable. He has to die. In Samurai Shodown III, Zankuro had a fake-out death followed by a real death, just as he lamented his horrible acts. He was be sorry about his sins, but sidestepped having to live with them.

Except…he keeps getting resurrected.

22. DIO BRANDO

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

It’s kind of crazy how popular Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has become in the US in the past few years, especially when you look back at how niche it was in the late ‘90s when Capcom’s Jojo fighter hit the arcade, Dreamcast, and PlayStation. Back then, the best you could do was find some low-quality manga scans and hope that someone online could translate them. All Capcom had was the manga and a few episodes of an anime, but they still managed to turn those into a kickass video game adaptation.

Dio was a major part of this. His moves and animation set him up as someone who could be cold and collected one moment and a slinking psychopath the next. The way he’d jump off-screen, return with a steamroller, and smash you with it while laughingly clawing at the vehicle defined what kind of series-carrying villain he really was.

The biggest mark against him is that regular boss Dio is not nearly as cool as his faceless counterpart Shadow Dio, based on the stretch of the manga when nobody knew what Dio’s powers actually were but understood that he was scary as hell.

21. WOLFGANG KRAUSER

Fatal Fury Series

SNK did Krauser dirty. His appearances in Fatal Fury 2 and Fatal Fury Special made him the most epic boss fight of the era. First off, the dude was so jacked that he was able to burst out of his chest armor with a mere flex. Second, he got this epic line:“I’ll chisel your gravestone! Sleep well!” Most importantly, his background music was only a version of “Dies Irae” but it was played by own personal orchestra during that fight!

Dude wasn’t even up to no good. He was just an intense man who wanted a good fight. Even in defeat, he stood back up to dramatically yell, “You were perfect! I have met…my match…” before collapsing. Legendary presentation.

Unfortunately, then we got the second Fatal Fury anime, where SNK inexplicably got rid of Krauser’s amazing purple mustache. Why would you do such a thing? That mustache never did anything wrong.

He was almost completely forgotten by the time King of Fighters rolled around. He appeared in King of Fighters ’96 with a lanky redesign that made it look like he had a swimmer build, but everyone knows that Krauser needs to look like 2003 Triple H.

Oh, well. At least they didn’t get Ray Park to play him in a movie.

20. FERNANDEZ

Waku Waku 7

Waku Waku 7 is one of the liveliest and enjoyable fighting games that nobody has ever heard of. With one installment to its name, this Sunsoft creation has a handful of anime archetypes and knockoffs fight to free a magical fairy and earn a wish. In order to release the fairy, they have to grow into a giant and take on the kaiju known as Fernandez.

Known as Fernandeath in Japan, Fernandez is a large, black ball with a smiley face, bat wings, ball-shaped limbs, and a glowing aura. The giggling beast seems cute at first, but the more time you spend with it, the creepier and more malevolent it becomes. Its eyes turn red, it sometimes has pointy teeth, and at times it’ll turn full-on demonic.

There are some silly move animations thrown in there, but getting devoured and then shot out of its butt like a cannon can’t be the most enjoyable experience out there.

19. JUSTICE

Guilty Gear

Guilty Gear gets a lot of flack for its confusing plot and ridiculous titles, but the gist of the story is unique and surprisingly simple: Once upon a time, humanity took part in a devastating war called the Crusades, where they fought against robo-mutants (a cross between SkyNet and the Age of Apocalypse) and barely survived. Now, with the world reaching borderline utopia, it’s constantly threatened by the possibility of going back to the bad old days. In other words, we missed out on seeing the exciting, explosive, action-packed era of this fictional world, but we absolutely have to prevent that from happening again.

Adding to the terror is that Justice was never fully destroyed in that war. She was simply sealed away for all eternity, which never lasts in fiction. In the first Guilty Gear, losing to this lizard mech meant endless death and destruction. But through her defeat at the hands of Sol Badguy, we not only got a tragic origin story for our main hero that explained what the hell a “Guilty Gear” is, but Justice opened up this world to the possibility that the Crusades could return in various ways despite her death.

18. BRAINIAC

Injustice 2

When your first game is all about Batman taking down an evil Superman, where do you go for the sequel? Easy. You figure out a threat so huge that both Batman and Superman have to put their feud on hold in order to save Earth. The logical choice is Darkseid, but NetherRealm went in a smarter direction with Brainiac. Even though he’s an established character in other continuities, Brainiac had yet to show up in any form in Injustice canon, so the studio could treat him as a brand new threat.

He was the perfect fit, too. Since he was the one responsible for blowing up Krypton, the game used this backstory to also introduce Supergirl and gave us a villain that Superman would hate just as much as the Joker. Even in defeat, Brainiac’s plan created another violent moral argument between Batman and the murderous Superman.

Above all else, Brainiac felt like a big deal. His moves during the boss fight made him seem like an even more advanced take on Doc Ock. The inside of his space ship added to his cyber nightmare aesthetic, too. Last but not least, he was voiced by Jeffrey Combs, whose chilling delivery made him sound like the most menacing threat in the universe.

Sorry, Darkseid.

17. THE GENERAL

Kaiser Knuckle

Kaiser Knuckle is your average Street Fighter II knockoff from the early days of fighting games, and there’s only one reason anyone remembers it at all. That reason is the General.

At first glance, he’s little more than a blatant ripoff of M. Bison. Then you fight him. Without a doubt, the General is the absolute hardest boss in fighting game history. He’s unbelievable. Not only are his attacks unfair variations of Bison’s offense, but he has a move where he releases Green Lantern construct projections of himself in various directions.

He’s an afront to God and when he wins the round and calls himself a perfect soldier, it’s hard to argue.

16. RYO SAKAZAKI

Fatal Fury Special

Some time after Mortal Kombat gave us Reptile and mere months before Street Fighter gave us Akuma, Fatal Fury Special introduced a very special hidden boss: Ryo Sakazaki. Sure, King of Fighters ’94 would be released within a year, but this was our first time seeing a major SNK fighting game crossover. This was the first Terry vs. Ryo matchup.

One of the reasons this debut hits so hard for me is that Ryo and the Art of Fighting crew never seemed to be too prominent in the King of Fighters games. There are two main continuities when it comes to SNK’s fighters. King of Fighters puts everything together and says it all coexists in the same era. Meanwhile, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, Buriki One, and Savage Reign are on a staggered timeline. With Art of Fighting taking place in the ‘70s, it means that the Ryo in Fatal Fury games and Buriki One is a hardened, middle-aged legend and not just another young upstart like he is in King of Fighters.

In other words, Ryo showing up in Fatal Fury Special isn’t just an early crossover, but a passing of the torch.

15. EYEDOL

Killer Instinct

Killer Instinct always valued character designs first and everything after. Ninja, robot, dinosaur, T&A secret agent, boxer, Native American, skeleton, werewolf, ice creature, and fire guy. Then came the story.

To that effect, Eyedol, much like Spinal, is a tribute to the stop-motion fantasy movie monsters of the old days. Specifically, he’s a two-headed version of the cyclops from the 7th Voyage of Sinbad. He made for a memorable final battle, thanks in part to the cheap-ass healing ability that he’d spam while the other fighter recovered in between rounds.

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Eyedol was the last classic character released for the Killer Instinct reboot, and they redesigned the HELL out of him. Depicted as a holy chosen champion turned demonic and ogre-like due to his own ego, Eyedol’s two-headed cyclops look was explained as the result of having his head cleaved in half down the middle, then being resurrected. The wound is healed, but not undone, resulting in some gnarly body horror.

Much respect to his old ending, which was not only a parody of Blanka’s Street Fighter II ending, but by having his would-be mother refer to him as “Billy,” it becomes both a sly reference to Double Dragon (Billy and Jimmy) and musician Billy Idol.

Get it?

14. GILL

Street Fighter III

Following up on M. Bison was never going to be easy. For a long time, he was the poster boy for fighting game final bosses. For the third major installment, Capcom needed to introduce someone who felt different but also as big a threat as his predecessor. Rather than introducing “M. Bison’s boss” or “M. Bison’s dad,” the studio instead went in a completely original direction with Gill. Was he powerful? Yes. Did he use street fighting tournaments as a front for some kind of maniacal scheme? Yes again. Was he the ultimate evil? Well…I guess that depends on your thoughts on organized religion.

Rather than a villain delusional enough to call himself a god, Gill might as well BE a god. And he both wants to be virtuous, but he’s also an egomaniac about it. It’s definitely a fresh take on the mustache-twirling monsters in these games. Even Alex, the main character of Street Fighter III, only wants to fight him to get revenge after for his mentor, who Gill beat so bad in a street fight they had to send him to the hospital. Alex doesn’t seem to really care about the whole new world order cult gimmick.

With Street Fighter III being such a beautiful-looking sequel, Gill also brought the novelty of an asymmetric 2D character who wasn’t just mirrored when he looked in the opposite direction (i.e. Sagat’s eyepatch switching eyes depending on where he’s facing). That fit well with Gill’s mastery over fire and ice.

Screw him for that cheap resurrection power, though.

13. KING LEO/TRUE KING LION

Savage Reign

A lot of times in fiction, futuristic designs are based on the decade when they were conceived. That’s how we got King Leo, a villainous champion in the future of the Fatal Fury/Art of Fighting timeline, who looks hilariously try-hard ‘90s. The angular mask/boots/codpiece combo, the boxing gloves with sword, the ridiculous flat-top mullet, the cap, the ab window, etc. He has it all. He is pure extreme.

In both Savage Reign and its sequel Kizuna Encounter, he’s playable but not really. King Lion is selectable from the beginning, but it becomes apparent that he and the final boss are two different entities. Playable King Lion is an impostor meant to test the challengers, while King Leo is the far more powerful real deal.

Even when Jyazu appears in Kizuna Encounter as the actual final boss by impaling King Leo with his giant sword, King Leo is still able to later shrug off that major wound in a post-credits sequence. God, I wish that game had a follow-up.

12. GALACTUS

Marvel vs. Capcom 3

I’m surprised it took Capcom so long to bring in Galactus. The studio had the giant boss thing going in its Marvel games with Apocalypse, Onslaught, and whatever the hell Abyss was, and probably should have gone with Galactus for Marvel vs. Capcom 2, but I guess Capcom wanted to do multiple forms for the battle and that’s what Abyss brought to the table. Fortunately, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 finally brought in the Eater of Worlds.

Galactus isn’t the kind of guy who is supposed to get taken down by Ryu and Wolverine, but considering Capcom made a Marvel fighter where Spider-Man can take down an omnipotent Thanos, and that there’s an in-story reason that Galactus isn’t at 100%, one can give this story a pass. He still fights like Galactus should with cosmic energy beams flying all over the place.

Probably the best thing about him is his silly appearances in various endings, like being put on trial with Phoenix Wright as his defense lawyer or an annoyed Wolverine telling X-23 to get Galactus’ defeated body off his lawn.

11. MARIE KORBEL

Skullgirls

The Skull Heart from Skullgirls is terrifying and interesting enough to build a fighting game story around. It’s a demonic relic powerful enough to grant you any wish you’d like, but it will possess you in time. How fast it possesses you depends on how selfish your wish is, but the sad fact is that no matter how altruistic or heroic your actions are, every wish is selfish on some level. To use the Skull Heart is to damn yourself and doom everyone else.

That’s the tragedy of Bloody Marie. She grew up an orphan, abused and treated as a slave. Her thirst for vengeance was justified, but it didn’t make a difference. As the all-powerful Skullgirl, it was only a matter of time before she lost herself completely and slaughtered everyone. This struggle translated to her appearance, which seemed normal enough…until you notice the glowing, bare ribs peeking out the side.

Marie has several forms, and each one depicts her as being less in control until she’s just scraps of bone being manipulated by the Skull Heart. Defeating her not only means wiping out a young girl who really doesn’t deserve it, but for some of her challengers, it means they’re walking towards their own tragedy with the Skull Heart.

10. ONSLAUGHT

Marvel vs. Capcom

Capcom pulled off a miracle when it made Onslaught cool.

In general, Onslaught is like the Star Wars prequels. A solid idea in bullet points, but terrible in practice. The idea of an insane Xavier/Magneto/Juggernaut hybrid commandeering all the Sentinels and becoming such a threat to the Marvel heroes that the only way to stop him is to send a purified version of the Hulk after him sounds so awesome, but…well, ‘90s comics are ‘90s comics.

Marvel vs. Capcom’s Onslaught makes for such a sweet boss fight and is a big improvement over Apocalypse, who bypassed the normal-sized battle for the sake of immediately turning giant. Onslaught is Magneto on steroids, who turns into Apocalypse on steroids, and works because ‘90s Capcom was so damn untouchable.

We’re at a point in pop culture where War Machine is a mainstream superhero and “Lethal Protector” Venom made more in the box office than the Justice League. Onslaught is still considered a very specific time capsule that’s yet to be redeemed, which makes Capcom’s use of him here that much more impressive.

9. OGRE

Tekken 3

Tekken is like WWE where it’s so much better when isn’t focusing on the old man running things and his shitty family. When the bosses aren’t part of the Mishima bloodline, they’re usually some kind of unearthly being. You have your Egyptian demigod, you have your goth lady wearing sludge overalls, and you have your Aztec God of Fighting.

Ogre is the one Tekken boss who doesn’t directly tie into the Mishima family. It’s refreshing and makes the whole world feel bigger. He’s a completely unrelated force who reveals himself by beating the crap out of different mainstays in between Tekken 2 and 3. Granted, it was more impressive early on because Ogre got credit for wiping out so much of the early cast. But those guys returned in later games, and it seems Ogre only really killed the first King and MAYBE Jun, who sucks so good for Ogre.

Outside of non-canon stuff, Ogre didn’t last long in the Tekken series, but his death brought forth the rivalry between Heihachi and Jin, springboarding the Mishima war into a new direction. It was also explained that the Ancient Ogre form was defeated by Paul Phoenix, which is sadly one of the last times that character was treated like an actual threat.

8. OROCHI

King of Fighters ’97

Nailing the landing on a long-running story isn’t easy, and it’s truly impressive when a franchise pulls it off. Fans of Avengers: Endgame know that feeling well.

While the first King of Fighters game was all about Rugal, his return in King of Fighters ’95 built on the idea that he was tapped into a greater power that dwarfed him. Then King of Fighters ’96 continued that by showing us Goenitz, who was also a player in Orochi’s game. Even Iori Yagami – an antihero who wanted nothing to do with the evil god – was powerless to be anything but its bloodthirsty pawn.

King of Fighters ’97 not only acted as the climax to this whole saga, but it really felt like the peak of the whole franchise. There were great King of Fighters games afterwards, but this was where everything really felt like it lined up. And so, after all this build up, we got a team of Orochi worshippers, two insane pawns slaughtering in his name, and one guy so insane and bloodthirsty to start with that he shrugged off the magical need to go feral. Then by the time you got to Orochi, he felt like a true final boss that they spent several years building towards. He was the right level of malevolent celestial being and, while challenging, was never too hard compared to other SNK bosses.

As the exclamation point, most endings in the game warned that he’d be back someday. The only way to truly do away with him was to beat the game with a very specific trio of fighters, which happened to trigger one of the coolest endings in the series. The following arcs of King of Fighters would try to build towards other masterminds, but none of them held a candle to Orochi.

7. DIZZY

Guilty Gear X

As I said earlier, the true conflict of the Guilty Gear series is that shit was bad long ago, and the heroes have to keep the world from unwinding back into that chaos. When it came to the villainous Justice, things were pretty cut and dry. Justice had been released from her prison, cloned, and even resurrected at times. But Dizzy was a deeper take on the idea. She is the daughter of Sol Badguy and/or Justice and is an omega-level threat who could very well relaunch the war between humans and Gears.

It just so happens that she’s also an innocent, young woman who just wants a peaceful existence, someone who just wants to be left alone where she can’t hurt anyone. Despite being possibly the most powerful character in the series (give her Instant Kill attack in Guilty Gear Xrd a look), Dizzy is left alone in the end. She ends up finding friends, love, and even has a son.

6. THANOS

Marvel Super Heroes

Marvel Super Heroes is a very loose adaptation of Infinity Gauntlet, and that’s part of the reason the final battle with Thanos work so well. You spend all game accumulating Infinity Gems, adding more power-up options to each fight. Then Thanos steals them away and you have to take on a fully-Gauntleted Mad Titan in front of a backdrop very reminiscent of the big heroes vs. Thanos fight from Infinity Gauntlet.

Now, for those of you who haven’t read the comic that inspired Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos got the Infinity Gauntlet and became omnipotent. A bunch of heroes dogpiled him, and Thanos even gave himself a handicap to make it the slightest bit challenging, but the heroes still lost BADLY.

So here you are, playing as Spider-Man or Iron Man or whoever, having to have a kickass one-on-one brawl with Thanos and having to do alone what almost 20 superheroes couldn’t do in the comics. But because fighting games exist in a reality where everyone can win (and not just Jim Starlin’s Jim darlings), everyone — from Psylocke to Juggernaut — stands a chance at dethroning Thanos and truly earning the Infinity Gauntlet.

5. RUGAL BERNSTEIN

King of Fighters Series

I’m a huge fan of this character despite his tendency to be a bullshit SNK boss. Fighting him in King of Fighters ’94 should be banned by the Geneva Convention. It’s just that…man, the dude has so much swagger and radiates such coolness that I can’t hate him. He’s Rugal Goddamn Bernstein and we’re better for knowing him.

As with most early villains of fighting games, Rugal is overshadowed by his replacements. Shang Tsung works for Shao Kahn. Sagat works for M. Bison. Heihachi is the son of Jinpachi. Eyedol is the rival of Gargos. Geese is the weaker brother to Krauser. Rugal got the ball rolling in his own way as a way to build to the Orochi storyline, which practically defined all the following King of Fighters storylines. Yet in the end, despite being the first step in the saga and being killed for good during the second entry, Rugal has solidified himself as THE villain of King of Fighters. Dream match games and non-canon adventures tend to just go with Rugal as the final boss by default, usually with some extra bell and whistle, my favorite being God Rugal from Capcom vs. SNK 2. A coked up Rugal with Akuma gimmicks is my kind of boss battle.

Rugal is mostly a collection of awesome motifs and special attacks, but I also love that he’s just as defined by his number one weakness. Yes, he’s good enough to crush a team of three like nobody’s business, but he has his physical limits and his downfall is that he doesn’t see that. In canon and as God Rugal, he loses because he absorbs and uses up too much power for his body to handle. It’s nice when a villain is done in by their inability to leave well enough alone.

4. SHAO KAHN

Mortal Kombat Series

The worst thing I can say about Shao Kahn is that, while I dig the way his latter appearances lean into his “painted on the side of your van” metal design, he will never be as completely rad as he was in Mortal Kombat 2 and 3. Probably because loud growling doesn’t hold a candle to his eerie whisper and proud laughter.

Kahn is more intimidating than most bosses. The attract sequence in Mortal Kombat 2 showed a silhouette of Kahn reading Shang Tsung the riot act followed by a more direct look at his appearance, and it was immediately clear that this guy was absolute trouble. The first game tried to make Goro seem terrifying, but we knew that he was still second to Shang Tsung. Shao Kahn was THE boss, and we knew that, even if we climbed up that ladder (with Kahn STANDING ON TOP A MOUNTAIN), Kahn would be the end of us.

And a lot of the time he was. He would beat you with a war hammer, kick you across the room, and taunt you and you’d love him for it. He was so perfect as a boss that Midway simply had to bring him back for the next game.

Even after taking a backseat in the subsequent games, Mortal Kombat Armageddon’s story revitalized him by making him the winner of what was essentially the Mortal Kombat Royal Rumble. It was such a tragic turn of events that Raiden had to go back in time to stop it. Even with nearly all the good guys dead, it was all deemed worth it just because Kahn was killed. At least for a few years.

3. M. BISON

Street Fighter Series

As a kid, I was always confused about why this bus driver was running his own fighting tournament, but that feeling was replaced by my rage at his damn slide kick and arm-hook throw combo. You have fire-hand powers. You don’t need to be that smooth, dude.

Bison isn’t as deep a character as Sagat or as hardcore as Akuma or as naked as Gill, but he is possibly the hammiest final boss in the history of fighting games. All the various actors who have portrayed the character seem to be taken by the infectious fun that comes with playing him, whether it’s Raul Julia in the first live-action movie, Gerald C. Rivers and Kenji Utsumi in the games, Richard Newman on the cartoon, and, hell, even Neal McDonough had his moments in that crappy Chun-Li movie.

As the first final boss that anyone ever cared about, Bison is a wonderful pile of escalating craziness. Over time, he’s become a comedically-jacked guy with a constant smile whose plots involve Buddha statues with laser faces, running over Ryu with a bigass truck, shoving his soul into gender-swapped clones, and dropping satellites onto civilization for the sake of causing chaos. Capcom can try to write him out of the series, but he’s just too iconic to destroy for good.

2. AKUMA

Street Fighter Series

It’s crazy to think how Electronic Gaming Monthly did an April Fools’ joke about there being an enhanced version of Ryu as a secret final boss in Street Fighter II and Capcom decided, yes, that’ll do. That’s how one of the most iconic fighting game characters ever was born.

“Ryu but darker and more powerful” could have ended badly, but Akuma’s always shined as the X-factor of Street Fighter’s roster. He’s more than just an evil final boss. He’s a malevolent force that is somehow neither good nor evil…which is for the best, considering Capcom eventually labeled M. Bison as literal pure evil.

What’s funny to me is how Mortal Kombat introduced the idea of the hidden boss fight with Reptile, then gradually turned him into the biggest jobber in Mortal Kombat lore. Akuma showed up, wiped out M. Bison with his so-powerful-we-can’t-even-show-you super move, gave you a nigh-impossible boss fight, and then Capcom made sure to keep him going as the guy who will make you shit your pants every time he shows up. When SNK made its SNK vs. Capcom crossover game, the team even put an ending in there where a bored Akuma challenged God to a fight.

1. GEESE HOWARD

Fatal Fury Series

As fighting games are ensemble pieces, so are their storylines most of the time. Fatal Fury, not so much. Fatal Fury is really the story of Terry Bogard vs. Geese Howard with a bunch of supporting characters. Even Andy Bogard, who has just as much a reason to be the protagonist as Terry, is relegated to being “the guy who is reluctant to sleep with his hot girlfriend.” Fatal Fury is really about Terry and Geese and everyone else is, at best, an extension of the two of them.

Geese is everything you could ever want in a final boss, unless you’re looking for a giant shooting lasers out his eyes. He’s slick as oil and tougher than brick, with a moveset that’s based around throwing you like a ragdoll or blasting you into the stratosphere. He’s the right balance of difficult enough to make you curse, but not cheap enough to make you throw the controller through your screen.

Not only is he unique in battle, but he just has so much personality. His cockiness is on another level. His every gesture makes him look like he knows he’s superior to everyone else in every way, but kicking their ass is a better use of his time than whatever else he has planned. Even his counter moves (“PREDICTABLE!”) make him seem untouchable.

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His canon death scene in the Fatal Fury games is also second to none. Hanging off a tower rooftop, he sees Terry reach his hand out. Rather than be saved and maybe even forgiven by Terry, Geese chooses to smack it away, let go, and fall to his death while looking up at the winner and laughing maniacally at him. What a boss way to go.

The post 50 Best Fighting Game Final Bosses from Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

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My Top 20 Films of 2018 - Part One

Hello people, time to once again resurrect this defunct blog to ramble about some films again. You may notice a trend if you scroll back through.

OK so I saw a BUNCH of movies this year, thanks again in part to some fantastic arts cinemas, film festivals (well, Sundance London and Frightfest) and yet another banner year for Netflix original content. There were many I didn’t catch like A Star is Born, First Reformed, Aquaman, BlackkKlansman etc but for my FULL ranking of all 135 films I did manage to see, as always go to my letterboxd list here - https://letterboxd.com/matt_bro/list/films-of-the-year-2018-1/

Alrighty then, let’s kick things off:

20. A Quiet Place

As a writer who is hugely inspired by high concept ideas with a grounding in genre, it thrilled me no end to see this ‘elevator pitch’ of a thriller do so well, both critically and commercially. Set in a world where making the slightest noise means certain death from these horrifying, Starship Trooper looking motherfucking bug aliens, we follow a desperate family trying to survive and all the hardships that entails when communication is cut down to a bare minimum.

Of course, this film – which in the wrong hands with a lesser script could easily devolve into a Birdemic style mess – has a helping hand right out the gate in both the star power and gravitas of Emily Blunt and the assured (almost TOO assured) direction of co-star John Krasinski. Their performances ground the action superbly (along with the excellent, actually deaf newcomer Millicent Simmonds) and the tension can be cut with a knife for practically the entire runtime. Famously, people’s enjoyment of the film usually came down to how well behaved their cinema audiences were, which is perhaps the most cruellest of circumstances because the irony is that this is a film that simply must be seen with a rapt audience in a huge dark room… but the second anyone breaks the unwritten code of the cinema, the illusion is shattered. Luckily, within the first three minutes, my crowd were practically holding their breath to maintain the silence. And when I felt a sneeze coming on, let me tell you, that was maybe the scariest moment of the lot!

A tense thrill ride with a genuine ‘why didn’t I think of that’ premise, A Quiet Place is another runaway success for modern horror and I truly hope the inevitable sequels don’t fuck with it’s power.

19. Avengers: Infinity War

Inevitable spoilers for the ending of Infinity War below:

The blockbuster to end all blockbusters, this culmination of ten years of the MCU was a huge triumph, somehow managing to juggle a billion characters jostling for screen-time via some savvy scripting and a focus on a core combination of story strands; namely Thor’s personal journey of revenge, the last stand at Wakanda, Tony’s crew misadventures in space and Thanos being ingeniously positioned as the protagonist. For a mainstream Disney movie to essentially end with the villain winning, there were perhaps no bigger statement this year than the words ‘Thanos Will Return’ at the end of the credits, cementing the fact that while we thought we had been watching a fun, superhero greatest hits package, we’d actually been watching the story of an ambitious, driven individual overcome the odds and claim his victory over all those pesky superheroes. Yes, his plan might be insane but you have to hand it to him; he did it. He actually did it. 

This being a comic book movie - with at least a further ten years of comic book movies to come - obviously means that what is done can always be undone but still, this climax provided such a stark (pun intended) resolution that it left half of my audience in stunned silence and the other half in tears.

Outside of the game changing finale, the film has a lightning pace and a whole host of fun set pieces, characters colliding (hello Rocket meets Bucky) and a real sense of... at least occasional... intimacy that somehow doesn’t get completely swallowed up by the spectacle.

18. Annihilation

Now here is a fascinatingly original sci-fi movie that I just was utterly transfixed and terrified by. Much like Jonathan Glazer’s mesmerising Under the Skin, this jettisoned much of the source novel (outside of the general premise and characters) in favour of a stronger focus on the things that a visual medium can really excel at, namely atmosphere, tone and deeply disconcerting visuals/sound design. I quite enjoyed Jeff VanderMeer’s book but this feels like a much more authored and singular vision. Book weirdness has been replaced by movie weirdness and it actually ends up feeling like a true adaptation and if any book truthers are upset, believe me it could have been so much worse. 

A group of scientists, led by a stoic Jennifer Jason Leigh, including Natalie Portman, Gina Rodriguez and Tessa Thompson, venture into ‘the shimmer’, a baffling electromagnetic field surrounding a crashed alien meteor. Each has their reasons for volunteering for this suicide mission and they are soon faced with the simply unknowable machinations of this particular alien biology, leading to some incredibly memorable encounters, not least of which is a nightmarish mutant bear attack. The practically wordless finale is something I WISH I could have seen for the first time on the big screen.

Eerie, haunting and a miracle of mid-budget, practically distribution-less filmmaking, this is one I can see revisiting many times over and I continue to be obsessed over anything Alex Garland is involved with.

17. Anna and the Apocalypse

Now here’s a surprise. And a delight. And a goddamn joyful burst of sunshine in a bleak bleak world. I went along to see this at the Frightfest Film Festival in August and boy did it deliver. It’s a (*huge breath*)  super independent, low budget, Scottish, high school, coming of age, zombie comedy… Christmas… musical! That’s too many things, I hear you say! And normally you may be right but this film has so much heart, so many breakout stars, so many ingenious, human moments, that it transcends the hurdles of it’s genre mashup trappings and actually works dammit.

The film follows Anna (a wonderful, future star in the making Ella Hunt) who falls out with her father (Mark Benton, the heart and soul of the piece) when she tells him that when school finishes, she’d rather go travelling than go to university. Dad being Dad, he’s appalled at the notion and though he clearly has her best interests at heart, their relationship has been strained since Anna’s mother died and this conflict soon gets ugly. Joining her in this teenage angst are her friends; John (Malcolm Cumming), her best friend who is hopelessly in love with her, Steph (Sarah Swire – who pulls double duty as the film’s choreographer) a gay American outcast, Chris (Christopher Leveaux) a struggling filmmaker and Lisa (Marli Siu), Chris’ girlfriend and talented singer. Together, they butt heads with the panto villainy of the hilarious, scene stealing, scenery chewing Paul Kaye as the maniacal headmaster Mr Savage. Then of course, comes the ultimate spanner in the works… a zombie apocalypse.

As the film pivots from charming high school/slice of life melodrama to genuinely threatening zombie horror comedy, we cannot forget about the musical numbers (!), which are all pretty uniformly catchy as hell, singalong ready and really fucking integral to the entire emotional arc. You start out laughing as Anna sings her way to school completely oblivious to the zombie uprising happening behind her but by the time she’s singing a powerful duet with her father during the finale, there won’t be a dry eye in the house either. It’s a credit to the consistent tone and solid performances that the whole thing doesn’t descend into an overlong sketch and it’s the core relationships that make you care and give weight to the heavier moments in the second half.

It’s funny, smart, endlessly rewatchable and bound to be a new Christmas staple but above all else, it earns it’s emotional gut punches, marrying showtunes with real, life or death stakes that the film doesn’t fuck about with or ignore. People die here, sometimes unfairly but that’s the key to a great zombie flick. And if nothing else, you’ve got bad boy Nick (a stand out Ben Wiggins) shepherding his gang of idiot lads lads lads as they gleefully smash zombie heads in whilst singing “when it comes to killing zombies, I’m the top of my class!”. 

The year’s best kept secret and a real hidden gem. Seek it out.

16. Black Panther

Ryan Coogler man… Ryan fucking Coogler. 

Fruitvale Station and Creed are both five star movies to me and while this foray into the Marvel machine didn’t quite hit those heights, I think he did the best job he could have in blending his own style, ethos and interests with another chapter in the MCU – a production line rather famous for (until recently) stamping out individuality in favour of the bigger, uniformed picture. Sometime around Phase 2, we were getting somewhat bland creative choices like Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World) and losing auteurs like Edgar Wright (initially set for Ant Man) but after the success of the nutty, bold and gleefully anarchic Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s like the flood gates opened, Kevin Feige learned the lesson of diversity and taking bold risks in his directors and suddenly we had a mostly improvised Thor movie from idiosyncratic Kiwi Taika Waititi and then Black Panther.

Having introduced the character in Captain America: Civil War, this film was free to dive right in – and what a world we’re introduced to, one full of colour, afro-futurist designs and the grand daddy of Marvel villains (in my eyes) in the form of Coogler’s lucky charm, Michael B. Jordan, as Killmonger. Here was a man who believed himself abandoned and betrayed by his own people - his own family - who had massively different ideas about what Wakanda’s secretive technological advancements could do for other marginalised societies around the world. Of course, this being a comic book, his plan inevitably boils down to arming terror factions but in theory, it did address the imbalance and selfishness of the Wakandan people.

Outside of some dodgy super suit vs super suit CG fight scenes and some rather silly battle scenes involving rhinos, this was the most engaging and confident Marvel movie in some time, with the aforementioned B. Jordan and T’Challa himself Chadwick Boseman being supported by a whos who of incredible performers, from Letitia Wright and Lupita Nyong’o to Daniel Kaluuya and Andy Serkis.

15. The Square

This film killed me. It’s so very very dry in its humour and nearly every scene plays out in these often painfully long takes but it never fails in making every moment that bit funnier as a result, swinging right round from awkward to cringe back to hilarious again. From Christian’s (Claes Bang) repeated encounters with a very angry child to a deliriously off-kilter Elisabeth Moss fighting for control of a used condom, there’s a Curb-like immaturity to many of the sequences here that clash with the high brow, art world characters that populate it.

Not to mention one of the scenes of the year - period - as Terry Notary terrorises an elitist crowd of poshos, descending into performance art hijinks as he embodies a roaming Gorilla. Becoming genuinely threatening as the line between acceptable “art” and full blown menace gets increasingly blurred, the reactions (or lack thereof) from many of the crowd says much more than words maybe ever can.

14. Summer of 84

Another genre hit that I caught at Frightfest, this is the follow up to one of my favourite films of 2015: Turbo Kid. Directed once more by RKSS (the group moniker for François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell) the film seems to operate, at first glance, in the same territory as their previous movie (aka as a horror influenced, 80s throwback) but it is treated with a completely different tone. Whereas Turbo Kid is ‘Mad Max on BMXs made like an 18 rated Saturday morning cartoon’, this plays like a much straighter Stephen King style pulp thriller. 

The comparisons to Stranger Things are inevitable (group of nerdy teenage boys, suburbia, bikes etc) but unfair. This story doesn’t wallow in nostalgia, rather it is played like a film from the 80s rather than knowingly about the 80s. Yes there are references but they aren’t shoehorned in and it doesn’t take long for the central mystery to take centre stage. A little bit Rear Window, it follows these goofy teenagers (all unknowns to my eyes, all equally brilliant and believable) who begin to suspect that their homely, cop neighbour (Mad Men’s Rich Sommer) is actually a serial killer. It’s to the film’s credit that the outcome of this central question – is he or isn’t he – teeters back and forth so well for so long... that by the time it nosedives into a nasty, pulpy final act - taking the conventions you’ve come to expect and beating you into the ground with them - your heart will be so far in the back of your throat that you won’t notice. And again, another classy retro score from Le Matos helps tie this all together. 

A genuine change of pace from RKSS, despite the continued 80s fixation, and further proof that they have many more tricks up their sleeve.

13. First Man

Along with Ryan Coogler, Damian Chazelle is the other wunderkid whose career has been producing nothing but five star films for me (well, Whiplash and La La Land; I haven’t seen his actual debut). And First Man, like Black Panther, is another one that gets really close to perfection but falls slightly short. Having said that, I definitely think I like First Man a lot more than the general audience consensus. People have complained about its insular, intimate focus on a rather dull, introverted lead subject and the nauseating treatment of space travel but I loved both of these elements. 

This is less a film about triumphantly going to the moon and waving a flag around and more about a grieving man who is so out of touch with his own emotions that he a) speaks to his own children as if he’s attending a press conference and b) is hurting so internally that rather than talk to anyone about the loss of his daughter, he’d rather make the dangerous, unprecedented, insane mission to a cold, dead rock about as far away from anyone as you can get. That feeling - of wanting to shut yourself away from literally everyone - is universal. The actualisation of it - man goes to moon - is personal. And made history. And having the foresight to connect that emotional journey of Neil Armstrong with the otherwise feel-good true story of astronauts (and America!) winning the space race is genius. 

Add to that compelling supporting turns from everyone from Claire Foy, Kyle Chandler, Christopher Abbott and Shea Wigham, another dynamite score from long-time collaborator Justin Hurwitz and some nerve shredding rocket based set pieces and what you have is a fresh direction for Chazelle to take and one that I think we be re-evaluated in the years to come when his filmography expands to much more than just jazz-infused dramas.

12. Phantom Thread

This film is just gorgeous. A riveting character study of a supremely difficult man, Phantom Thread portrays a constant battle for dominance in a troubled yet surprisingly cinematic relationship. Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville give as good as they get from Daniel ‘this is my last film, I swear’ Day-Lewis, an undeniable acting giant who effortlessly breathes as much life into Reynolds Woodcock here as he did Daniel Plainview before, in his last collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson. 

Beautifully shot with another fantastic score from Johnny Greenwood, this one really feels like old school movie magic, like a lost melodrama from the 50s but with a modern mentality bubbling underneath, ready to blow it’s top at the mere, ear-splitting scrape of butter on toast.

11. Widows

Who’d have imagined the director of Hunger, Shame and 12 Years a Slave would be the one to team up with Gone Girl’s Gillian Flynn to deliver one of the best action thrillers of the year? 

Adapted from the 80s TV mini-series and given a modern makeover, this film wastes no time getting right to the important stuff as Liam Neeson’s latest heist takes a deadly turn, leaving the widows of him and his crew to deal with the fallout of the failed money grab. Forced into desperate action to pay off their debts, Viola Davis leads this mismatched group of women into the belly of the beast. The cast in this thing is insane - even outside the main players (Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, Cynthia Erivo) you have Colin Farrell, Bryan Tyree Henry (having one hell of a year), Daniel Kaluuya, Robert Duvall, Carrie Coon, Jacki Weaver, Garrett Dillahunt... not a weak link amoung them.

It’s clear that McQueen is a master storyteller and this is a supremely exciting and suspenseful thriller that if nothing else, adds fuel to my ‘Jon Bernthal shared universe’ fan-theory, haha. Imagine, if you will, that he plays the same character in this as he does in Baby Driver. In both films, he takes part in an opening heist and then disappears for the rest of the movie. In Baby Driver, as he’s walking off after a job well done, he says that if you don’t see him again, he’s probably dead. Cut to him joining up with Neeson on THIS job and promptly getting blown to pieces. 

Boom.

COMING UP - star shaped earrings, reloading biceps, fish sex and a mutant pig

[leftwriteb]

Industry Trend: Open Worlds & Empty Spaces

With the recent release of both Horizon: Zero Dawn and the impending UK launch of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the WiiU/Switch in the next few minutes, the gaming community is going to be treated to two incredible sprawling universes with little but a handful of days between them. Even if that wasn't enough, a new endeavour into the galactic expanses of Mass Effect: Andromeda could easily be another title to add to the growing list of open world games that have reigned supreme on the "next gen" (or now much rather current) console generation. As someone who plans to get all three of these games, as well as the disc copy of Telltales TWD Season 3, March is going to be an expensive and time consuming month for many.

With the latest generation of consoles having been around for a few years now, we are starting so see games and developers use the tools at their disposal in new and exciting ways. Uncharted 4 showed us that games are prettier than ever. Forza Horizon 3 showed us games are smoother than ever. Games like Limbo and The Witness showed us that older concepts and genres could be reborn and reimagined. Games like Star Wars: Battlefront showed us that you can make stupid amounts of money selling half a game... again.. Oh, and let's not forget that The Witcher 3 showed us games were bigger than ever. That too.

But, that being said, I can’t say I ever completed the Witcher 3. Not even close. And a large part of that was because the game gave me something I had never experienced before: a world that was just too big. That’s not to say the game was bad of course, but I found myself less and less interested in the map and what was held within it because there was no real drive for me to explore and investigate every corner as I often do when playing games. While I absolutely adored the time I spent with the game, in a landmass as vast as it was, much of that space was empty and void of the kind of mystery or intrigue that would usually have its hooks in me. 

In all honesty, this is something far too common in this generations lifespan. When I look at the the games I’ve spent the most time with over the past few years, it’s sadly all too clear that they are also the games that haven’t stuck with me. Unlike games before them, they don’t have locations I vividly remember, or locales I could map out from memory. To this day, I could still build a shockingly acccurate model of Outset Island from Wind Waker if asked to. I can still tell you how where the best vantage point is in Armadillo, the first town you come across in Red Dead Redemption, and describe in detail the layout around it. I could even take you on a worryingly precise tour of most of Pandora given the time spent in the Borderlands games.

But when I look at more recent games, feats like that are far more difficult. I couldn’t tell you the name of one location from Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, despite the game being my first Platinum Trophy and one of my favourite titles on the Playstation 4 so far. I can’t recall anywhere particularly memorable from the many hours I spent within Far Cry 4. Even having spent hundreds of hours (and £) on Fallout 4, I remember far less of the map than that of it’s predecessor. It’s a problem sometimes referred to as “open world fatigue”. Far too often we see games having open worlds for open world sake, and in an attempt to create more for the player to do, the surroundings these tasks are situated in are dull, repetitive or both.

Having played a good number of hours of Horizon, and around 30 minutes of Breath of the Wild at the Switch event in London a few weeks ago, it does thankfully look like this trend in the industry is about to get a big fat slap in the face.

Let’s start with Zelda, given this is the game that releases around now in the UK (at the time of posting) and is the game I’ve spent less time with of the two. In just the short time I had with the game, it can’t be stated enough how refreshing the game felt, not just as a Zelda title, but within our beloved medium as a whole. Every corner I chose to explore had something waiting for me. While there were plenty of open grassland areas, looming forests and aged rock formations to create the vast stretches of this reimagined Hyrule, they were generously peppered with things of interest too.

The buried remains of an ancient Guardian sat in a cluster of moss and dirt, frozen in mid-animation. Lakes and rivers would cut through the terrain to add some visual variety and to add some complexity to navigating. Goblin camps would often be positioned along commonly used pathways and would be home to a whole host of enemies and loot, should you defeat them.

What’s more, these details within the greenery provided new ways to interact with the world around you. At one camp, I found some large boulders on a hilltop to the west. Pushing these boulders down the slopes meant I squashed two of the three enemies waiting for me, allowing for an easier victory and an even easier path to the wooden chest the blighters had been guarding. The world felt more alive than any iteration I had played before it, and this wasn’t just limited to the environment; characters and enemies feel more alive than ever too! While traversing a canyon during exploration, I found myself within a narrow bottleneck. Atop of solitary rock stood a goblin wielding a wooden torch. After knocking him to the ground with an arrow or two, his lit torch set the grass around us alight and we both scurried backwards away from the flames, waiting for them to die out, before we charged at each other once more ready to settle our little ember-filled spat. What made me fall in love with the game was how this clearly huge space before me felt like it had purpose. It felt lived in. It felt like it had a history. The things I saw felt like they were there for a reason, instead of just to fill a void.

It’s been a long time coming but I can tell you that I am incredibly excited to play what Zelda has waiting for me, and I honestly think you should be too.

On a more Sony oriented note, Horizon: Zero Dawn is also proving to be another highlight in the catalogue for Playstation 4. While the comparisons between Horizon and Zelda will undoubtedly surface, it’s important to keep in mind that while they do a few things similarly, they are two very different behemoths. While Breath of the Wild brings a much-needed freshness to an established series, Horizon aims to build a solid base for a completely new IP and, make no mistake, it succeeds.

Horizon is a game of two tales and it’s one that manages to provide a playground filled with things you’re already familiar with. Scaling a Tallneck reveals the expanse on your map as you’ve seen in many Ubisoft titles. You can traverse the map via your mount which you can summon to you, akin to the Witcher 3′s Roach, though perhaps not as comical as Geralt’s almighty steed. You’ve got heavy attacks, light attacks, special tools and a weapon wheel just as you’d expect. What the game does, it does incredibly well and with a great deal of polish. But on top of this all is a new universe to become complete infatuated with too.

The strange mashup of sci-fi robotics and engineering with more traditional tribal influences creates a kind of harmony in artistic direction you wouldn't expect to see with such juxtaposition. Locales are a cocktail of twisted metal and blossoming vegetation and everywhere you go has a reason to exist and a visual storytelling that ignites your imagination as you try to piece together your own logic for how or why this ruin is where it is.

While there is plenty of familiarity to keep you grounded in the world Horizon offers, there’s so much more depth in what it brings newly to the table. The open spaces are ones you’ll want to envelope yourself in and already, in the limited hours I have spent with the game so far, I have discovered locations and beauty in the environments that will stick with me forever in my gaming endeavours. This world isn’t just beautiful; it’s actually interesting and exciting too.

While there have been plenty of open worlds and empty spaces in videogames in recent memory, we are at a point in time where things are really changing and open worlds are coming into their own. They feel, as they should, more like established worlds than just open ones. With Horizon and Zelda, we are treated to some of the most brilliantly realised worlds we have ever seen in this medium and I think we can all agree that that’s a trend we hope continues.

[statrano]

How to Blend Learning with Play for a Kid-friendly Summer

With summer fast approaching all over the Northern Hemisphere, kids are eager for time away from teachers, textbooks, and To-do lists. In Ireland, Italy, Greece, Russia, and other Eurasian nations, summer vacation lasts about three months. In Australia, Britain, The Netherlands, Canada, and Germany, it’s six to eight weeks. American students get roughly ten weeks.

While kids celebrate, teachers and parents worry students will lose their academic edge. It turns out that concern is valid. Statistics say over the summer, kids lose over two months of math skills, two months of reading skills, and one month of overall learning. Efforts to prevent summer learning loss propel often-unpopular year-round school initiatives and all manner of summer school and summer camps that focus on cerebral topics.

Worry no more. The cure is much simpler: Disguise learning as play. Using the websites below, kids will think they’re playing games while actually engaging in the leading [mostly] free games and simulations in the education field.

A note: some must be downloaded and a few purchased, so the link provided might take you to a website that provides access rather than play.

General

Here are two gamified options that can be tweaked to address any topic:

Digital Breakouts — Players of all ages use teamwork and critical thinking to solve a series of challenging puzzles that ultimately enable them to achieve a goal. Digital Breakouts are an update to the traditional and popular webquests that have students explore the web as they gather content in a particular field — history, math, literacy, or others. A great collection of free, ready-made digital breakouts can be found over at Tom’s Digital Breakouts. These don’t have to be played online; for a fee, students can play unplugged.

Flash cards — apps like the free Brainscape provide topical flash cards kids can memorize in between the rest of summer stuff. You might even provide badges for the lists students finish.

Financial Literacy

Summer is a great time to learn topics that require dedicated periods of time — like a financial literacy program. These are important for high schoolers, but often not required for graduation. That means many students transition to that almost-adult point in their life where they need to understand credit cards, bank accounts, paying bills, and other financial concepts but have no real knowledge of how these work.

Here are a few sites that gamify financial literacy topics and can be completed over the summer:

Banzai – online free comprehensive financial literacy program

You are here – kids learn to be smart consumers

History

If you ask successful business leaders what subject is most important to their success, most will not say math or science. Surprisingly, it’s history, where future leaders vicariously experience how others survived difficult situations and solved problems they had never before seen. Yet, history classes are often considered boring and not a serious subject like math and science. As if to prove their point, many history classes are dry and fact-oriented with rote drills about dates and events. Even students who thought they liked history might change their minds.

If your students are on the cusp of disliking this subject, change their mind this summer with these sites:

Civilization –– a strategy game in which you attempt to build an empire to stand the test of time. Includes games on Macedonia, how to prepare for war, how to generate Faith, Persia, the inception of Australia, and more; fee required.

History Mystery – solve mysteries using history clues.

History Simulations – interactive and engaging history games and simulations; fee and free.

Math

Somewhere between arithmetic and algebra, students lose interest in math. For many, they find it difficult, confusing, and thus over their intellectual heads. If your students are struggling with this, try one of these gamified approaches to learning math:

Dimension M – math simulations for middle school and high school.

Jasper Woodbury — 12 adventures that focus on mathematical problem-solving; fee required.

Manga High — math content that adapts to particular student needs.

Origo Math — rigorous problem-solving activities and interactive digital games that enhance K-6 student thinking and reasoning skills.

ProdigyGame — game-based approach to teaching hundreds of math concepts for grades 1-8.

Problem Solving

Every day, kids are asked to solve problems. When young, they follow parent’s or peer’s advice, but by a certain age, they realize — if they’re going to lead successful lives — they must know how to evaluate and solve problems themselves. Here are three sites that help them to develop those skills:

The Crossing – the character tries varied ways to cross a gorge. This is a 2-minute video.

Quandary – an ethics problem-solving game from MIT.

Virtual Escape Room – use the clues available to escape the room.

Programming

Let children build on class initiatives for programming by picking an option that works best for their learning style rather than the group. Let them spend as much of their summer vacation on it as they’d like. It won’t feel like learning, but will improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Good choices include:

Hopscotch (an app)

Kodable (an app)

Lego Fix the Factory (an app)

Code.org

the Foos (an app)

Reading

The importance of reading to education success is well-documented. Kids who read statistically excel in their academic journey; those who don’t, don’t. Being good at reading is not just about getting through a book, but remembering what you read, reporting on it to others, and transferring this information to other parts of life. Helping students enjoy this “close reading” requires a different set of tools than grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.

Summer is the perfect time to reinforce authentic and granular reading skills in ways that students will enjoy. Try one (or all) of these three tools:

Book reports — have kids prepare unconventional book reports on their summer reading using sites that share their review via video, audio, or a drawing. Collect these into a digital library that kids can access online, see what friends are reading over the summer, and find books that appeal to them. Over time, this will become a valuable summer resource to supplement student reading.

Book trailers — this is similar to the book report but more exciting! Just like the trailers students watch to help them pick a movie, book trailers summarize the book and share a hook without giving away the story. These can be created in a variety of programs such as Voki and Tellagami.

Sports Network 2 – practice reading skills in a simulated sports network setting.

Science

Science is probably the most under-appreciated fascinating subject taught in schools. Why? Understanding too often comes down to complicated concepts that are more theory than practical making kids wonder why they should learn something they’ll never use. Science is quickly conflated with work and they move on.

If you have kids on the cusp of loving and hating science, remind them why they love it with one of these two sites:

NOAA Science games

Science simulations — lots of choices at the Middle School level.

Technology

So much of learning today is about technology. Kids think they know tech because they do stuff on Mom’s smartphone she doesn’t understand, but the bar is higher than that. When faced with the technology required for test-taking and applications, students can be confused and discouraged when they shouldn’t be — because it’s not difficult.

Take the stress out of technology by letting students use typical tech tools (like Excel or Google Sheets) to play a game. Here are several examples:

Battleship on Google Sheets

Candy Number Crunch in Excel

Monopoly on Excel

Test Prep

By the time students reach high school, if they’re on a college-bound track, preparation for the SATs and ACTs becomes critical, but the thought of opening a Kaplan practice test book with questions they barely understand might derail their good intentions. Instead, give kids fun options that will still leave them feeling better prepared for a test that will decide their future.

Here are a few:

Khan Academy Reading-Writing prep

Mindsnacks SAT Vocabulary –  flash cards on SAT vocabulary that can be studied anytime.

Quizlet – hundreds of SAT vocabulary prep flash cards.

Writing

A great option for summer writing is digital storytelling where kids tell their stories without the worry and frustration associated with typing, grammar, spelling, and language rules. Instead, they focus on communicating with creativity. They might even consider scrapbooking about their summer vacation, journaling about their experience in a camp, or joining friends on a collaborative forum like Google Draw or Padlet to tell a group story.

Good options include:

Draw a Stickman – draw a stickman to represent the main character of a story you’d like to write. Then, this site turns it into a choose-your-own-adventure story, asking you to add detail.

Google Storybuilder — collaboratively write a story to share with friends and family.

Puppet Pals – create simple animated stories with puppets in this iOS app.

Telestory – tell your story with this free augmented reality video storytelling app.

Toontastic – tell your story with comics.

At the core of each of the twenty-five plus websites above is the belief that learning is fun. Let your students (and kids) live it this summer.

— this article was first published on TeachHUB

More on games and simulations:

Weekend Website #44: Mission US

How Minecraft Teaches Reading, Writing and Problem Solving

Teach Digital Citizenship with … Minecraft

Hunger Games

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 25 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, a weekly contributor to TeachHUB, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

How to Blend Learning with Play for a Kid-friendly Summer published first on https://seminarsacademy.tumblr.com/

[corpasa]

How to Blend Learning with Play for a Kid-friendly Summer

With summer fast approaching all over the Northern Hemisphere, kids are eager for time away from teachers, textbooks, and To-do lists. In Ireland, Italy, Greece, Russia, and other Eurasian nations, summer vacation lasts about three months. In Australia, Britain, The Netherlands, Canada, and Germany, it’s six to eight weeks. American students get roughly ten weeks.

While kids celebrate, teachers and parents worry students will lose their academic edge. It turns out that concern is valid. Statistics say over the summer, kids lose over two months of math skills, two months of reading skills, and one month of overall learning. Efforts to prevent summer learning loss propel often-unpopular year-round school initiatives and all manner of summer school and summer camps that focus on cerebral topics.

Worry no more. The cure is much simpler: Disguise learning as play. Using the websites below, kids will think they’re playing games while actually engaging in the leading [mostly] free games and simulations in the education field.

A note: some must be downloaded and a few purchased, so the link provided might take you to a website that provides access rather than play.

General

Here are two gamified options that can be tweaked to address any topic:

Digital Breakouts — Players of all ages use teamwork and critical thinking to solve a series of challenging puzzles that ultimately enable them to achieve a goal. Digital Breakouts are an update to the traditional and popular webquests that have students explore the web as they gather content in a particular field — history, math, literacy, or others. A great collection of free, ready-made digital breakouts can be found over at Tom’s Digital Breakouts. These don’t have to be played online; for a fee, students can play unplugged.

Flash cards — apps like the free Brainscape provide topical flash cards kids can memorize in between the rest of summer stuff. You might even provide badges for the lists students finish.

Financial Literacy

Summer is a great time to learn topics that require dedicated periods of time — like a financial literacy program. These are important for high schoolers, but often not required for graduation. That means many students transition to that almost-adult point in their life where they need to understand credit cards, bank accounts, paying bills, and other financial concepts but have no real knowledge of how these work.

Here are a few sites that gamify financial literacy topics and can be completed over the summer:

Banzai – online free comprehensive financial literacy program

You are here – kids learn to be smart consumers

History

If you ask successful business leaders what subject is most important to their success, most will not say math or science. Surprisingly, it’s history, where future leaders vicariously experience how others survived difficult situations and solved problems they had never before seen. Yet, history classes are often considered boring and not a serious subject like math and science. As if to prove their point, many history classes are dry and fact-oriented with rote drills about dates and events. Even students who thought they liked history might change their minds.

If your students are on the cusp of disliking this subject, change their mind this summer with these sites:

Civilization –– a strategy game in which you attempt to build an empire to stand the test of time. Includes games on Macedonia, how to prepare for war, how to generate Faith, Persia, the inception of Australia, and more; fee required.

History Mystery – solve mysteries using history clues.

History Simulations – interactive and engaging history games and simulations; fee and free.

Math

Somewhere between arithmetic and algebra, students lose interest in math. For many, they find it difficult, confusing, and thus over their intellectual heads. If your students are struggling with this, try one of these gamified approaches to learning math:

Dimension M – math simulations for middle school and high school.

Jasper Woodbury — 12 adventures that focus on mathematical problem-solving; fee required.

Manga High — math content that adapts to particular student needs.

Origo Math — rigorous problem-solving activities and interactive digital games that enhance K-6 student thinking and reasoning skills.

ProdigyGame — game-based approach to teaching hundreds of math concepts for grades 1-8.

Problem Solving

Every day, kids are asked to solve problems. When young, they follow parent’s or peer’s advice, but by a certain age, they realize — if they’re going to lead successful lives — they must know how to evaluate and solve problems themselves. Here are three sites that help them to develop those skills:

The Crossing – the character tries varied ways to cross a gorge. This is a 2-minute video.

Quandary – an ethics problem-solving game from MIT.

Virtual Escape Room – use the clues available to escape the room.

Programming

Let children build on class initiatives for programming by picking an option that works best for their learning style rather than the group. Let them spend as much of their summer vacation on it as they’d like. It won’t feel like learning, but will improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Good choices include:

Hopscotch (an app)

Kodable (an app)

Lego Fix the Factory (an app)

Code.org

the Foos (an app)

Reading

The importance of reading to education success is well-documented. Kids who read statistically excel in their academic journey; those who don’t, don’t. Being good at reading is not just about getting through a book, but remembering what you read, reporting on it to others, and transferring this information to other parts of life. Helping students enjoy this “close reading” requires a different set of tools than grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.

Summer is the perfect time to reinforce authentic and granular reading skills in ways that students will enjoy. Try one (or all) of these three tools:

Book reports — have kids prepare unconventional book reports on their summer reading using sites that share their review via video, audio, or a drawing. Collect these into a digital library that kids can access online, see what friends are reading over the summer, and find books that appeal to them. Over time, this will become a valuable summer resource to supplement student reading.

Book trailers — this is similar to the book report but more exciting! Just like the trailers students watch to help them pick a movie, book trailers summarize the book and share a hook without giving away the story. These can be created in a variety of programs such as Voki and Tellagami.

Sports Network 2 – practice reading skills in a simulated sports network setting.

Science

Science is probably the most under-appreciated fascinating subject taught in schools. Why? Understanding too often comes down to complicated concepts that are more theory than practical making kids wonder why they should learn something they’ll never use. Science is quickly conflated with work and they move on.

If you have kids on the cusp of loving and hating science, remind them why they love it with one of these two sites:

NOAA Science games

Science simulations — lots of choices at the Middle School level.

Technology

So much of learning today is about technology. Kids think they know tech because they do stuff on Mom’s smartphone she doesn’t understand, but the bar is higher than that. When faced with the technology required for test-taking and applications, students can be confused and discouraged when they shouldn’t be — because it’s not difficult.

Take the stress out of technology by letting students use typical tech tools (like Excel or Google Sheets) to play a game. Here are several examples:

Battleship on Google Sheets

Candy Number Crunch in Excel

Monopoly on Excel

Test Prep

By the time students reach high school, if they’re on a college-bound track, preparation for the SATs and ACTs becomes critical, but the thought of opening a Kaplan practice test book with questions they barely understand might derail their good intentions. Instead, give kids fun options that will still leave them feeling better prepared for a test that will decide their future.

Here are a few:

Khan Academy Reading-Writing prep

Mindsnacks SAT Vocabulary –  flash cards on SAT vocabulary that can be studied anytime.

Quizlet – hundreds of SAT vocabulary prep flash cards.

Writing

A great option for summer writing is digital storytelling where kids tell their stories without the worry and frustration associated with typing, grammar, spelling, and language rules. Instead, they focus on communicating with creativity. They might even consider scrapbooking about their summer vacation, journaling about their experience in a camp, or joining friends on a collaborative forum like Google Draw or Padlet to tell a group story.

Good options include:

Draw a Stickman – draw a stickman to represent the main character of a story you’d like to write. Then, this site turns it into a choose-your-own-adventure story, asking you to add detail.

Google Storybuilder — collaboratively write a story to share with friends and family.

Puppet Pals – create simple animated stories with puppets in this iOS app.

Telestory – tell your story with this free augmented reality video storytelling app.

Toontastic – tell your story with comics.

At the core of each of the twenty-five plus websites above is the belief that learning is fun. Let your students (and kids) live it this summer.

— this article was first published on TeachHUB

More on games and simulations:

Weekend Website #44: Mission US

How Minecraft Teaches Reading, Writing and Problem Solving

Teach Digital Citizenship with … Minecraft

Hunger Games

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 25 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, a weekly contributor to TeachHUB, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

How to Blend Learning with Play for a Kid-friendly Summer published first on https://medium.com/@DLBusinessNow

[endevia]

How to Blend Learning with Play for a Kid-friendly Summer

With summer fast approaching all over the Northern Hemisphere, kids are eager for time away from teachers, textbooks, and To-do lists. In Ireland, Italy, Greece, Russia, and other Eurasian nations, summer vacation lasts about three months. In Australia, Britain, The Netherlands, Canada, and Germany, it’s six to eight weeks. American students get roughly ten weeks.

While kids celebrate, teachers and parents worry students will lose their academic edge. It turns out that concern is valid. Statistics say over the summer, kids lose over two months of math skills, two months of reading skills, and one month of overall learning. Efforts to prevent summer learning loss propel often-unpopular year-round school initiatives and all manner of summer school and summer camps that focus on cerebral topics.

Worry no more. The cure is much simpler: Disguise learning as play. Using the websites below, kids will think they’re playing games while actually engaging in the leading [mostly] free games and simulations in the education field.

A note: some must be downloaded and a few purchased, so the link provided might take you to a website that provides access rather than play.

General

Here are two gamified options that can be tweaked to address any topic:

Digital Breakouts — Players of all ages use teamwork and critical thinking to solve a series of challenging puzzles that ultimately enable them to achieve a goal. Digital Breakouts are an update to the traditional and popular webquests that have students explore the web as they gather content in a particular field — history, math, literacy, or others. A great collection of free, ready-made digital breakouts can be found over at Tom’s Digital Breakouts. These don’t have to be played online; for a fee, students can play unplugged.

Flash cards — apps like the free Brainscape provide topical flash cards kids can memorize in between the rest of summer stuff. You might even provide badges for the lists students finish.

Financial Literacy

Summer is a great time to learn topics that require dedicated periods of time — like a financial literacy program. These are important for high schoolers, but often not required for graduation. That means many students transition to that almost-adult point in their life where they need to understand credit cards, bank accounts, paying bills, and other financial concepts but have no real knowledge of how these work.

Here are a few sites that gamify financial literacy topics and can be completed over the summer:

Banzai – online free comprehensive financial literacy program

You are here – kids learn to be smart consumers

History

If you ask successful business leaders what subject is most important to their success, most will not say math or science. Surprisingly, it’s history, where future leaders vicariously experience how others survived difficult situations and solved problems they had never before seen. Yet, history classes are often considered boring and not a serious subject like math and science. As if to prove their point, many history classes are dry and fact-oriented with rote drills about dates and events. Even students who thought they liked history might change their minds.

If your students are on the cusp of disliking this subject, change their mind this summer with these sites:

Civilization –– a strategy game in which you attempt to build an empire to stand the test of time. Includes games on Macedonia, how to prepare for war, how to generate Faith, Persia, the inception of Australia, and more; fee required.

History Mystery – solve mysteries using history clues.

History Simulations – interactive and engaging history games and simulations; fee and free.

Math

Somewhere between arithmetic and algebra, students lose interest in math. For many, they find it difficult, confusing, and thus over their intellectual heads. If your students are struggling with this, try one of these gamified approaches to learning math:

Dimension M – math simulations for middle school and high school.

Jasper Woodbury — 12 adventures that focus on mathematical problem-solving; fee required.

Manga High — math content that adapts to particular student needs.

Origo Math — rigorous problem-solving activities and interactive digital games that enhance K-6 student thinking and reasoning skills.

ProdigyGame — game-based approach to teaching hundreds of math concepts for grades 1-8.

Problem Solving

Every day, kids are asked to solve problems. When young, they follow parent’s or peer’s advice, but by a certain age, they realize — if they’re going to lead successful lives — they must know how to evaluate and solve problems themselves. Here are three sites that help them to develop those skills:

The Crossing – the character tries varied ways to cross a gorge. This is a 2-minute video.

Quandary – an ethics problem-solving game from MIT.

Virtual Escape Room – use the clues available to escape the room.

Programming

Let children build on class initiatives for programming by picking an option that works best for their learning style rather than the group. Let them spend as much of their summer vacation on it as they’d like. It won’t feel like learning, but will improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Good choices include:

Hopscotch (an app)

Kodable (an app)

Lego Fix the Factory (an app)

Code.org

the Foos (an app)

Reading

The importance of reading to education success is well-documented. Kids who read statistically excel in their academic journey; those who don’t, don’t. Being good at reading is not just about getting through a book, but remembering what you read, reporting on it to others, and transferring this information to other parts of life. Helping students enjoy this “close reading” requires a different set of tools than grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.

Summer is the perfect time to reinforce authentic and granular reading skills in ways that students will enjoy. Try one (or all) of these three tools:

Book reports — have kids prepare unconventional book reports on their summer reading using sites that share their review via video, audio, or a drawing. Collect these into a digital library that kids can access online, see what friends are reading over the summer, and find books that appeal to them. Over time, this will become a valuable summer resource to supplement student reading.

Book trailers — this is similar to the book report but more exciting! Just like the trailers students watch to help them pick a movie, book trailers summarize the book and share a hook without giving away the story. These can be created in a variety of programs such as Voki and Tellagami.

Sports Network 2 – practice reading skills in a simulated sports network setting.

Science

Science is probably the most under-appreciated fascinating subject taught in schools. Why? Understanding too often comes down to complicated concepts that are more theory than practical making kids wonder why they should learn something they’ll never use. Science is quickly conflated with work and they move on.

If you have kids on the cusp of loving and hating science, remind them why they love it with one of these two sites:

NOAA Science games

Science simulations — lots of choices at the Middle School level.

Technology

So much of learning today is about technology. Kids think they know tech because they do stuff on Mom’s smartphone she doesn’t understand, but the bar is higher than that. When faced with the technology required for test-taking and applications, students can be confused and discouraged when they shouldn’t be — because it’s not difficult.

Take the stress out of technology by letting students use typical tech tools (like Excel or Google Sheets) to play a game. Here are several examples:

Battleship on Google Sheets

Candy Number Crunch in Excel

Monopoly on Excel

Test Prep

By the time students reach high school, if they’re on a college-bound track, preparation for the SATs and ACTs becomes critical, but the thought of opening a Kaplan practice test book with questions they barely understand might derail their good intentions. Instead, give kids fun options that will still leave them feeling better prepared for a test that will decide their future.

Here are a few:

Khan Academy Reading-Writing prep

Mindsnacks SAT Vocabulary –  flash cards on SAT vocabulary that can be studied anytime.

Quizlet – hundreds of SAT vocabulary prep flash cards.

Writing

A great option for summer writing is digital storytelling where kids tell their stories without the worry and frustration associated with typing, grammar, spelling, and language rules. Instead, they focus on communicating with creativity. They might even consider scrapbooking about their summer vacation, journaling about their experience in a camp, or joining friends on a collaborative forum like Google Draw or Padlet to tell a group story.

Good options include:

Draw a Stickman – draw a stickman to represent the main character of a story you’d like to write. Then, this site turns it into a choose-your-own-adventure story, asking you to add detail.

Google Storybuilder — collaboratively write a story to share with friends and family.

Puppet Pals – create simple animated stories with puppets in this iOS app.

Telestory – tell your story with this free augmented reality video storytelling app.

Toontastic – tell your story with comics.

At the core of each of the twenty-five plus websites above is the belief that learning is fun. Let your students (and kids) live it this summer.

— this article was first published on TeachHUB

More on games and simulations:

Weekend Website #44: Mission US

How Minecraft Teaches Reading, Writing and Problem Solving

Teach Digital Citizenship with … Minecraft

Hunger Games

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 25 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, a weekly contributor to TeachHUB, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

How to Blend Learning with Play for a Kid-friendly Summer published first on https://medium.com/@greatpricecourse

[mybesttrends-blog]

Salsa Dance Course: How To Get Most Advantages From Team Classes

Many men would rather have their tooth pulled than https://lessonsgowhere.com.sg/dance-classes dance. Yet when males discover Modern Jive they are often pleasantly shocked at just how easy it is to discover and how a lot enjoyable they have performing it.

Quality Dance Classes In Ambabari Jaipur

Full sole ballet footwear have a sole which covers the length of the shoe from the ball of the foot to the heel to offer the needed assistance for beginners. Allow's encounter it, we are all either scrimping for money or conserving for an unsure future. Once they are all wound up and prepared to operate, time to hunt for Pixie Dust! If not, the male partners might step on it and ruin the scene. For a girl some of the most important things in lifestyle relate to pink and lace and these products will frequently be found all through their gown up wardrobe. Whether you are paying it back or paying it ahead you will be cultivating relationships and interactions with individuals. This is a great factor to do and can be furthered. The initial two examples might involve strangers for the most component. You can also broaden these concepts with the individuals near to you. Make certain to spend time with your family members and buddies and have real heart to coronary heart discussions with them. Opening up creates happier individuals who will be more positive in all locations. If you are deficient in this region at the moment you can flip this about. Join a club, take a course. dance classes are extremely popular at the moment, ballroom dancing in particular. You will satisfy new individuals and have more enjoyable in the process.

Ambabari Jaipur Belly Dance Classes

Dance shoes should go with the dancing gown. Your dance footwear with heels should not look awkward with the dress. The colour of dancing footwear should match with the color of ballroom gown. Perhaps you want to learn to get fit, for a social occasion or to meet new friends. Plus if you know what you want to get out of it this assists your teacher.

I did pull a hamstring onstage once while leading dance classes in ambabari jaipur performing shemadan. That was unpleasant, but not uncomfortable. It didn't begin hurting until after I'd completed dancing. Adrenaline rocks. Get a canine. Using your dog for an early walk is an excellent way to start the working day. Go with medium or large-sized dog, as smaller ones are most likely to get fatigued effortlessly.

Top List Of Rated Dance Classes In Ambabari Jaipur

Is it really that simple? A neighbor, a coworker, even my accountant have all suggested to me that companion dancing is the way for me to satisfy solitary males. I've been to a contra dance or two over the many years, and attempted Zydeco once. It was enjoyable, but since I am not the very best at companion dancing, I think I frustrate my companions. At Northwest Folklife Festival 1 yr I joined the humongous sq. dance and was reprimanded by 1 of the individuals in my sq. - I guess I wasn't taking it critically enough. The evening exhibits at the Aurora Theatre were a mix of the ship's own crew of dancers and singers plus some outdoors comics and singers. In common, the exhibits had been quite good. We would have liked them to combine up the enjoyment every night rather than allocate music, comedy and magic into various evenings. Rather than an whole show of magic, we would have favored each evening featuring a selection of enjoyment. Live music about the ship was a good additional contact. Whether you are paying it back or having to pay it forward you will be cultivating relationships and interactions with people. This is a good thing to do and can be furthered. The initial two illustrations might include strangers for the most part. You can also expand these concepts with the people near to you. Make sure to invest time with your family and buddies and have genuine heart to heart discussions with them. Opening up creates happier individuals who will be much more good in all areas. If you are deficient in this region at the second you can flip this about. Join a club, take a class. dance classes are highly popular at the moment, ballroom dancing in specific. You will meet new individuals and have much more fun in the process.

At UCLA, the Ballroom Dance Club and Worldwide Dance Club host historic balls as soon as a thirty day period with a hiatus in the summer time. The next historic ball is in Oct, the Ragtime Ball. The price is minimal. The ball is held at Powell Library. Some people dress up. Others come casual.

Ambabari Jaipur Leading Dance Classes

Dance is not only coaching for your physique, but it is also a good exercise to for your brain. Learning difficult choreography entails memorizing steps and therefore stimulates brain action. Some studies display that dancing is one of the methods to prevent Alzheimer's disease.

Another option is to ask mother and father or even your aunt from the other condition for a couple of hours of tutorials. They might be flattered by this and it can all be a pleasant experience. It will also be easy on your wallet. Make certain that you only ask for family members member with whom you easily get alongside with, this is because the procedure can be shaky and frustrating at first and if you are not in good books you are much more most likely to finish grabbing each other's necks. Be certain to express some gratitude after that, dinner would do. To accessibility the various types of Wholesale Air Max Footwear that are accessible Zumba, please go to the website. Here you have accessibility to reduced prices, totally free transport and related information with a variety of sneakers.

[cameronwjones]

20 Outstanding Examples of Experiential Marketing

When people think of event marketing, they think of one or two things. There are the conferences, tradeshows and sponsored exhibitions that call to mind people in business casual attire mingling around a showroom floor in-between sessions and networking breaks. And then there is something entirely different. Then there is driving an Aston Martin across a frozen in a way that would make James Bond blush. Then there’s escaping a cold dungeon in Castle Black to promote the next season of Game of Thrones. Then there’s experiential marketing.

So, what is experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing is all about direct engagement with consumers and creatively interacting with them in a memorable way. It’s also known as engagement marketing, live marketing or participation marketing, and is often lumped into event marketing—even if it’s a far-cry away from traditional conferences.

Though some experiential strategies involve live events as we typically think of them, others can be one-off installations that only last for a few hours. Whatever the format may be, experiential marketing has proven to boost event ROI and is a crucial strategy for marketing executives. To offer a better sense of how this tactic can make an impact, check out this list of 20 outstanding examples of experiential marketing.

Table of Contents

Volkswagen - Piano Staircase

LeanCuisine - #WeighThis

3D Oreos

Smirnoff Comic Book Party 

HBO Escape Rooms

Gatorade Combine

VICE + Delta Launchpad Events

Jet Blue - The Ultimate Icebreaker

Zappos: Google Cupcake Ambush

Stratos - Red Bull

Aston Martin On Ice

Sensodyne's Great Sensitivity Test

Doc McStuffin's Check Up

Google Impact Challenge: Bay Area

Delta - Stillness In Motion

Coca Cola - Small World Machines

Budweiser Beer Garage

American Express - 2014 US Open 

Misereor - Social Swipe

Gilmore Girls - Luke's Diner Pop-ups

  1) Volkswagen - Piano Staircase

Photo Source: KJ Vogelius

Though known for being a car company, Volkswagen has been known for extending their brand beyond the automotive industry. One way they were able to do so was by creating a concept called “the fun theory” in which they attempt to pivot people’s behavior by adding an element of fun. For this experiential marketing example, the Volkswagen team cleverly created “piano” stairs in a subway stop in Germany, right next to the escalator. This led commuters to choose the stairs, playing their own tunes as they went up and down each step. As a result, 66% more people chose the stairs as opposed to the escalator.

On the surface, it may seem very odd for a car company to use musical steps as a marketing tactic. However, the reason this experiential strategy worked so well was because it resonated with a simple human emotion: having fun. When a company is able to associate their brand with an emotion as pure as fun, they’ve already won over the customer.

Main takeaway: The experiential strategy does not always have to involve the product. As long as the result is a powerfully positive brand association, the strategy is worth it every time.

back to top 2) Lean Cuisine: #WeighThis  

Photo source: EventMarketer.com

“If you’re going to weigh something, weigh what matters.” With this tagline, Lean Cuisine launched a heartwarming experiential event right in the middle of Grand Central Station in New York City. As a company that makes frozen dinners, Lean Cuisine’s messaging focuses mostly on weight loss. And although health is very important, consumers can easily feel overwhelmed with messaging that solely measures a person based on their outward appearance. Lean Cuisine was acutely aware of this and for this experiential campaign, chose to focus on a different type of “weight.”

For this campaign, the company set up an installation in the middle of Grand Central where a professional sign-painter would write down the way in which people wanted to “weigh” themselves. In other words, passersby were asked how they wanted to weigh themselves, separate from their physical weight. One woman wanted to be weighed by the amount of love she gave to her children. Another wanted her weight to be the work ethic she showed by returning to college. This feel-good campaign quickly went viral, garnering over 204 million impressions.

Main takeaway: Take your product out of the spotlight and put your customers front and center. A campaign focusing on the customer is always a win.

back to top 

3) 3D Oreos at SXSW

Photo source: Kalahari Meetings

As one of the most recognizable cookies in the world, Oreos carry much tradition in its brand. Thus, some people may have been hesitant to combine Oreos with cutting edge technology to create an experiential marketing experience. The clash between the classic Oreo and the unexplored capabilities of the 3D printer may not have made sense to some. But in the end, the combination worked beautifully.

During SXSW festival in 2014, Oreos’ parent company, Mondelez International, came up with the idea of combining Twitter, 3D printing, and the classic Oreo cookie all into one experiential strategy. People would be able to receive a uniquely flavored Oreo cookie (made by the 3D printer) that would be determined by which flavors were trending on Twitter during that very moment. Mondelez International described the experience as “deliciously hyper-personalized and customized snacks based on real-time data collection.” Putting a modern tech twist to a classic cookie was a great way to capture the attention of SXSW attendees.

Main Takeaway: Consider industries that your brand/product would normally be unassociated with and think of creative ways to join forces.  

back to top 

4) Smirnoff Comic Book Party 

Photo source: BizBash

Nothing is more experiential than a fully immersive entertainment experience. In other words, an awesome party. Smirnoff decided to create a comic book-themed industry party, inviting guests to entire a whole different world. The venue was decorated with full-sized graphic comic illustrations that stayed consistent with the overarching story. All brand ambassadors were dressed as characters from the illustrations, maintaining the fantasy throughout the night.

From beginning to end, the theme of the party stayed consistent and all attendees were immersed in a comic book universe. By keeping a red color scheme and having bartenders dress like fictional characters, Smirnoff created a rather memorable experience that really showed off their creativity as well as their brand.

Main Takeaway: Fully commit to the experiential strategy and make sure all other stakeholders have bought in as well. This ensures an immersive and memorable experience for consumers.

back to top 

5) HBO Escape Rooms at SXSW  

Photo source: The Verge

Escape The Room is a popular game in which a group of people are locked inside a particular room and must solve a set of clues in order to escape. Escape The Room has become incredibly popular over the last few years with different versions of itself spawning all across the United States. Riding this momentum, HBO created a mega Escape The Room experience at SXSW 2017, combining three separate rooms into one huge mystery. Each room was a recreated set of a popular HBO show. The three shows were Veep, Silicon Valley, and of course, Game of Thrones.

This experiential marketing tactic proved to be very successful because it forced attendees to be fully engaged. Given that HBO is known for its incredible shows, recreating the sets of these shows for fans to literally be a part of was an ingenious way of bringing these fictional narratives to life.

Main Takeaway: Be mindful of popular trends and think of ways to incorporate them into your experiential marketing strategy. Think about what’s resonating with your audience.

back to top 

6) Gatorade Combine  

Photo Source: Mountain Trout Photography

Gatorade is a brand that is closely associated with athletes. So, why not create an experience where consumers are transformed into athletes? At SXSW 2017, Gatorade offered a complete athletic experience in the form of a combine. A combine is an athletic examination that rookie athletes must go through before entering the professional league. Gatorade had the brilliant idea of creating a combine for consumers and testing their overall athletic abilities.

From Xbox Kinect to Sparta Science, Gatorade worked with with a number of other companies to make this possible. The combine consisted of several stations that tested various abilities such as reflexes, jumping ability, and flexibility. The results of each test were accurate and data-rich so that participants could actually take this knowledge and incorporate it into their lives, whether it be their workout routines our diets. This made consumers feel like true professional athletes which is what the Gatorade brand is all about.

Main Takeaway: In addition to being entertaining, experiential marketing is all the more impactful when it offers something of actual value to the consumer, whether it be a free product or newfound knowledge.

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7) VICE + Delta Launchpad Events

Photo source: Ad Age

Sometimes, there’s no need for fancy setups or high-tech machines to create a memorable experiential marketing event. Sometimes, a good partner and a solid vision is all you need. In need of tapping into the younger demographic of travelers, Delta Airlines partnered up with Vice media to create a series of entrepreneurial events on the topics of film, music, and food. These events took place in Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle.

Each event was meant to teach aspiring entrepreneurs the ways they can find success in the fields of film, music, and food. Each city had its own focal topic and created events around that topic. By partnering with Vice, Delta was able to put together authentic events that resonated with their target demographic, thus bringing in a younger customer base.

Main Takeaway: Partnerships can be very impactful as long as they are strategic. Keep in mind your target audience and if applicable, brainstorm different event marketing partnerships that can help you bring in that demographic.

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8) JetBlue - The Ultimate Icebreaker

Photo source: Eventmarketer.com

In the dead of winter, there’s nothing more enticing than a trip to a warm and sunny destination. JetBlue knew this all too well and devised a clever way of promoting their new direct flights from New York to Palm Springs. They placed a number of summer accessories inside a six-foot by six-foot ice block and told New Yorkers that anything was up for grabs. People had to use whatever they had on their person to chip away at the ice to claim their prize. Prizes included summer accessories such beach attire, golf clubs, and, of course, free tickets to Palm Springs.

This activation was done in partnership with the Greater Palm Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau, helping to bring more tourism to the beautiful California city. A full social media campaign was executed in tandem with the experiential strategy and the result was great online buzz for JetBlue.

Main Takeaway: Consumers always love free things. Add another layer by gamifying the experience and creating a vibrant social media campaign around the experiential strategy.

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9) Zappos: Google Cupcake Ambush

Photo source: EMS Magazine

As shown by the above examples, partnerships can play a significant role in successful experiential campaigns. In some cases, even unintentional partnerships can have a meaningful impact. In 2015, Zappos thought of an extremely clever way to capitalize on a Google’s own experiential campaign. Google was giving out cupcakes to anyone who shared a picture using their photo app. Zappos brilliantly took advantage of the opportunity by setting up their own “free stuff” giveaway that required simple one-time donation—a cupcake. Zappos set up a mysterious cardboard box right next to Google’s cupcake truck and each time someone would offer their cupcake to the box, the box would return cool gear such as a watch, gloves, and of course, shoes.

Main Takeaway: As long as it is in good taste, think of ways to capitalize on other companies’ experiential campaigns to amplify the effects of your own campaign.

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10) “Stratos” - Red Bull

Photo source: Inquisitr

The Red Bull brand has long been associated with risk-taking and bold actions. Nothing could be riskier and bolder than setting the world record for the highest parachute jump. In 2012, Red Bull set to take this world record along with professional skydiver Felix Baumgartner. This stunt was a widely anticipated event that resulted in a resounding success. Felix broke the world record, dropping from an altitude of 128,000 feet.

This event was a prime example of how a brand not only fully embraced its identity but pushed it to its most extreme limits. The video of this record-breaking stunt has garnered over 3 million views and has been recognized as one of the greatest stunts in freefall history. There is a lot that can be learned from Red Bull’s bold endeavors.

Main Takeaway: Never be afraid to think big and push the boundaries. Experiential marketing is meant to leave an impression so constantly push yourself and test the limits of your creativity.

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11) Aston Martin On Ice

Photo Source: Autoweb.com

The Aston Martin has long been an iconic car, largely in part due to the legendary car chase scenes that in many James Bond movie. And if one had the chance to drive this luxury vehicle like a secret agent, why wouldn’t they?  In 2014, up in the Colorado Rockies, a handful of lucky Aston Martin owners were given the opportunity to drive different Aston atop of slick winter ice, skidding and sliding like Agent 007.

This test drive experience included a braking loop, a slalom course, skid pad, and a full race circuit. All parts of the course were supervised by professional drivers in an enclosed yet amply spacious setting. Although only a handful of Aston Martin owners were able to drive on the ice, the experience was shared across multiple social media channels and lifted Aston Martin’s brand visibility. The campaign proved so successful that they’ve continued to execute this experiential strategy every subsequent year.

Main Takeaway: By creating an exclusive experiential experience and following up with a strong social media campaign, the strategy can still reach a wide audience and achieve the lift in brand equity that you are aiming for.

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12) Sensodyne’s Great Sensitivity Test

Photo source: marketingbynaomi.blogspot.com

Sensodyne was looking to launch one of its newest products, the Sensodyne Complete Protection, in a way that was memorably delightful. Working together with the UK-based marketing agency Hotcow, Sensodyne decided to create an all-day experience in Potters Field Park in London that involved games, samples, and a public class on oral hygiene.

The setup in Potters Field consisted of three separate zones in which Londoners could engage in multiple experiences. Zone 1, The Sensitivity Zone, offered a ten minute dental sensitivity check-up by professional dentists. Participants could also win prizes by playing the “How Sensitive Are You?” buzzer game which consisted of guiding a metal ring through winding metal wires without having the two touch. Zone 2 was set up with a 13-foot tall molar, providing a great opportunity for attendees to take photos and share them on social media. And finally, Zone 3 was an attempt to break the Guinness world record for the world’s largest oral hygiene lesson. 232 people partook in the public lesson and everyone walked away with more knowledge on the subject of dental hygiene.

This extensive experiential strategy achieved 150 media mentions which resulted in a reach of over 4 million. Over 6,000 Sensodyne samples were distributed and 200 dental sensitivity checks were conducted. The strategy proved to be successful campaign that significantly increased brand awareness.

Main Takeaway: Remember that an experiential campaign can consist of multiple forms of engagement. Don’t restrict yourself to only one channel of interaction with consumers.

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13) Doc McStuffin’s Check Up

Photo source: Kelseyads.com

Doc McStuffin is a popular Disney Jr. television show that is geared towards children, ages 2-10. The show revolves around a 6 year old girl named Doc who heals toys from her own backyard clinic. The team at Disney Jr. decided to recreate this same scenario of healing toys for the millions of fans who watch the show every day, giving them the chance to be in Doc’s shoes.

This experiential campaign consisted of a nationwide tour of Doc McStuffin check-up clinics, travelling to 20 cities and setting up in retail stores such as Tesco’s, Smyths, and Toys R Us. Children were invited to conduct 10 minute check-ups on larger-than-life sized teddy bears who were in need of a diagnosis. While waiting their turn to play doctor, children were given Doc McStuffin toys to play with along with coloring books and puzzles. After each child completed their diagnosis, they were awarded a Doc McStuffins certificate and given a free “Doc Is In The House” door hanger. This creative campaign resulted in a 5.3% increase in propensity to purchase, interacting with over 7,700 children in the process. 87% said they would recommend Doc McStuffin to other parents.

Main Takeaway: For experiential campaigns that are targeting children, make sure you include as many opportunities to “play” as possible while also keeping in mind the parents’ experience as well. The goal should be to make both of them happy.

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14) Google Impact Challenge: Bay Area

Photo Source: Trisparker

Not all experiential campaigns are meant to sell something. In 2015, Google awarded $5.5 million dollars to 10 nonprofits that were dedicated to building a better community for the San Francisco Bay area. But before awarding the grants, Google decided to let the Bay area citizens have a say in which cause should be placed at the forefront of this campaign. After all, the ones who live in the community should have the loudest voice.

In order to have Bay Area members participate in the process, Google set up interactive posters all over San Francisco which served as public voting booths. Each poster displayed all 10 nonprofits and the main cause each was trying to address. Bay area community members simply had to press the one they thought was most important and the poster would record their vote.

In the end, the top six nonprofits each received a $500,000 grant and the remaining four were awarded $250,000 each. This campaign proved to be widely successful in not only driving financial support, but more importantly, driving awareness towards the local issues of the Bay Area community.

Main Takeaway: When applicable, try to include the voice and opinions of the audience you are trying to target. This creates a feeling of shared ownership and mutual engagement that results in a much more memorable experience.

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15) Delta’s Stillness In Motion

Photo Source: Travel Weekly

It is oftentimes too easy to be caught up in the hustle and bustle of the daily schedule, especially if you’re someone who travels often. Delta knew that many of their flyers frequently operated out of a hurried mindset and thus wanted to emphasize the importance of slowing down. This was a brilliant way for Delta to starkly contrast the hectic busyness that airlines are often associated with.

At the 2015 TED Conference, Delta created an incredibly intricate and immersive experience that encouraged individuals to actively practice stillness. Attendees were given an orb and upon entering a glass room, placed the orb on top of a small pedestal in front of their seat. They would then sit down and place their hands on top of biometric sensors that would sync the lights with the individual’s heart rate. The orb on the pedestal would then capture the lowest recorded heart rate, pulsing as a calming light.

After the soothing experience, attendees would be given the orb as a gift which served them as a reminder to slow down when they felt in a hurry. Attendees were encouraged to share their experience on social media and were provided photos to do so. The Stillness In Motion campaign resulted in 9.3 million Twitter impressions for Delta.

Main Takeaway: Be incredibly intentional with the emotion you want your consumers to walk away with after the experience.

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16) Coca-Cola: Small World Machines

Photo source: Design Taxi

Sometimes, experiential marketing can go way beyond the product. When executed thoughtfully, experiential campaigns can directly address and make an impact on global issues that have ongoing for years. In 2013, Coca-Cola set out to do just that by creating “small world machines” in both India and Pakistan. The hope was that through virtual interaction, the fractured relationship between the two countries could be set aside for a moment and genuine human connection can take place.

These high-tech vending machines were placed in two locations: Lahore, Pakistan and New Delhi, India. They were each set up inside bustling shopping malls where shoppers could pass by and partake in the experience. The vending machines had built-in cameras that allowed for face-to-face live interactions. The objective would be to work together with the person on the screen to achieve cooperative tasks such as mirroring each other’s movements and tracing images on the screen.

The campaign was incredibly successful and received many positive reactions from the press. But more importantly, it proved that even a soda company can make bold attempts in bringing about positive change through their marketing strategies.

Main Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to tackle larger issues through the campaign. Beyond elevating brand awareness, this will be a public affirmation of your company’s values, which is just as important.

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17) Anheuser Busch: Budweiser Beer Garage 

Photo source: Anheuser-busch

During 2016 SXSW, Anheuser Busch’s experiential campaign consisted of a full-on beer garage that involved all things Budweiser. From a comfortable lounge to a bar with Budweiser beer on tap, the garage was full of multiple sections that created an entertaining atmosphere. The most popular part of the beer garage was the 4-D immersive virtual experience that put participants through a tour of the Budweiser brewing plants.

Using Oculus VR headsets, participants were given a full tour of the brewing plant, engaging all five of their senses. When entering the refrigerator, cold air was blown into the room for a realistic effect. When the virtual tour took them to the hops room, Budweiser employees would hold a jar of hops under the participant’s nose so they could understand what the room actually smells like. This entire experience helped participants become more aware of the Budweiser brew process, developing a deeper connection with the product than simply a choice of beer at their local bar.

Main Takeaway: When you can, engage as many of the senses as possible for a thoroughly immersive experience.

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18) American Express: 2014 US Open

Photo Source: BizBash

In an attempt to become more digital and social savvy, American Express created a complete digital experience at the 2014 U.S. Open that allowed fans to engage in multiple ways. The U.S. Open American Express Fan Experience was filled with numerous activities that kept participants entertained in more way than one.

All attendees who entered the AmEx experience were given RFID-enabled wristbands that captured fans’ on-site experiences into a personalized email. One part of the onsite experience included a 180-degree rally cam which featured a video camera and backdrop of Arthur Ashe stadium, allowing fans to take pictures and upload them to social media. Additionally, there was a life size hologram of tennis champion Sloane Stephen with whom AmEx card member could pose for pictures with. Finally, the on-site setup included a text cafe that served as a digital hub of sorts, allowing attendees to charge their phones while watching a live newsfeed aggregator of US Open fan buzz from all over the world.

Director of sports marketing at American Express, Michele Carr, was particularly proud of the company’s complete embrace of the mobile and digital spaces, which is crucial for AmEx’s future success. “We had to raise the bar on how we adapted our consumer engagement opportunities, “ she stated. “We really gave [digital and mobile] a facelift this year.” Campaigns like these are why American Express continue to be one of the leading credit card brands.

Main Takeaway: Experiential campaigns should always be easily shareable to magnify the potential of brand visibility.

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19) Misereor: Social Swipe

Photo Source: Kolle-Rebbe

One of the many obstacles for charitable organizations who are trying to collect donations for their cause is that their target audience frequently does not understand how their dollar makes a difference. The lack of transparency with the donation process oftentimes causes people to hesitate before offering their money. Misereor, the German international development charity, very much understood this problem and thought of a brilliant way to address it.

Teaming up with German ad agency Kolle-Rebbe, Misereor created the world’s first interactive display that was able to accept credit card donations. The screen, which had a credit card swipe down the middle, displayed one of two images: a loaf of bread and a child’s hands that were tied up. When donors ran their card through the swipe, they would either be “slicing” a piece of bread of “untying” a child’s hands. The slicing of the bread signified a daily meal for a family in Peru. The cutting of the ropes meant that imprisoned children in the Philippines would be that much closer to freedom.

This highly interactive design was effective because it literally showed how the donor’s dollar was making an impact, directly addressing the lack of transparency that many charities struggle to solve.

Main Takeaway: If your campaign involves asking something from participants, make sure they know exactly why and how their contribution will make an impact on your objective.

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20) Gilmore Girls: Luke’s Diner Pop Ups

Photo source: Las Vegas-Review Journal

As HBO demonstrated above, there are few things more exciting than entering the world of your favorite television show. But it’s especially exciting your favorite show has been on a 9-year hiatus. The team behind the comeback season of the Gilmore Girls had this in mind when they decided to recreate over 200 “Luke’s Diners” all across the United States.

Luke’s Diner was one of the main settings on the show where the main characters often met with one another. At each Luke’s Diner pop-up, customers had the chance to receive a free cup of coffee as well as a “fun surprise under their custom Gilmore Girls coffee sleeve.” The event lasted from from 7am - 12pm on October 5th, 2016. On that particular fall day, Luke’s Diner was an actual real place in over 200 different locations and in all 50 states. The campaign also included an authentic website for the town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, which was the fictional town in which the show was based in.

Making a fictional town into a real place was a surely a memorable experience for longtime Gilmore Girls fans, bringing back waves of nostalgia that only further persuaded them to tune in on Netflix for the comeback season release.

Main Takeaway: Bringing back feelings of nostalgia is a strong way to emotionally connect with your audience. As long as it is relevant with the product/service you are promoting, try adding a pinch of nostalgia in the experiential recipe.

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Key Takeaways As a quick recap, here a look at some of the main lessons we learned from these stunning experiential marketing examples.

The experiential strategy does not always have to involve the product. As long as the result is a powerfully positive brand association, the strategy is worth it every time.

Be mindful of the pop culture trends and think of ways to incorporate them into your experiential strategy.

Experiential marketing is all the more impactful when it offers something of actual value to the consumer, whether it be a free product or newfound knowledge.

Never be afraid to think big and push the boundaries. Experiential marketing is meant to leave an impression so constantly push yourself and test the limits of your creativity.

Remember that an experiential campaign can consist of multiple forms of engagement. Don’t restrict yourself to only one channel of interaction with consumers. 

Want event more event marketing goodness? Click the button below to access even more resources. You brain will thank you.

from Cameron Jones Updates https://blog.bizzabo.com/experiential-marketing-examples

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15 Most Epic Transformers Stories By Marvel Comics

Since they first invaded toy stores in 1984, the warring Robots in Disguise have appeared in numerous cartoons, movies, books, comics and more. Each new product has helped to expand the mythology in some way, turning both Autobots and Decepticons from (admittedly very cool) toys into fully expanded, well-rounded characters.

RELATED: PRIME TIME: 13 Classic Optimus Prime Moments

The greatest credit for this development isn’t down to the original carton or even the helpful character bios that adorned the toy packaging. The Marvel comic, running for 80 issues in the US and 332 issues in the UK, produced a stream of entertaining stories that took both popular and obscure Transformers alike and used them in often unexpected ways. With “Transformers: The Last Knight” on the horizon, and rumors of the shocking betrayals and new threats that it may contain, we’ve selected 15 epic moments from Marvel’s Transformers comics to get you in the mood. Transform, roll out and read on!

TRANSFORMERS MINISERIES (#1-4)

Despite its significance as readers’ introduction to the Transformers, these four issues can’t help but feel rather basic, with a tone somewhere between an info dump and a toy commercial. Characters introduce themselves and describe their powers in great detail, while Frank Springer’s artwork portrays most characters as close to their toy forms, rather than the more expressive, humanized features that they would later adopt. This wasn’t helped by many characters being inconsistently drawn and colored, leading to unintentional comedy as characters switch color schemes, and gain and lose body parts between panels.

Regardless, the series was crucial for setting into place the building blocks that would underpin the entire franchise. The age-old conflict, the crashed Ark, the renewal of hostilities on a new world — it’s all here. Ralph Macchio and Jim Salicrup do a good job of juggling the large cast and there’s even a guest appearance by Spider-Man (in his black costume) to show that the series takes place in the Marvel Universe. The series sold so well that the decision was quickly taken to turn it into an ongoing series. From humble beginnings, something very special was about to happen.

PEACE (TRANSFORMERS UK ANNUAL 1989)

The scale of the Autobot/Decepticon conflict is so immense that it’s almost hard to comprehend. The two sides have been fighting for millions of years, have seen cities and worlds all but destroyed by war, and have lost countless friends and comrades to the battlefield. Autobot and Decepticon alike are warriors now, either by necessity or choice. The horror of this war, and the tantalizing prospect of its end, is what makes “Peace” such a tragic, memorable story.

The story appeared in the 1989 “Transformers” annual from Marvel U.K., written by Richard Alan with art by Robin Smith. It is the year 2150 and the last Decepticon has fallen in battle on Cybertron. A weary Rodimus Prime decides to step down, naming Springer as his successor. What no-one knows is that one of the Autobots present, Triton, is a Decepticon spy. He argues that Ultra Magnus should be the leader. Before long, harsh words are said, shots are exchanged, and Roadbuster and Triton are killed. Battle breaks out, this time between Autobots, and the war begins again. The final panel, with a distraught Rodimus Prime on his knees as the battle rages around him, is genuinely chilling.

GI JOE VS THE TRANSFORMERS (#1-4)

Military types often get a bad reputation for shooting first and asking questions later. Members of G.I. Joe do their best to live up to this stereotype in the first issue of this 1987 miniseries, blowing up Bumblebee, everyone’s favorite yellow Volkswagen Beetle. Written by Michael Higgins with art by Herb Trimpe, “G.I. Joe VS The Transformers” saw the Joes and Cobra team up with the Autobots in order to tackle the Decepticon threat. This sounds epic, but unfortunately the execution didn’t quite match the concept.

Part of the reason is that, as its own entity uniting two franchises, the book had to tie into events in the ongoing books. Its publication coincided with the departure of both Optimus Prime and Megatron from the main Transformers comic, leading to both characters abruptly disappearing from the miniseries after the second issue. The book also struggles to deal with its large cast, with characters dropping in and out of the action. By story’s end, the Decepticon threat has been neutralized and Bumblebee has been rebuilt as Goldbug, no doubt creating great confusion for children who were only reading the Transformers title.

DINOBOT HUNT (#47-50, Marvel UK)

Even on their best day, the Dinobots were generally considered more surly, hot-tempered and downright savage than the majority of Autobots. This story-arc showed readers that they hadn’t seen anything yet. When the Dinobots reverted to a savage state after their neural functions corroded, the stage was set for an old-fashioned monster hunt. From the Black Rock Desert to a frozen wasteland, the Autobots tried to capture their errant comrades, leading to savage battles and epic destruction.

Simon Furman scripted this four-parter, with art from Will Simpson and Barry Kitson. Each chapter focused on a different squad of Autobots trying to subdue a specific Dinobot, and there’s a pleasing number of lesser-used characters given a chance to shine. Jetfire rides Slag like a rodeo bull, Windcharger, Gears and Cliffjumper track Sludge through waterways and Bluestreak, Huffer and Sideswipe are nearly sent to the great scrapheap in the sky. This arc removed the Dinobots from circulation for a while as the damage to their neural circuits was repaired, but what a way to go.

RETURN TO CYBERTRON (#17-18)

In recent years, a large proportion of the Transformers’ adventures have been set on Cybertron. Readers have learnt about the history of the planet, the political machinations behind the scenes and many of the cities and locations scattered across the planet. In 1986, though, Cybertron was the great unknown. Readers had followed the Earthbound Autobots for over a year and Cybertron had always been the unattainable goal: the focus of so many efforts to return. So, when the US comic took readers to Cybertron for the first time in a 1986 two-part story, it was a huge deal.

It’s fair to say that the Cybertron portrayed here wouldn’t be on many people’s list of vacation destinations. If things were tough for the Autobots on Earth, then their Cybertronian counterparts were in an even worse predicament. Produced by regular Transformers creators Bob Budiansky and Don Perlin, these issues primarily focused on Blaster and Lord Straxus, with the former attempting to destroy the Decepticon’s space bridge to Earth. Blaster’s efforts eventually succeeded, resulting in him and several of his Autobot comrades, including Perceptor, Warpath and Powerglide, being transported to Earth.

MATRIX QUEST (#62-66)

When Primus, the legendary creator of the Transformers, was woken from his long sleep, Optimus Prime and company realized that Unicron would soon try to kill him, his old foe. Legends said that the Creation Matrix had the power to stop Unicron, but there was just one problem: it had been lost in space since the original death of Optimus Prime. Thus, the stage was set for a search throughout the Universe, as different teams of Autobots attempted to locate their prize.

Written by Transformers guru, Simon Furman (now writing the U.S. and U.K. comics), and penciled by Jose Delbo and Geoff Senior, the serious purpose of the quest is balanced by individual missions that are often tongue-in-cheek. Each issue pays homage to a different type of film, including “The Maltese Falcon,” Westerns, “Jaws” and “Aliens”.

The story then finishes in frenetic style in #66 as the stakes are raised. The Matrix has come into the possession of the Decepticon called Thunderwing, but that’s not the only problem. It has also been corrupted, turning a force for good into a malevolent force of destruction.

LEGACY OF UNICRON (#146-151, Marvel UK)

If there was one thing that the Marvel U.K. Transformer strips did well, it was epics. More often than not, these involved Galvatron, Rodimus Prime, Ultra Magnus and other characters introduced in “Transformers the Movie.” While Bob Budiansky on the US comic preferred to focus on other characters, Simon Furman took every opportunity to play with these new toys. Despite the heavy U.K. focus on Galvatron in the years since the movie, Unicron had not been seen in the comics. When he made his return to the “Transformers” universe, it was in suitably memorable style.

Furman’s ambition certainly can’t be faulted. Working with artists Geoff Senior, Dan Reed and Bryan Hitch, he crafted a tale that spanned two time zones, several worlds and featured a huge cast. Unicron had enslaved the Junkions and was mentally controlling them to repair his body. Meanwhile, Cyclops and Scourge manipulated a bloody conflict between Autobot and Decepticon, one intended to destroy both factions. The story is chockfull of great moments, heroic sacrifices (R.I.P. Inferno) and seemingly impossible odds. It also provided fans with another chance to see Death’s Head, the freelance peacekeeping agent who had become an integral part of U.K. continuity.

END OF THE ROAD (#76-80)

In a nice touch, the masthead of the final issue of “Transformers” read “#80 in a four-issue limited series,” referencing the title’s origins as a planned four-part miniseries. With its huge cast, grand ambition and plentiful plot threads, the series had come a long way from its origins as a glorified toy commercial. The surprising cancellation of this book meant that Simon Furman had to compress many of his story threads into a mere five issues, but this frenetic pace gives the book a restless energy as the action switches between Cybertron, Earth and elsewhere, with plots coming to abrupt, but largely satisfying, conclusions.

The end of the final issue sees Optimus Prime restored to life and the Autobots taking back control of Cybertron from the Decepticons, probably as close to a happy ending as Autobot fans could have wished for. The only small downside is that the most memorable Decepticon leaders (Shockwave, Megatron, Galvatron and Starscream) are confined to a sub-plot aboard the Ark. The return of Optimus Prime is a great moment, but loses some of its impact when the Decepticon leader he’s faced with is Bludgeon, the blade-wielding Decepticon who is a master of Metallikato (a Cybertronian martial arts form).

PRIMAL SCREAM (#56-61)

The concept of the Transformers can be as simple or complex as you want to make it. You could easily use political allegories to explain the rise of the Decepticons, and draw parallels between transformations and characters personalities. Or, alternatively, you could simply look upon the whole saga as good and bad robots that can change shape and like to punch each other. For the longest time, the origins of the Transformers and Cyberton had only been alluded to. The arrival of Simon Furman as writer for the US comic changed that, as he introduced readers to Primus, the creator of the Transformers.

This storyline, by Furman and Jose Delbo, is also notable for featuring the revival of Bumblebee, Jazz and Grimlock as Pretenders and the return, and quick departure, of Megatron. All are already plot points guaranteed to please longtime fans, but the reveal of Primus and the origins of the Transformers were undoubtedly the most significant events of this story-arc. The origins of Primus and Unicron were detailed, re-introducing the latter character to readers of the U.S. comic where he had received less exposure than in the U.K. title. At story’s end, Unicron is seen heading to Cybertron with one thing on his mind: dinner!

WANTED, GALVATRON: DEAD OR ALIVE (#113-119, Marvel UK)

One of the most obvious differences between the U.S. and U.K. “Transformers” comics was in the characters that they chose to focus on. While the U.S. comic featured a steady stream of new characters linking to new toy releases, they largely tended to steer away from the future Autobots and Decepticons introduced in “Transformers the movie.” In contrast, The U.K. comic embraced these characters, with Simon Furman using them as pivotal characters in some of his greatest epics.

Rodimus Prime hires Death’s Head to hunt down Galvatron, resulting in Death’s Head following Galvatron to present day Earth. There, poor Bumblebee is blown up and subsequently resurrected as Goldbug (in an entirely different manner to his origin in the U.S. comics) and Ultra Magnus and Galvatron resume their rivalry. The conflict between Magnus and Galvatron in the animated movie was brief, but through their appearances in the comics, Furman really builds up their rivalry. Magnus is way out of his depth against the raw savagery of Galvatron – practically scared out of his wits – but he never stops trying to fight the good fight. With art by U.K. stalwarts including Geoff Senior and Dan Reed, these are some darn fine comics.

THE NEW ORDER (#5-12)

Parents who were happy to buy the “Transformers” comic for their children believing it was the child-friendly adventures of some popular toys could not have been more wrong. True, the Marvel series could never have been described as grim and gritty in its early days, but it certainly had no qualms about doing terrible things to its cast members. Case in point: in the fifth issue, Shockwave announces his arrival to the book’s cast by nearly killing all the Autobots, hanging them from the ceiling like slabs of meat, and by removing Optimus Prime’s head from his body. Nightmare-worthy material for a five-year-old.

This storyline, by Bob Budiansky and a rotating team of artists, saw several noteworthy events for the series. The Dinobots were introduced, Megatron and Shockwave had the first of their numerous clashes over the leadership of the Decepticons and the Creation Matrix was used to bring the Constructicons and Jetfire to life. By the end of the story, Optimus Prime got his body back and the Autobots once again had hope for the future.

TIME WARS (#199-205, MARVEL UK)

If there’s a Marvel U.K. equivalent of the Michael Bay “Transformers” movies, it’s probably this epic time-bending story from 1989. In this arc, everything is turned up to 11, with mindless destruction and character deaths around every corner. Previous crossovers between present day Transformers and their future counterparts had tended to focus on several key characters. Instead, this story throws together multiple Autobots and Decepticons from 1989 and 2009, leading to all the misunderstandings, fighting and time distortion that would be expected.

There are some genuinely memorable moments in this story: Galvatron fighting side-by-side with Megatron, Optimus Prime meeting Rodimus Prime, the return of Ravage, and Autobots and Decepticons are forced to fight alongside each other to survive. Simon Furman does a good job of weaving together plot threads, with nice character work helping to ground the high-stakes of the imminent time storm. Andrew Wildman, Geoff Senior, Lee Sullivan and Robin Smith have the unenviable task of drawing the countless characters involved, but all rise to the occasion with gusto. This was the last mega-epic in the U.K. comic before the amount of U.K. only material was drastically reduced. What a way to go.

UNDERBASE SAGA (#47-50)

One constant of the U.S. “Transformers” comic was that new characters were constantly being introduced, mirroring the range of characters released for the toy line. By the time that the title celebrated its 50th issue, the number of characters had grown to truly excessive levels: The Headmasters, Powermasters, Triggermasters, Throttlebots, Pretenders, Special teams and more. Quite simply, the cast was so large that the majority of Autobots and Decepticons were now background characters, with the majority of the original cast members having long been sidelined in favor of newer characters. Bob Budiansky addressed this problem in a rather direct fashion, the 50th issue of “Transformers” coldly dispatching with countless Autobots and Decepticons.

The concept of the story was that Starscream has gained the power of the mythical Underbase, the combined knowledge of the Transformer race. He subsequently goes mad with power, merrily killing any Transformer who gets in his way. Make no mistake: this is carnage. The slaughter is so widespread that, rather than characters getting heroic sacrifices, groups of 5-10 characters are often killed in a single panel. Who would have thought that an issue of Transformers would be in contention for the most death-filled Marvel comic?

THE UNICRON SAGA (#69-75)

It had all been leading to this. Ever since Simon Furman had begun his tenure on the U.S. “Transformers” comic, he had been planting the seeds for an epic confrontation between Unicron and the inhabitants of Cybertron. The threat was real, enough to compel Optimus Prime to surrender to Scorponok in the hope of forming an allegiance with the Decepticons. And, when Unicron finally reached Cybertron, the results were exceedingly bloody. Familiar characters, both Autobot and Decepticon, were eaten, stepped on, blown up, incinerated and more as they desperately tried to fight this planet-sized foe. Sadly, Unicron didn’t answer the age-old question of whether Transformers taste like chicken, but it was clear that he was a formidable, almost unbeatable, foe.

Andrew Wildman penciled this story arc, with Geoff Senior stepping in to pencil the last issue, the entirety of which is taken up with that epic confrontation with Unicron. The mark of a good story is when a hero can overcome seemingly insurmountable odds through organic means instead of some random deus ex machina. When Optimus Prime used the Matrix to destroy Unicron (essentially destroying him with life) it was a bittersweet but satisfying ending.

TARGET 2006 (#78-88, MARVEL UK)

The original and best Marvel U.K. epic, this eleven-part story introduced readers to the new leaders, Ultra Magnus and Galvatron, as well as Cybertron based characters such as The Wreckers. When Galvatron, Scourge and Cyclonus arrive on present-day Earth, they quickly take control of the Decepticon forces and soundly trounce the leaderless Autobots. Ultra Magnus has also arrived on Earth, but will even his power be enough to turn the tide?

As first introductions go, that of the “Transformers: The Movie” characters are superb. Scourge and Cyclonus are coldly efficient, Galvatron is danger personified and Ultra Magnus has an unbreakable spirit. As would become a running theme in his battles with Galvatron, he is outmatched for power but still fights on, aptly stating “As an Autobot I can do no less!” Issue #86, the entirety of which is devoted to an increasingly destructive battle between Magnus and Galvatron, is rightfully acclaimed. Add in the Autobots teaming up with Megatron and the shock of mind-controlled friends and returned foes, and the quality of this story becomes clear. Simon Furman, Jeff Anderson, Will Simpson, Ron Smith and Geoff Senior were the creative team involved in crafting this tale, the greatest Marvel Comics “Transformers” epic.

Do you have any other epic moments or characters from Marvel’s Transformer comics? Let us know in the comments or on Facebook!

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