Saturday, 21 February 2015

The Powerpuff Girls return to Cartoon Network in 2016

The three girls made from sugar and spice are making a comeback! Blossam, Bubble and Buttercup return to kick evil's butt once more on Cartoon Network in 2016.

Cartoon Network will be showing in 2015-2016 agenda the reboot which will have Adventure Time’s animation director Nick Jennings as executive producer. This is positive news for retro fans of the show as we can only expect great humour and story.

The Powerpuff Girls cartoon was originally 78 episodes which started airing in 1998 though to 2005, developing a cult following. During Craig McCracken's first year in character animation he made a short film 'Whoopass Stew!' featuring three girls as main characters thus was the beginnings of The Powerpuff girls.

The Powerpuff Girls in CGI form for a 2014 special
It became known for its outlandish villains, including the wordy Mojo Jojo Monkey with a massive brain, and HIM, a sort of half devil, half goat transgender character who still haunts our nightmares to this day with his bizarre tactics.

Tuesday, 19 November 2013

Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby In 8-bit Land Review

Regular Show is an American animated television series created following the lines of Adventure Time. Created by J. G. Quintel for Cartoon Network which premiered September 6, 2010, the series revolves around the lives of two friends, a blue jay named Mordecai and a raccoon named Rigby who are introduced at the beginning of the game.

You have 16 levels of  head banging 2D platforming to look forward to in Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby In 8-bit Land, it is that frustrating. With the famous Super Mario Bros. platforming games you enjoy a simple story line, not forgetting the goombas. Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby In 8-bit Land on the over hand is seriously, frustratingly hair pulling difficult with no quirky commentary which was lacking from this game.


To go into detail about how hard the game is, there were multiple instances where I was killed by an off-screen enemy (glitch?) or narrowly missed a jump that looked reachable. You are then left feeling deceived and having to plan different strategies then to make the jump rather than jumping. There’s a difference between a good challenge, and difficulty for difficulty’s sake. Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby In 8-bit Land feels like a troll game with everything put in to enrage you. Great to motivate you to take up the sport of boxing.

Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby In 8-bit Land follows typical gameboy retro platform games. However, following the times, this isn’t nostalgic, it is almost a copy of Mario Bros. You jump on snails to continue and collect dollar bills with the addition of switching characters. If you switch characters you then have increased skills. For example, Mordecai is taller so has better jumping ability and reach, whereas Rigby is small but fast, so more likely to dodge enemies and crawls through tight spaces.

Both are needed to fully explore each area of 8-Bit Land. Levels themselves are all fairly large, so there’s a decent amount of exploration involved. The backgrounds are nicely drawn with great colours and graphics for a 2D game.

Three gold VHS tapes are hidden about in each stage, giving you the momentum to look around as you can back track on levels. There’s a timer too, and finishing levels in a speedy manner gets you bonuses. The timer is a catch 22 as you try to speed through the game which means instant death, you have to time your jumps and take a slow pace to survive and keep your sanity.

However, avid Regular Show fans will find plenty to like here. They have incorporated some of the amusing characters from the show as big bosses. Two notable ones are the Flock of Geese and the Destroyer of Worlds.

The story though is not apparent, they literally get sent a game, flip a coin to see who plays first. The story fits in with the lazy character personas from the show. A narrative and voice over-style game from the great star cast from the show would have been better fitting, coupled with this an RPG-style game would work much better with the original series. These points won’t deter loyal fans and anyone who likes to torture themselves with exceedingly hard games.