Month: June 2017

Robbie Rotten: The True Hero of LazyTown?

ComicaLeave a comment
A true Lazytown hero.

To many, Robbie Rotten is a scheming villain, a master of disguise, an advocate of laziness, and just an overall brutus. However… Did you know Robbie Rotten is actually a straight-up honest guy? Contrary to his reputation as “Villain Number One”, he’s actually a freedom fighter for LazyTown, hoping to free it from its communist dictatorship.

Due to the lack of coverage regarding not only LazyTown’s government, but all of Robbie Rotten’s not-so-rotten heart as well, one of our Buttbuddz reporters decided to interview Robbie himself.

Buttbuddz Reporter: Thank you for taking time from your busy day to sit down and speak with us, Mr. Rotten. First off, do you have any connection to the brutish, British politician, Theresa Mays?

Robbie: What!? No! She disguised herself to look like me! For one, I’m against spying on ordinary citizens: Perhaps LazyTown’s dictators like Mayor Meanswell, maybe, but not innocent civilians!

Buttbuddz: You say that LazyTown’s a dictatorship, but can you elaborate on what it’s leaders -like Mayor Meanswell- have done to LazyTown?

Robbie: They all say that they “love that it’s the laziest place on Earth” yet “Mayor” Meanswell insists on everyone following the sleeping schedules, and physical activity standards set up by Sportaflop, the sworn enemy of laziness and all that LazyTown stands for! Then he turns around and says I’m the bad guy because I like sleeping in, and liking sweets… How can one man be in favor of all these contradictory things!? …And don’t think this is ending anytime soon; His niece, Stephanie, plans on taking over the family dictatorship after he retires.

Buttbuddz: I can see the problems you have with LazyTown’s government, but how does this impact the other residents of LazyTown?

Robbie: Believe it or not, they don’t want to be outside, or wake up at six in the morning, or eat nothing but fruits and vegetables; Do you think Pixel is really happy being forced to play real football outside instead of games like Extreme Football Throwdown? Do you think Ziggy’s happy not eating his favorite candies, but apples instead? Do you really think Trixie likes be forced to wear Roller-skates all the time!? I didn’t think so!

Buttbuddz: If you were in charge of LazyTown, how would you run it instead?

Robbie: I’d change the laws, of course. I’d abolish the required education laws Meanswell set up so that nobody would be forced to go to school, and everyone can learn at their own pace. I’d abolish the sleeping schedule, so everybody can sleep as long as their bodies need it. And, of course, I’d abolish all of Sportaflop’s “healthy living standards”; A nation without cake and Pepsi is a nation nobody should be living in!

Robbie really would be the best mayor LazyTown’s ever had.

Buttbuddz: But isn’t having only cake a bit unhealthy? 

Robbie: Not exactly; There’s carrot cake, sweet potato cake, beef cake… Cake’s like sandwiches: You can put anything in a cake and still call it cake. Besides, its not just cake and Pepsi I’d allow; Ice cream, pies… You name it; we’ll have it. …Just not Coca Cola and apples, as those end up giving Sportacus the power to overthrow LazyTown’s reformed government. And we can’t have that, now can we?

Buttbuddz: Finally, what do you think of the residents of LazyTown?

Robbie: Deep down, I wish I could be friends with everyone… Sometimes it feels like I’m thinking about myself more than anyone else, but then I look at everyone’s living situations, and I realize they need my help too.

After our interview was over, Robbie immediately dashed out to resume his efforts in saving LazyTown from it’s tyrannical government. Hopefully, he succeeds in his efforts, but if he doesn’t, he’ll always be a straight up honest guy in our hearts.

Advertisement

Crash Buttrospective – Crash Bandicoot 2

NobaddyLeave a comment

Hello, it’s me Mr. Buttbuddz and I think it’s time for another excitapating episode of our first buttbuddz retrospective. Today we will look at the second game in the Crash Bandidash series, which is Crash’em Bash’em 2: Vengance: Ressurection, also known as Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back in Europe.

Press start to begin

Like with the first game I’ve played Crash 2 at least a couple of times, but for this retrospective I’ll only be replaying the first world to jog the memory strains. A secret tip is that if you do not skip the first cutscene, you get to play a short secret stage before you enter the first world.

You can tell this is a secret stage because Coco is there.

In Dash Dingo you have to save the world by getting batteries for Cocoa’s  pink late 90s laptop, because chargers are outlawed in this postapocalypse. As you start touching you are controller, you will realize what a treat you are in for, because Krash 2 controlls a hell’uva lot better than the first game. The game looks better, has more detail, better level design. The music is a lot more catchy and complex too than the more ambient music of the first game.

very scary

So yeah Crash 2 is slightly more fun than crash 1 which was very fun so this is fun too. See you next time when we will play Neo Turf Masters ’96, the last game in the Crash Bandfantasy XIII: Crash Returns.

He might say that you can run, but you’ll just run straight into that hole!

Theresa Mays EXPOSED as ROBBIE ROTTEN IN DISGUISE!?!?!?

NobaddyLeave a comment
Villain number one speaking to the masses.

After the leader of the Tories and Prime Minister Theresa May decided to start a new government after kinda maybe sorta lost the UK election, she has called forth a lot of unpleasant political ideas, such as expanding the power of the government to spy on everyone on the internet and ban encryption so they can finally stop mean thought-criminals and arrest those mean bullies who say rude things about Theresa Mays on the internet, but this and also the fact Theresa Mays is banning apples, sports and activity made the British newspaper “de ma’nin’ nyoose” suspicious about the real identity of Theresa Mays, if that’s her real name.

Theresa Mays with one of her many funny faces.

Turns out Theresa Mays was Robbie Rotten all along, the notorious villain of LazyTown. He was trying to make the UK lazy with his dastardly scheme, but thanks to those meddling kids at “de ma’nin’ nyoose”, His plan has been exposed.

After this exposure, it seems like the political climate in the UK is in total chaos, especially since Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was caught in the back seat of Dick Dastardly’s car.

Who will rule the UK now!??!?!

Sources: http://newsthump.com/2015/08/21/jeremy-corbyn-denies-links-to-dick-dastardly/ and de ma’nin’ nyoose

Bubsy Bobcat Returns After Being Missing For Half A Decade

ComicaLeave a comment

After years of being declared missing by the gaming industry at large, Accolade’s (in)famous feline mascot, Bubsy the Bobcat, has finally returned in a new game titled Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back. Bubsy’s sudden comeback has shocked millions; Nobody was prepared for his reappearance in the public eye, especially not after the overwhelmingly positive reception of 1996’s Bubsy 3D: Bubsy visits the James Turrell Retrospective.

“…Stunning…Original…Bubsy 3D climbs back to the top…Check it out!” – EGM

While some speculated that Bubsy was going to appear in Sonic Forces due to the appearance of a matching silhouette (that ended up actually being a Sonic OC that was somehow less generic-looking than he is), the last true sighting of the bobcat was in a late 2012 photograph of him and Ren and Stimpy‘s Ren Hoek eating bowls of soup together. However, the photograph -not unlike Bubsy himself- was missing from the Buttbuddz Historical Archives, so in it’s place, here’s an artist’s recreation instead:

a quality recreation

Professional Bubsy players are rejoicing in the streets due to the comeback of their beloved gaming franchise and gaming-mascot bobcat, but will Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back become a classic like the other installments in it’s franchise? We’ll have to wait and see when Fall 2017 gets here.

[EDIT] As it turns out, the original was in the Buttbuddz archive all along; Buttbuddz history is saved!

“you eediot the original was in the buttbuddz archives all along.”

What Kaiserreich: Legacy of The Weltkrieg’s Second American Civil War can tell us about the world we live in today

Image GodzillanLeave a comment

What’s up Pepsi fans today I’m going to show you the shocking parallels between Kaiserreich: Legacy of The Weltkrieg’s Second American Civil War and the Second American Civil War in our timeline.

How’s America? Broken

As you can see there’s a lot going on in this picture but we can pick out some very important details.

  • Atlanta is the capital of the nasty American Union State, which proves that Coca Cola (whose headquarters are in atlanta) is an extremely un-american beverage, only consumed by reactionaries and brutes
  • Chicago is the capital of the Combined Syndicates of America, proving that Chicago is the biggest dumpster fire in America and that Illinois is actually full of communists
  • Before Canada steals New England, America owns New York (home of pepsi) which proves that true Americans drink Pepsi over all else
  • The illegals who are also commies jump over the border and steal not only America’s jobs, but also her oil due to the lack of a wall (i made a trump joke please clap)
  • Even MORE proof that the west coast is the worst coast?
  • By stealing Alaska and New England, Canada shows their true colors, just like how in our timeline Canada showed their true colors by making me pay $41 for a case of beer and not letting me bring my guns over the border
  • You may not see it because this is a brutish map but Hawaii secedes and sometimes joins Japan so that’s probably symbolic of something but I’m not sure what

As you can see there is a lot going on in America in the world of Kaiserreich but how does it relate to the America you live in? Well behold:

That’s right, as shown in this only the states of the American Union State and Combined Syndicates of America support coke, while the rest of the United States supports Pepsi. In fact, Colorado has an 80% approval rating for Pepsi, could this mean Pickles is a closeted Pepsi drinker????

Find out next article on the buttblog, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Buttbuddz and share this article with your friend if it enlightened you.

How MGM’s 1930’s police procedural series Crime Does Not Pay influenced modern Magical Girl anime.

ComicaLeave a comment

Apparently everyone’s been waiting years for this article, but if this was released earlier, not much would’ve changed; The Magical Girl genre -as a whole- has been rather “stagnant” within the 2010’s, with all of it’s reboots, and sequels, and other things. In this analysis, the influence of Crime Does Not Pay that’s slowly seeping it’s way into the genre will be looked at with a critical eye, and plenty of appreciation of it’s brilliance.

Crime Does Not Pay is a theatrical crime-genre series of short films by MGM that ran in theatres from 1935 to 1947. The Crime Does Not Pay series revolves around one-off short stories starring police officers, detectives, and criminal justice workers of all kinds solving the crimes surrounding them. It also had a spin-off radio show that ran from 1949 to 1951, and a crime-genre comic series by Lev Gleason Publications that -while both have the same title- are not actually related.

For example, the comics have a consistent character in the form of Mr. Crime, a brutish narrator character who also eggs on the criminals of the comic’s short stories.

However, -as the writer of this article doesn’t own the “COMPLETE SHORTS COLLECTION” and also wasn’t able to find any of the films on the internet aside from Don’t Talk, a WWII-Propaganda piece about industrial espionage and defense manufacturing- most of the information regarding Crime Does Not Pay used in this analysis had to come from the radio dramas based on MGM’s films, and assorted IMDB articles.

As far as Crime Does Not Pay‘s influence on the magical girl anime genre goes, it wasn’t always there. While their worlds still have cops and other law enforcement, traditional crime series elements ended up taking a backseat to the sparkles, teamwork, occasional romance, and threats too huge for many criminal justice fields to even deal with, let alone defeat: That’s where the magical girls come in after all. It would take years before Crime Does Not Pay would ever influenced their genre.

Enter the early 2000’s, the very end of the “classic” era and the very beginning of the “Modern” era. After Sailor Moon ended in 1997, Toei Animation had been going through new magical girl series on a regular basis; At one point, they demanded an anime producer by the name of Washio Takashi to make a series for them, as they needed something to fill another show’s soon-to-be-empty time slot. However, there was problem; Washio Takashi wasn’t familiar with any “shoujo” genres, let alone the *~Mahou~* Shoujo genre.

Hoping to solve his writer’s block, Takashi watched a few episodes of his favorite classic crime series, Crime Does Not Pay for inspiration: As the daunting tales of detectives and crimes filled his head, he decided to bring a lot of elements from the show into his and Toei Animation’s Izumi Todo’s newest magical girl show; Futari wa Pretty Cure.

Image result for futari wa precureFutari wa Pretty Cure ended up premiering on TV Asahi in February 1, 2004. (Even though the show looks an entire decade older than it actually is.) The anime stars two girls: Nagisa Misumi, and Honoka “The Queen of Knowledge” Yukishiro. Nagisa, -like a true crime detective- doesn’t play by the rules, but by a sense of justice; She hates that innocent people get hurt for things they had nothing to do with.

Nagisa’s outfit has pink in it, therefore making her the main character.

Honoka, on the other hand, is a member of the chemistry club, therefore making her a professional chemist not unlike how many of the crime solvers in Crimes Do Not Pay are professionals at their jobs.

Solving crimes with chemistry!

After finding two talking cellphone critters, and becoming magical girls as a result, Nagisa and Honoka use their newfound powers and friendship -as Cure Black and Cure White respectively- to stop evil such as brutes, card-counters, and card-counting brutes.

Nagisa and Honoka’s great criminal-catching skills in action.

Similarly to Crime Does Not Pay, there’s thrilling action sequences that show up deep into Futari Wa Pretty Cure‘s episodes. Unlike Crime Does Not Play, though, they don’t use guns and punch people: Instead, they turn into magical girls, and punch people. (They even punch/kick people more than they use stock footage attacks.)

If you’re not absolutely convinced that Futari wa Precure‘s inspired by Crime Does Not Pay…

In the end, justice wins every time: The crimes get solved, and Nagisa and Honoka -like Crime Does Not Pay‘s narrators- reflect on the mysteries of the human psyche and the crimes surrounding them.

They don’t call her “The Queen of Knowledge” for nothing.

Futari wa Pretty Cure ended up being a massive success, spawning not only a direct sequel and two movies, but countless spin-off seasons as well, each detailing the lives of various different teams like the original Crime Does Not Pay does with it’s crime solvers with each new short film; One film it would’ve been police inspectors, another would have FBI agents. Precure (the abbreviation for the franchise as whole) seasons past Futari wa Pretty Cure work much the same way; One season you’d have a chemist like Honoka, but another season you’d have a character like Splash Star‘s artist, Mai Mishou, instead. While the amount of Crime Does Not Pay‘s influence varies from installment to installment of the franchise, sometimes it gets even more obvious than it was in Futari wa Pretty Cure itself.

Mai Mishou, now finished with her latest forensic sketch.

A good example would be from the tenth anniversary season, 2014’s Happiness Charge Pretty Cure, which makes its influences incredibly obvious through it’s use of “Precards”; Not only dues it reference Futari wa Pretty Cure‘s similar (but unnamed) cards, but some of the cards, -such as the detective or police Precards- are references to the original Crime Does Not Pay series itself. (Complete with being able to be used by the non-magical forms of the protagonists, for that nice, classic crime fiction feel!) Conveniently, there’s clips of these forms already posted on YouTube, so here they are for the sake of evidence.

However, many modern-day magical girl shows (especially those from during the 2010’s) chose to follow in Puella Magi Madoka Magica‘s footsteps instead in being gritty and dark, choosing to revel in the dark themes of shows prior except on an even huger scale than shows like Sailor Moon had ever done. And as we all know, edgy shows/comics/other works -magical girl genre or otherwise- don’t look highly on law enforcement, and it would be highly unlikely that these shows would take influence from classic crime fiction such as the short films of Crime Does Not Pay. (Which were initially made to stop the influence of 1930’s gangster films, the “edgy” works of it’s time.)

Image result for sad luna sailor moon
[Pictured: The current state of newer works in the genre.]
…Well, that, and there’s virtually no results for “magical girl police” or “magical girl detective” online, modern-era shows or otherwise; That means no shows are taking OBVIOUS influence from Crime Does Not Pay either. This, however, leaves the question of whether or not modern Magical Girl shows will continue to take influence from Crime Does Not Pay after the genre gets over it’s Hot Topic phase: Will the genre get its own equivalent of Crime Does Not Pay to combat it’s Public Enemies and Scarfaces? Only time will tell at this point. (But I sure hope Crime Does Not Pay‘s legacy in the magical girl genre will be able to continue, especially as it’s arrived fairly “late” in the grand scheme of things.)

United States president Donald Trump exposed SABOTAGING the INDIE GAME SCENE!?!??!?!

NobaddyLeave a comment
Donald trump CAUGHT WITH HIS HAND IN THE COOKIE JAR!?!??!

Indie game developers all over San Fransissco have been reporting that President Donald “Don” Trump has infiltrated their local communities and have personally urinated all over their computers.

“He’s very rude” said Fill Fish, who was finishing up his new game “Red arabic hatwear 2 – funny video game enjoyed by liberal college students and hipsters”, but the game is now permantly canceled because Donald Trump ate the flash drive which he kept his code on.

Multiple games such as Gone with the Home 2 and Jerry Seinfeld Presents: Bioshock Infinite 2 has been canceled after this unfortunate event. There are calls for Donald Trump  to quit his presidency from all over the indie game scene after this happen. His majesty the president has yet to answer to these demands

Local reports from an anonymous source also tells us Donald Trump has been caught counting cards in Vegas, which adds to the large amount of controversies the President has been involved in the last three minutes.

Bookmark this site and subscribe to the buttbuddz for further reports, please and also support or patreon and kickstarter for quality gaming news.

Crash Buttrospective – Crash Bandicoot 1

NobaddyLeave a comment

Hello, and welcome to this first BUTTBUDDZ (trademark) retrospective. We will look at one of my favorite games (me, as in Nobaddy), Crash Bandicoot. Through this retrospective I’ll write a bit about all the crash games that matter, which is 1-3, CTR and maybe Wrath of Cortex (which is shit) and Twinsanity (which is at least 30 times less shit than WoC, but not as good as the Naughty Dog games)

In this first written piece I will look at the first game. I’ve replayed the first world of Crash Bandicoot to jog my memory, but I’ve played through this game many times as a child, and as a teenager and at least once as an adult.

It’s Crash!

Crash Bandicoot is a 3D platformer released in 1996 in which you play as Crash Bandicoot, who must stop the evil Dr. Neo Cortex because he’s a mean villain.

The game has an intro cutscene which isn’t very important, so we will start with the first level. You start out on a beach and then you go into the jungle where you will find many exciting challenges. One of the most apparent strengths of Crash Bandicoot is the beautiful visuals. One of the best found in a 3D playstation game, the game portrays lush jungles, mystic ruins and disturbing factory locales with ease, and together with is sequels are easily some of the best looking video games of the 90s. The art holds up today, and makes the games so much enjoyable as you’re always excited for what the next level is going to look like. Might I say the game is eye candy?

The gameplay in Crash Bandicoot is alright. You can jump and you can run and do a spin attack and not much more. The level design is very similar to the 2D platformers of the early 90s, but turned around into a 3D perspective. The game is a linear, tunnelvision platformer, almost kinda similar to the boost sonic games, but also half the levels are sidescrolling stages. The gameplay and level design in Crash 1 isn’t as strong as in it’s sequels, even though the game has a much more mysterious feel to it compared to it’s streamlined sequels. One of my favorite stages in the series is the bridge level where you jump across a broken bridge. It’s mysterious, almost haunted and it has great atmosphere. I think actually Crash 1 has the best mood in the series. What adds to this almost as much as the lush graphics and simple but effective soundtrack is the secrets.

It’s as if I’m in a real jungle!

Crash 1s secrets are the most secret in the series, and are kinda arbitrary and poorly designed. You can unlock secrets by collecting colored gems, which unlocks hidden paths, but for many stages you can’t get the gems unless you’ve acquired a color gem which adds to a very confusing experience. To get a gem you have to break all the crates, but the issue is that you can’t die on a stage. This makes it very hard to get gems on the later stages, a bit too hard maybe and unfair, since you can’t collect the gems in the earlier stages because they have crates on hidden paths that only unlock after you get a colored gem from a later stage! But when you do this, you do get some exciting secrets. A great childhood memory of mine is when I finally got a colored gem and went back to a previous stage. Suddenly there was a gem platform which lead me to an exciting, hidden path. Crash 2 and 3 have secrets too, which are better designed to boot but I will never forget the memory of finding that secret in crash 1.

The boulder chase is one of the most iconic parts of the game

Also the game controls much worse than the later games, there’s no analogue control and the spin attack has this weird thing where you kinda slide forwards while you use it which can cause you to die sometimes if you spin near a hole just right.

All in all Crash Bandicoot is a great game which is very fun, and while it’s sequels improve on it, it’s still a great game on it’s own and worth playing.

Game Review #1: Kirby Squeak Squad

ComicaLeave a comment

Welcome to the BLOGBUDDZ’s first ever game review: Today we’ll be reviewing a rather divisive game today, known for causing it’s gaming franchise’s fans to question the morality of it’s own protagonist. A game that’s more well-known as “Kirby’s Fucking Pissed” among the internet than by it’s actual title, Kirby: Squeak Squad. 

KSQSQ_logo

Like all Kirby games, it’s darkness and extensive lore is not visible in the slightest when you start it; The first thing you see in game with Kirby enjoying a piece of nice, delicious, strawberry cake. KSqSq_Strawberry_Shortcake_Screenshot

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” you might ask. “It’s just a pink gumball eating cake: Just how horrifying can it be?” Well, that’s when you notice that you’re wrong…

tumblr_inline_mzhi7oJpy51rjw2mu.png

Kirby beats up an entire game’s worth of enemies and bosses, over a slice of cake. This didn’t bode well with Kirby’s fans, as they were more used to the cutesy, innocent Kirby the other 14 years worth of games before Squeak Squad had. (Hal Labs eventually reverted back to the aforementioned “good Kirby” in Kirby games post-Squeak Squad as well, but the damage had already been done: The “Kirby is Evil” theories and disturbingly-realistic internet fan-art still persisted, and Kirby’s reputation was never the same since…)

…That’s basically the entire plot of the game. Well, that, and you fight this installment’s titular Squeak Squad.Squeak_Squad2The Squeak Squad are rats. They’re rats. They’re the rats. They prey at night, they stalk at night, they’re the rats. Their leader Daroach is even a giant rat that makes all of the rules. The trouble they got themselves into was stealing Kirby’s cake. (…Which is conveniently located in the same treasure chest as the game’s true antagonist.)

Keep in mind that Kirby Squeak Squad was made only eight years before the release of Jerma985’s legendary Rat Movie: Mystery of the Mayan Treasure. (and it’s 2015 sequel, Rat Movie 2.) Does this mean the Squeak Squad are the predecessors to the rats we see in the RAT MOVIE MOVIES!?

gfs_75607_2_1

Gameplay-wise, it’s like pretty much every other Kirby platformer: You can fly, you suck up foes and gain their abilities, you even fight King Dedede and Meta Knight like in a lot of other Kirby games, etc. However, you can see inside Kirby’s stomach from the Nintendo DS’s bottom screen, so there’s that, I guess…

Overall, there isn’t a lot to say about this game. The lore is surprisingly small for a Kirby game, which isn’t surprising considering the complete lack of Escargoon and the extensive lore surrounding him.

While Kirby: Squeak Squad is a still nice game, (After all, Kirby truly has no bad video games!) it’s not exactly one of the highest priority ones you need to play in the franchise: It’s pretty simple lore-wise, and about as remarkable as any other platformer in the series is gameplay-wise….

Well, unless you’re a die-hard Kirby fan, a Rat Movie fanatic, a “Kirby is Evil” theorist, or already finished with Super Star/Air Ride/Planet Robobot: Then this game should be a priority to play.

OUR SCORE: 5.2 [Needs more Escargoon.]

Last-Minute Fun Fact: When you play Kirby Squeak Squad on your birthday, you are greeted with a “Happy Birthday” screen. (It even greets you with a nice little song!)

rats.png

…I know this because it’s my birthday (or at least in EASTERN STANDARD TIME, where and when this article was written), so I’m sharing the surprise this game gave me with you. Enjoy?