Star Wars Comics Part 2: The Early Dark Horse Run (1991-1994)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Wednesday. I'm back for the second part in my look at the early Star Wars comic books. This final part takes us into the 90's when Dark Horse Comics got the license to publish Star Wars comics. I'm only looking at the first few years of Dark Horse's line as they published Star Wars comics long enough that looking at 23 years worth of Star Wars comics would get way too complicated. So let's take a look at the beginnings of Dark Horse's Star Wars run. Let's get into it.

Published on December 12th, 1991, Dark Empire #1 was the first issue published by Dark Horse. Having originally been pitched to Marvel in the late 80's, following the end of Marvel's original run that began in 1977, as I covered last time, it wasn't until Dark Horse got the license that Dark Empire got published.

Unlike the Marvel line of Star Wars comics, which had one ongoing monthly series, with a couple of other monthly series near the end, Dark Horse chose a different approach. Instead of a singular ongoing monthly series, Dark Horse chose to produce several limited series or miniseries. Dark Empire ended in October, 1992 with issue #6.

While Bantam Spectra had embraced their publishing program following the release of Heir to the Empire in 1991, Dark Horse was actually slow in greenlighting more Star Wars comics in the wake of Dark Empire's success. In fact, it wasn't until October, 1993 that the first issue of the next Star Wars series, Tales of the Jedi, was published. Even though George Lucas had prohibited other writers to tell stories set before the events of Star Wars (1977), particularly ones set during the Clone Wars, as he was seriously considering making the Prequel Trilogy movies, and he didn't want the stories being told in the novels and comics to hinder the story he wanted to tell in the movies. However he did allow Tom Veitch to tell stories set thousands of years before the events of the original movie, during the height of the Jedi Knights and the Old Republic.

After issue #5 Tom Veitch finished telling his original story in the Tales of the Jedi series. Also, by then, it was 1994 and George Lucas had not only announced that he was returning Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi to theatres in 1997, but that he was also starting to work on the first movie in the Prequel Trilogy.

Early in 1994, a new Star Wars comic book series began publication. The comics were still in prequel territory, and this series was more like a Marvel series, as it was focused on R2-D2 and C-3PO as the original Droids comic book series had been. Unlike that series though, this series was completely original and had no ties to the 1985 cartoon series, it was even set about ten years after the cartoon. 

The series ended with issue #6. I think one of the reasons that Dark Horse wasn't as quick to publish more Star Wars comics following the success of Dark Empire is that George Lucas became more hands on with the publishing side of things, particularly the comics, so he had to approve everything thanks to the resurrected Emperor plotline. As I said it was almost a full year following the release of Dark Empire #6 when Tales of the Jedi #1 was published. I also think it has to do with the fact that Dark Horse was a much smaller publisher in the late 80's and early 90's as it had only started in February, 1986. 

Plus, Star Wars comics aren't that well known outside of the fandom, particularly in 1991-1994, when things like, Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn, The Death of Superman, The Infinity Gauntlet, and Batman: Knightfall were happening at DC and Marvel. Not to mention the first round of publications from Image Comics were coming out as well, like Spawn, Youngblood, The Savage Dragon, WildC.A.T.S., ShadowHawk, and CyberForce. So between George's more hands on approach, the competition from other companies, and the fact that Dark Horse was publishing the Star Wars comics instead of DC or Marvel, there were many factors that were part of why there were no Star Wars comics published for almost a year following the release of Dark Empire #6.

While Droids was in the middle of its run, Veitch continued his Tales of the Jedi series, with a two issue arc called The Freedon Nadd Uprising. One of the reasons I think Tales of the Jedi wasn't an ongoing monthly series is it allows the writers to choose how long their stories would be. If a story only takes two issues to tell, then the story would only take two issues to tell. But, if the story needed six issues to be told, then it could be six issues. It also separates the arcs out, as the publisher wasn't having to worry about the numbering. The first issue of the arc was also part 1 of the story and that's it. None of that insanity of part 1 of Knightfall being published in Batman #492 the way comic books had been doing it for decades by this point. 

The next Tales of the Jedi series to be published by Dark Horse was Dark Lords of the Sith, which was written once again by Veitch, but he had a co-writer in Kevin J. Anderson, the author of the Jedi Academy Trilogy novels, which were also coming out at this time. Anderson was collaborating with Veitch on this series because it tied into Anderson's novels, by telling Exar Kun's story that the novels had only just scratched the surface of.

 The final issue came out in March, 1995. I don't remember if Anderson continued with the series after this arc, but this was the end of the initial series featuring Exar Kun.

To wrap up 1994, Dark Horse published the first issue of the sequel to Dark Empire, Dark Empire II. As I mentioned in my overview of the Dark Empire Trilogy, this sequel felt almost unnecessary given that Luke and Leia had defeated the resurrected Emperor in Dark Empire #6, which had been published a little more than two years before the first issue of Dark Empire II was published, as this issue was published in December, 1994, while Dark Empire #6 had been published in October, 1992. I can't find anything on the history of Dark Empire II, as Wookieepedia doesn't have any behind the scenes information on the comic, and I don't have any issues of The Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine/Star Wars Insider that might cover it in their comic book section, "Straight from the Horse's Mouth" as it was called at the time. 

 The final issue of Dark Empire II, issue #6, was published in May, 1995. Again, Dark Horse's strategy works well for the Star Wars comics. Particularly the ones being published in the early to mid 90's, when Dark Horse was just getting started with publishing Star Wars comics. More comics would be published in 1995, and by the time the marketing campaign for Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace started in late 1998 and early 1999, Dark Horse was publishing alot of Star Wars comics, as they were not only involved in that marketing campaign since Episode I had several comic book tie-ins, including a four issue comic book adaptation of the movie, but they were also involved in crafting the story that would become The New Jedi Order novel series, starting with Vector Prime in 1999.

That's it for me for this week. I've got lots going on next week, so I don't know if I'm going to post anything yet. We'll see. Regardless, I have a few posts in mind for the next several weeks, though I won't reveal what those posts are just now. Also, don't forget that in two weeks I'm returning to The VHS Club podcast to discuss the history of VHS, our personal histories with the format, and VCRs. I'm really looking forward to it. But,  until then have a great rest of your week and a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: YTV's The Zone (1992-2002)

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was pretty good. Today I'm here to talk about a programming block on YTV that kept me entertained for about a decade. The Zone, with PJ Phil and Snit, PJ Katie, PJ Jenn and PJ Ashna, and Sugar Beard. Let's get into it.

Originally known as The Afterschool Zone, The Zone was a two to three hour programming block that aired after school usually from 4 pm to 6 pm. At certain points though the programming block would air from 3 pm to 6 pm. That was certainly the case in the summer of 1996 when Sailor Moon aired at 3:30 pm, after reruns of The Woody Woodpecker Show at 3. The original host of The Zone, from when it was known as The Afterschool Zone, was Gordon Michael Woolvett, who I know as Seamus Harper on the 2000 Sci-Fi series, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, who hosted The Zone from 1991 to 1992, and then PJ Phil, a.k.a. Phil Guerrero, took over. I began watching The Zone in 1992 with Video & Arcade Top 10 and reruns of the 1966 TV series, Batman. Other shows like Alvin and the Chipmunks, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, the aforementioned Sailor Moon, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Rugrats and Pokemon all aired on The Zone at one time or another. And I watched them all.

From 1993 to 1996 I didn't have cable, so I could only watch YTV if I was in the hospital or visiting my grandparents, be it Nana and Grandpa, who lived five minutes away from us, or Grandma and Grandpa, who lived in the west end of Ottawa. So watching The Zone was really special during this time because it was so infrequent. 

 Starting in 1994, Snit, voiced by Atul N. Rao, became Phil's cohost on The Zone. This was after Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had been pulled from the station's lineup, but he was there to bring in Rugrats as a replacement after Batman. He and Phil would host The Zone together for three years, until Snit left. The cool thing about The Zone is that sometimes, they would have storylines that the hosts, be it Phil and Paul, Phil and Snit, or later on Sugar and Carlos, would act out, filming on location in some cases, or as a way to introduce new hosts, new elements, or new sets, to the block. 

By the time PJ Katie, going by her real name, Jennifer Racicot, took over in November, 1999, the set was designed to look like a subway train, to look more modern in the last few months of 1999 and into early 2000. Also by this point Jenny incorporated alot more pop culture news into the segments between shows, like Spongebob SquarePants. While I wasn't watching The Zone as often as I had been from 1992 to 1997, when Sailor Moon went on a three year hiatus to give Cloverway Inc. time to dub the third and fourth seasons, I was still watching the block with my siblings because of Pokemon. I remember that Jenny had interviewed Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones of Savage Garden around this time, as their second album, which ended up being their final studio album, Affirmation was released on November 9th, 1999, only six days before Jenny and her cohost, Pat Kelly, whom I only vaguely remember, began hosting The Zone.

By the time Carlos came on as Sugar's cohost in 2002, I wasn't watching The Zone anymore, but I did see a little bit of the Sugar solo era though because of season 4 of Sailor Moon airing, and the fact that Sugar also voiced Sailor Mini-Moon in seasons 3 and 4. I've said this in my previous YTV post, but if you want a complete history of The Zone, check out Shinken004's YTV Retrospective on YouTube. He has a very indepth episode on the history of The Zone from 1991 to the present day. Now, let's talk about the shows that I watched on The Zone. This will have a very loose order, because the majority of the shows that I watched on The Zone were on together, one after the other.

The earliest show I remember watching on The Zone was Video & Arcade Top 10. This was a pop culture review game show hosted by Nicholas Picholas. Kids would play the latest Nintendo games, with the occasional Sega Genesis game for points. While Nicholas and his co-hosts would review the latest movies/home video releases, and music. Contestants at home could write in their answers to a skill-testing question based on one of the reviews and if they won their prize would be free movie rental passes for either Rogers Video or Jumbo Video or the CD or home video release being reviewed on the show. I honestly only ever remember watching the show from 1992 to 1993, because I wasn't watching The Zone much except for Batman and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and only when I had access to it like at the hospital or my grandparents's places. I definitely don't recall seeing it during the Pokemon era, and I wasn't watching The Zone after Woody Woodpecker and Sailor Moon during the period that those two shows aired together. It's crazy though that Video & Arcade Top 10 stayed on the air until 2008, which is insane to me, because like I said, I didn't watch it after the early era.

It's also weird to me that Alvin and the Chipmunks aired on The Zone, because while I do remember watching it there, I mainly remember it from Kids TV on Global around this same time. Nevertheless I did watch it on The Zone at like 4 or 4:30 pm starting in 1994.

Another show that I watched on The Zone was Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Again, I only watched it a handful of times because I didn't have regular access to YTV and The Zone, but I do remember watching it. However, it's the next two shows that I really watched The Zone for.

At 5 and 5:30 pm I was introduced to Batman and the Power Rangers on The Zone. You all know my history with both of these shows as I've talked about them numerous times over the years, even reviewing season 1 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers last year. Unlike the other shows that were on The Zone during this time, Batman and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were the shows that I went out of my way to make sure I had access to YTV for on my TV in the hospital whenever I was there. I loved, and still love, both of these shows. But, I think what made me fall in love with both shows is that they were aired together on YTV. Yes, it was only reruns of Batman being that the show originally aired from 1966 to 1968, but to me it felt special that it aired as the lead-in to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which was a brand new show in 1993. Especially because Batman was so popular at the time given that Batman Returns came out the year before and Batman: The Animated Series was currently airing on Fox Kids, Global, and YTV. Of all the shows on The Zone from 1992 to 1994, it's these two that I remember the most fondly.

Eventually though Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was pulled from YTV, though episodes would continue to air on Global's Kids TV until the end of the second season in 1995. Replacing it was the 1991 Nickelodeon cartoon, Rugrats. I've talked about this before, but for whatever reason occasionally Canada will get a show from the U.S. late. In my experience this mostly happened with early 90's Nickelodeon shows like Rugrats, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and Clarissa Explains It All which all debuted in 1991 on Nickelodeon, but we didn't get them here in Canada until later. We got Rugrats in 1994, Clarissa Explains It All in 1999, and The Adventures of Pete & Pete in 2000, with Rugrats the only one to have any staying power as both Clarissa and Pete & Pete only lasted two years each here. While Rugrats aired on YTV from 1994 to 2004, taking it to the end of the show's run.

One of the more ridiculous shows I ever watched on YTV was Samurai Pizza Cats, which is an Anime that got an English dub/adaptation. And the producers of this adaptation was Saban Entertainment, and aired on YTV from 1992 until 1993, while it would air in the U.S. in syndication, but not until 1996, a full three years after it finished airing here in Canada. Unlike other Anime dubs at the time, this one wasn't meant to be taken seriously. The opening theme even alludes to the fact that the show is basically a cat themed parody of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was still hugely popular when the original Anime, Kyatto Ninden Teyandee began airing in Japan in 1990.

With the success of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in 1993, naturally there would be many attempts to adapt other Tokusatsu shows. One of them was Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, starring Matthew Lawrence, who would later go on to play Jack Hunter on Boy Meets World, as Sam Collins, who gets zapped into Cyberspace to become Servo. Tim Curry voiced Kilokahn, the cyber-villain of the show. As this show was an adaptation of Denkou Choujin Gridman, or Gridman the Hyper Agent, which was produced by Tsuburaya Productions, the creators of Ultraman (hence why Servo looks like an Ultraman character), and being that the show was only 39 episodes long, Samurai Syber-Squad aired for 53 episodes, and that was it. It was only on for a year.

The next block of shows that I want to talk about is The Woody Woodpecker Show, which was a TV repackaging of old Woody Woodpecker cartoons from the 1940s, which aired on ABC, NBC, and in Syndication from 1957 to 1977, and Sailor Moon, which is one of the first Animes to become hugely popular in North America alongside Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, and Digimon. I don't have very much to say about The Woody Woodpecker Show, but Sailor Moon was awesome! Every afternoon in the summertime and on March Break my siblings and I would sit in the basement and play Batman: The Video Game on the Nintendo Entertainment System and then change the channel to YTV for The Woody Woodpecker Show and Sailor Moon. 

This was before Teletoon was even a thing, though it wasn't far behind, and by this point Kids TV on Global was starting to wind down, we weren't watching PBS, the CBC children's programming block, or TVO Kids on TVOntario (TVO) as much anymore, if at all, and Family Channel was still a premium cable channel. So there was only YTV and Fox Kids for children's programming here in Canada as even BBS Master Control was starting to wind down for us as well, as Jenn Beech, who had been PJ Jenn on YTV until 1994, would leave Master Control in 1997, and shows like Goof Troop, Gargoyles, The Lion King's Timon and Pumbaa, and Aladdin: The Animated Series were all starting to wrap up as well.

As a result Sailor Moon became THE show my siblings and I would watch on The Zone, along with Rugrats since both the Batman reruns and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers weren't on the channel anymore, with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers having become Power Rangers Zeo in 1996. Though reruns of MMPR would continue on Fox Kids throughout the late 90's under the Power Rangers: Power Playback title. Sailor Moon was great though and even though it had its roadblocks with new episodes going on hiatus in the middle of the second season, not long after we started watching the show on YTV, having watched the whole thing on Global from 1995 to 1996, up to when the show went on hiatus. Sailor Moon eventually moved to 7 o'clock in the morning when the show returned for the remainder of the second season, and then returned to that timeslot in the early 2000's for seasons 3 and 4 before dropping off YTV for good.

The next big show my siblings and I watched on YTV together was Pokemon. specifically the first three incarnations, Indigo League, Adventures in the Orange Islands, and The Johto Journeys. I don't think we missed a single episode of any of the seasons. Though personally, I couldn't tell you that I remember the episodes where Brock left and was replaced by Tracey or the episodes where Brock returned, replacing Tracey. I do remember when Togepi hatched though. I also remember the Jigglypuff episodes, the "Who's that Pokemon?" bumper segment and of course, the Poke Rap at the end of the episode. That first season was the height of Poke-Mania for me for sure though. 

By this point I was almost in my teens and more interested in shows like Animorphs, Radio Active, reruns of The Odyssey, which I will talk about at a later time, Incredible Story Studios, and The New Addams Family, all of which were airing on YTV in the evening after The Zone had ended. Plus Teletoon had started, reruns of Batman began airing on Space Channel alongside its short-lived sister series, The Green Hornet, reruns of The Waltons were airing on TNN, and on Friday nights we were watching Boy Meets World, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Teen Angel, You Wish, and Two of a Kind on TGIF. So there was alot to keep me occupied and The Zone was no longer a big draw for me. Especially because PJ Phil was no longer the host, though I did enjoy Jenny's interview with Savage Garden, which I mentioned earlier.

Now, Digimon was apparently on during The Zone, but this must've been when The Zone was extended, because I honestly don't remember it being on during the programming block's main time period of 3 pm to 6 pm, or 4 pm to 6 pm, however long The Zone was on during that 1999-2001 period. Again, this was pretty late into The Zone's lifespan as I was a teenager by this point and already begun watching shows meant for my age group like Radio Active. I loved Digimon though.

After this period, I watched The Zone less and less, especially once Sailor Moon moved to the early morning slot in 2000 for Sailor Moon S and Sailor Moon SuperS and Digimon Tamers ended its run in 2002. But, again, Sugar was the host of The Zone, and I really liked seeing her, especially because she was the voice of Rini/Sailor Mini-Moon in those final two seasons of Sailor Moon.

While The Zone is still around today, it has greatly been diminished as, sadly, thanks to budgetary cuts made by Corus Entertainment last year, The Zone is now without any hosts. Corus fired the hosts, Melony Manikavasagar, Spencer Litzinger, and Kelsey, in the summer of 2023, 32 years after The Zone debuted. No matter what era they were part of, I honestly feel like the PJs were an important part of YTV and it's success in the early days of the channel. 

Whether it was Phil, Snit, the Grogs, the Fuzzpaws, Paul, Sandra, Ashna, and Jenn in the early days, Jenny and Pat in the heyday of Anime on YTV, Sugar and Carlos in the Teen Titans, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), and The Batman era, or Spencer, Melony, and Kelsey in the modern day, each PJ brought something unique and cool to YTV, which has now been lost thanks to that decision to cut costs by firing the hosts, making it just like Cartoon Network Canada (formerly known as Teletoon) and Family Channel. Which is unfortunate. Especially since broadcast television is very much on its last legs.

That's it for me for today. I'll be back soon to talk about the early days of Star Wars comic book publishing at Dark Horse to wrap up my early Star Wars comics discussion that I started last week with my look at the original Marvel Comics lineup from 1977 to 1987. So until then have a great night. Take care.

Star Wars Comics Part 1: The Original Marvel Star Wars Run (1977-1987)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with another Star Wars post for you. However, it's not part of my My Star Wars Experience series because I wanna do a two part general overview on the early Star Wars comics. The first part, which is today's post, will be on the Marvel Comics run from 1977 to 1987, and then part 2, which will be next week's will be on the early Dark Horse comics from the early 90's. So let's get into it.

As part of the marketing campaign for Star Wars in the 70's, Lucasfilm made a deal with Marvel Comics to publish a comic book adaptation of the movie. Marvel began publishing the comic a month before the movie came out, so no major spoilers were revealed prior to the film's release. Not that it mattered since nobody was paying attention to the movie's production at this point in the game.

Following the movie's success and the success of the comic book adaptation, Lucasfilm and Marvel Comics re-negotiated their licensing agreement and starting with issue #7, new stories set after the events of the movie started being told. These stories were insanely wild and barely Star Wars stories, but the comic book medium, long before Bantam Spectra published Heir to the Empire, was able to expand the Star Wars Universe in a way that the early novels from Del Rey just weren't able to do.

Issue #24 was the first time we got a Star Wars story set during the Clone Wars. I guess George Lucas didn't put as many restrictions on what the Marvel Comics series could and couldn't tackle, as he did the Dark Horse comics, and the Bantam novels in the 90's being that he had no idea when or if he would ever do any movies set during the Clone Wars while he was working on The Empire Strikes Back from 1978 to 1980.

Speaking of The Empire Strikes Back, the movie was adapted into comic book form from issues 39-44 of the Marvel Comics series. Being that all the comic book artists had to work on was the script and some design sketches, Yoda looks nothing like he would in the movie. They changed that in later editions of the comic adaptation, but for the original issues and the initial digest collected edition, Yoda looks vastly different than he does in the movie.

The series continued until issue #107, which was published in 1986. By this point the movies had been completed and general interest in the trilogy had waned, leaving the fans to their own devices. The post-Return of the Jedi stories introduced Lumiya, the Dark Lady of the Sith, who has revenge against Luke in mind following her injuries during battle. She was an apprentice of Vader in this comic book series, but then later became Jacen Solo's Sith master in the Legacy of the Force book series in 2007.

In 2019 the series was revived for an 108th issue under the Star Wars Legends banner for Marvel's 80th Anniversary. To date this is the only Star Wars Legends comic to be published since Marvel took over the comic book license in 2015. 

Marvel published a comic book adaptation of Return of the Jedi in 1983. However, for whatever reason, the adaptation got its own four issue mini-series instead of being part of the main Star Wars comic book series like the adaptations for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back had been. Unlike the adaptations of the other two movies, the adaptation of Return of the Jedi didn't begin publication until five months after the movie's release.

While the movies finished in 1983, they weren't the only Star Wars stories made for film or television in the 80's. In 1985 two cartoons, Droids and Ewoks, were produced by Canadian animation studio, Nelvana, and aired on ABC. Ewoks was the first to have a comic book series based on it, under Marvel's Star Comics imprint, which had been created specifically for comic books based on animated series that Marvel owned the comic license for, but didn't originate with them. So, for example, the G.I. Joe and Transformers comics didn't fall under this imprint because both comics originated with Marvel and weren't just licensed to them by Hasbro.

The Ewoks comic ended in 1987, after a two year run, and one year after the main Star Wars comic had ceased publication. Though Marvel would still own the comic book license for the saga until well into the production of Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy's six issue series, Dark Empire.

While Droids initially didn't have a comic book series when it debuted in 1985, by the time the series ended in 1986, it did. It was only an eight issue series though. The first five issues were completely original stories, not based on any of the episodes of the TV show. Instead they acted as a prequel to the cartoon, which is interesting.

The final three issues did something a little bit differently. Issues 6, 7, and 8 did a retelling of the original movie, but from the perspective of Artoo and Threepio. The final issue was published a month before the final issue of Ewoks.

So I have a very small history with this run of comics. Being that I wasn't born until the end of 1986, I missed the original run of all of these comics, as well as their omnibus collected editions by Dark Horse. However, I did get copies of the digest collected editions of the comic adaptations of Star Wars (issues 1-6), and The Empire Strikes Back (issues 39-44) from a friend while I was in high school, I also got issue #41 of Star Wars (part 3 of the The Empire Strikes Back adaptation) from someone for either my birthday or Christmas when I was a teenager. While I don't have that single issue anymore, I do still have the digest collected editions, and I currently have the 2020 Facsimile Edition reprint of Star Wars #1. I've never read any of the Droids or Ewoks comics. Trying to get a hold of these comics isn't difficult, but might be expensive, depending on where you find an issue, and which issue you find.

That's it for today's post on Star Wars comics. Next week I'll finish this short series off with a look at the early run of Dark Horse's long history with Star Wars. So until then have a great rest of the week and a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: My Favourite Video Game Manuals

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was pretty good. As you may have noticed, I didn't post the Star Wars post that I had said I was gonna post. I was busy last week getting ready for my appearance on The VHS Club Video Podcast, which was really fun. I'll do that post eventually, but for now, let's talk about today's topic, which is video game instruction manuals. Particularly my favourite ones from the NES, SNES, and N64 eras, as well as a Game Boy/Game Boy Color one. These won't be in any real order or anything, though I'll save my absolute favourite one for the end. So let's get into it.

The first one I want to talk about is the one for SimCity for the Super Nintendo. I've already talked about this game as the first post in this series, so I won't say too much about it again here. The manual was great though as it takes you through the whole process of building and managing a city in the game, with the game's character, Dr. Wright, as your guide. Of course, the manual opens with Demolition and all the natural, and not so natural, disasters you can use to destroy your city, or one of the cities depicted in the various scenarios included in the game, like rebuilding Tokyo after a Bowser attack. The manual takes you through all six stages of the game, from village to Megalopolis, as well as provides examples of fictional cities that failed because their mayors sucked. 

Next is the manual for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64. One of the things that these manuals all do very well is give the story of the game, including background information that you either get in game, or you know because you read the manual. As we'll see with the Mario games, particularly the ones for the NES and SNES, they couldn't give you the whole backstory in the game, since the game mechanics were fairly primitive for the time that those particular games were coming out. They also allow you to figure out the controls for the game before turning the game console on. Some even allow you space to write in game passwords, and cheat codes. Others, like Ocarina of Time even give you a map of the world of the game you're playing.

Next is the Pokemon Trainer's Guide for the first generation of Pokemon games (Red, Blue, and Yellow). This essentially is a combination of instruction manual, and a condensed version of the Official Player's Guide book published by Nintendo. It takes you up to Pewter City, and the first gym badge. Which is cool.

The manual for Majora's Mask isn't as good as the one for Ocarina of Time, but I think that's just because the game came out in 2000, which was the end of the N64's lifespan, when video game manuals had less effort put into them than they did in the 80's and early 90's. I still like it though because it does make the game feel like a follow-up to Ocarina of Time, instead of its own standalone game. 

Then there's the first manual I ever saw, which was the one for Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, which was the game cartridge that came with our original NES console. One thing I haven't mentioned in this post is that because I'm Canadian and live in Canada, some of the game manuals were slightly thicker because they included the French language version of them in the back of the manuals. This game did, as did the one for Super Mario World, but I think that's it. I don't have any of these manuals anymore, as I gave them to my brother since he has the Super Nintendo, but I'm pretty sure that this manual and the one for Super Mario World were the only ones to include a French language version in the back. This manual is how I found out about the story for the Mario games, because, well, the game itself didn't have the capacity to tell the story.

Of course I was going to mention Star Trek in this post. The booklet for Star Trek: The Next Generation - Future's Past for the SNES is the one that allowed us to write down passwords that the game provides you whenever you visit a Starbase between missions, which allow you to return to that segment of the game as, for whatever reason, the game doesn't actually allow you to save your game in a save file like most SNES games let you do. Especially given that this game was released pretty late into the SNES's lifespan, as it came out in 1994, long after TNG had ended its television run. 

The manual for Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES is unique because the game is a compilation of the three NES Mario games, plus the previously unreleased (in North America) Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, which was the original Super Mario Bros. 2 that got released in Japan shortly after the original game came out in the mid 80's, but was deemed too difficult for players, so it got replaced by the game that we know as Super Mario Bros. 2, which was also included in this compilation. The manual only devotes two pages to The Lost Levels as it treats it as an extension of Super Mario Bros., which it actually is.

And then we finish off with my favourite video game manual of all time, the one for Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo. There's just something about this manual that made me read it and look at it over and over again. I think it's because it connects the game to the previous NES Super Mario Bros. games in a way that, well, the other games didn't connect to each other really. And the manual makes reference to Super Mario Bros. 3 multiple times. The first time is in the story at the beginning of the manual, which establishes that this game takes place soon after the events of that game. Which is really cool, because, again, the game itself doesn't give that much detail. And then on pages 19 and 20 (I'm looking at a scan of those pages online) it gives us a map of Yoshi's Island and the various locations you have to go to. 

It also highlights a sunken ship off of Chocolate Island with the caption, "This is a strange looking sunken ship. Haven't you seen it somewhere before? That's right, in Super Mario Bros. 3, Koopa and his kids used a flying ship to make life tough for Mario. I wouldn't be surprised if Bowser is lurking somewhere nearby." I always thought that this description sounded ominous and a little scary, given that it is an abandoned sunken ship. But the fact that it's Bowser's airship from Super Mario Bros. 3 gives it a bit more gravitas that it wouldn't've had if it were just a generic sunken ship. And I think that's what Miyamoto and his team were going for when they made this game. 

The best thing about looking at these manuals, particularly the Mario ones, is seeing what the games were like back then. In the case of the Mario games, there was no Bowser Jr. and the seven Koopalings, were Bowser's kids. It's also interesting to see Bowser being referred to as Bowser or Koopa, as the name was pretty interchangeable throughout the early Mario games. 

And that is my look at my favourite/most memorable video game manuals. I love thinking about stuff like this, since we don't have manuals for video games like this anymore. They started to go away during the GameCube/Xbox era in the early to mid-2000's. I love talking about this stuff too, which is why I have this blog. I'll be back soon with more nostalgic goodness. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

My 90's and 2000's Experience: Batman Returns (1992)

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was nice and quiet. As you know, I was gonna put out a My Star Wars Experience post on Wednesday, but stuff came up and I just decided to push the post I was gonna do last week to this week. I'm back with another My 90's and 2000's Experience post. This week I'm taking a look at the 1992 film, Batman Returns. This may or not be a shorter post than I would normally do for one of these posts because I'm actually going to be reviewing Batman Returns with my friends on the VHS Club Video Podcast, live on Thursday at 9 pm ET on YouTube. So alot of what I'd say here is also gonna be said on the show. Let's get into it.

Released on June 19th, 1992, Batman Returns made only $266.8 million at the box office against a budget of between $50 million and $80 million, compared to Batman's final gross of $411.6 million against its budget of only $48 million. Normally I would attribute this to competition from other movies in theatres at the same time, but nothing was out that could even be considered to be competition. I think the issue was that, the controversy surrounding the movie, namely it being too scary for children, but having toys and other merchandise sold to kids is what hurt the movie at the box office. 

I saw the movie sometime in 1993. I was in the hospital and my roommate wanted to watch it, so his mom put the VHS on for us. It scared the crap out of me! I was six years old at the time and I was used to a less scary version of the Penguin from the reruns of the 1966 TV series that I'd been watching on YTV at the time. The sexual undertones went right over my head, but the movie scared me so much that I didn't watch it again until a decade later. My dad had it on VHS so once I got my TV/VCR combo set for my 16th birthday I borrowed it from him and watched it. While it still creeped me out a bit, I enjoyed it alot more than I did when I first saw it back in 1993.

I eventually got the movie on DVD as part of the The Batman Legacy DVD box set, which was just the original 1997-1998 DVD releases of all four Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman movies. Oddly enough I actually started watching Batman Returns more once I got it on DVD. I don't normally watch it on its own, but anytime I do a re-watch of the series, I'll watch all four movies

A few years ago I got Batman Returns on Blu-ray as part of the Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology box set. It has tons of bonus features on it, including the 1992 TV special, The Bat, The Cat, and The Penguin, which I watched last night for the purpose of making notes on the movie for Thursday night's review. I wanted to see what the people who made the film were saying about the movie when it was coming out, versus what they were saying at the time the Shadows of the Bat documentary was made for the original 2-disc special edition DVD releases of all four movies. Very different.

I didn't have this when I was growing up, but I eventually got a copy of the movie's comic book adaptation published by DC around the time the movie came out. I actually had three different versions because I got the prestige format version (shown above), which is in my collection currently, and I have the adaptation in the trade paperback collected edition, Batman: The Movies, which contains the comic book adaptations of all four Burton/Schumacher movies, and I used to have the regular newsstand edition of the issue as well.

Despite not being allowed to watch the movie at home, because of my siblings, who were quite young at the time, my parents still got me three of the four Happy Meal toys that came out for the movie. I had the Batmobile, the Bat Ski-Boat, and Catwoman's car, which isn't actually in the movie. I never got the Penguin vehicle though. 

A few years later I got a few of the Kenner figures from the movie as hand-me downs from the kids of a friend of my mom's. I had the Penguin, which was actually just a repainted version of the original Super Powers Collection Penguin figure, the Penguin's Commando Penguins (two of them), and Robin, who also isn't in the movie, but they released a Tim Drake Robin figure nonetheless, because I guess there wasn't a toyline based on the comics at that point. While I was in the hospital, probably in either 1992 or 1993, my roommate (different from the one who watched the movie with me) had the Batman Returns Batcave Command Center playset, which was an updated version of the version that Toy Biz produced for the first movie back in 1989, and was also repainted and released in 1993 for the second wave of toys from Batman: The Animated Series, as well as some of the Batman figures that were part of that line, including the Bruce Wayne figure that came with the Batsuit, for a quick change into Batman. 

The thing about Batman Returns's marketing campaign is that even though there are toys produced for the movie, doesn't mean the kids of the time had to have seen the movie to want the toys. If you're a kid in 1992, and you see Batman toys on the shelf at Toys 'R' Us or Walmart or Kmart or wherever, and you like Batman you probably wanted the Batcave Command Center, or the Batmobile, or one of the many Batman variant figures that were released at the time. Even if you didn't see the movie. However, despite making the licensing deals with various companies to produce toys, books, and other merchandise for the movie, Warner Bros. also told Tim Burton that he had complete creative control on the movie. Which means he didn't make it with children in mind, or even families. And while studios could get away with this in the '80's with movies like The Terminator and RoboCop, which were R-rated movies that had toylines attached to them, by 1992 the 90's had become a more conservative time when it came to what parents allowed, and didn't allow, their kids to watch. 

I watched the 30 minute documentary, "Shadows of the Bat: The Cinematic Saga of the Dark Knight Part 4 - Dark Side of the Knight" on the Blu-ray last night, and in it Tim Burton expressed surprise at the backlash the movie received from the public due to how dark and horrifying it is. Of course you're gonna get backlash Tim! You made a movie that wasn't for kids, but was still marketed to kids, and people were gonna be upset when they had to leave the theatre with a screaming child because they got scared seeing a movie that wasn't made for them, but still had merchandise marketed towards them. I don't get why anyone would be surprised.

I didn't own the Super Nintendo game based on the movie, nor have I ever played it, but I remember seeing this ad for it in issue #10 of The Batman Adventures. I also saw ads for the comic book adaptation, the trading cards, and even the movie itself in the first several issues of DC's Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation comic book series that I got. The movie was EVERYWHERE in 1992. Because I didn't see this movie or even the 1989 movie until much later, these ads were actually my introduction to this version of Batman.

At one of the first Scholastic Book Fairs I ever went to, I got this Batman Returns storybook. If I remember correctly, it took out everything with Catwoman and Schreck (played by Christopher Walken), and just focused on the Penguin's original plot to become mayor and that's it. 

I also had this book where you have the basic story of Batman Returns, but you can write your own script for it. I, of course, did write my own script in the book, but it was actually a story based on the 1966 TV series, rather than on the movie, despite the prompts being from the movie. Yeah, I have no idea why this book was even published, being that I don't think very many kids back in 1992 were capable of actually writing a movie script, but it was still pretty fun to look through. 

Despite the movie scaring me when I originally saw it on VHS back in the summer of 1993, I had alot of stuff from the movie, because alot was made for the movie. I didn't have either of them but there was a novelization and a junior novelization for the movie. Like I said though, the movie was everywhere in the summer of 1992, and apparently in my life in general. And while it's not my favourite Batman movie, I still enjoy it. I'm actually looking forward to watching it on VHS again later this week for the podcast on Thursday night. 

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back on Wednesday to talk about the 1991 Star Wars novel, Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn, and how it impacted the Expanded Universe, and the franchise as a whole. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.