Beetlejuice (NES)! Beetlejuice (GB)! Beetlejuice (PC)!

Beetlejuice came to theaters in 1989, and while I didn't see it on the big screen, I caught it as soon as it came to our local VHS rental place. It was the perfect mix of creepy, funny and fun to get me absolutely hooked. We eventually got an action figure line from Kenner, makers of the wonderful Real Ghostbusters toy line, as well as a cartoon show that took quite a few liberties with the source material to make it work, but I still found it enjoyable, especially since it made Beetlejuice and Lydia the main stars, not to mention that great opening with Danny Elfman's score!

So of course with any hot franchise kids were into in the 80s, there were video games as well, and while none of them were fantastic, they had enough Beetlejuice charm in them to keep me happy. Two of the three I'll go over I enjoyed from my childhood, while the third I'm coming at with a completely fresh take.

There's been a couple more games I've played through in my backlog since my blogging about Little Nemo and The Guardian Legend. Next on my sights was a game that I'd wanted to play through for a long time now, the last Konami TMNT game for the Game Boy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue. Released in 1993, this was a pretty late title in the original TMNT's popularity, with Turtlemania dying down quite a lot since 1989. That being said, I was still a big ninja turtle fan, I mean I never really have stopped. But I remember seeing this game on shelves when it was new, in Electronics Boutique back in the day, and while I debated getting it, I just didn't want to part with my hard earned allowance, which is crazy looking back considering this probably retailed new for $30 at the time! Game Boy games were pretty inexpensive!

One thing a lot of fans and critics have said about Ghostbusters Frozen Empire is that it has too many characters with too little focus on each, and too many plotlines for one movie. There have been interviews with the director where it's been said they looked towards The Real Ghostbusters cartoon on how they wanted this movie to feel, but I think they should have made it feel like only ONE episode of Real Ghostbusters. This movie has so much crammed into it that I feel they could have taken any number of scenes and plots from this movie and made it into its own sequel. Spoiler warning for those that haven't seen the new movie yet!

Take the possessor ghost, for instance. In its normal form, the possessor ghost looks kind of like a red orb. But it's constantly possessing things and making them move around. It possesses the lion statue outside the New York Public Library, as well as the Ecto-1 and even a proton pack briefly. This felt very close to an episode of The Real Ghostbusters from season 3, The Copycat. Instead of possessing items, this ghost can copy anything it sees, such as a lamp, a dog, or even one of the ghostbusters! A ghost like the possessor getting free and being able to control anything it touches could have been a pretty solid story for an hour and a half adventure. It could even have possessed the Ecto-1 and proton packs at key moments to make the ghostbusters cause some real damage and take the blame for its mischief!

I mentioned in my last post that I was delaying working on the Steamboat Willie Rides Again game to work on a short game for the Byte Off IV, a five week competition where you make a game, or at least a demo, for the NES using NESMaker. The theme this year was New Frontiers. After wracking my brain for a short while, I decided on a game about the migratory journey of a monarch butterfly!

This is my first completed NES project, so I'm pretty pleased about it. It's really short, and occasionally buggy, but at least I finished it! It's three levels, with the first level taking place during the day, the second at sunset and the third at night. It plays like a sidescrolling shooter, only there's no shooting, you're just a monarch butterfly. You have to avoid environmental hazards as well as predators like wasps and praying mantises.

Hoo boy, been a while. Let me briefly say, November and December sucked personally, and I found it hard to get back into blogging and making YouTube videos after I lost my momentum. But here's my attempt at getting back into things.

As you may know, Mickey Mouse went public domain as of January 1, 2024 in the US, along with the cartoons Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy. (For a comprehensive look at what that means, and what the public now has legal access to, check out this great writeup by Jennifer Jenkins at the Duke Center for the Study of Public Domain, Mickey, Disney and the Public Domain) Back in November I had the idea that it would be cool to make an NES game of Mickey Mouse and get it ready to release shortly after his release from copywrite. My plan originally was to start the game in November, and then with luck, since it was going to be very short, have it ready to go on New Years Day or shortly thereafter. But like I said, November and December kind of sucked, and I was not able to get motivated to make it. But shortly after New Years I started feeling like it was worth it to give it a try, and so for the past few months I have been working on the game!

Retro Puzzle Maker is an amazing little free game engine. It's a web-based tool that allows you to make Sokoban style games that output as playable NES ROM files. The engine is code-free and any beginner can use it, and while means that while you can't change much in terms of the type of game you're making, there are some variations to the level goals you can select and a robust level editor to make the game feel like a creation that you yourself have made.