Sean Akizuki's Fantasy Critic

The recent death of Ichiro Mizuki would remind me of his guest appearance in Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters . Who'd have thought that his role ten years ago would predict HIS OWN DEATH ten years later? Now, it's time to give some praise to Power Rangers Beast Morphers . I could go ahead and keep pointing out how I feel Power Rangers keeps relying on TOO MANY THROWBACKS . What in the world was Hasbro thinking? I even felt that Haim Saban's return was ruined by it since Power Rangers Samurai .  Rather than do a word-for-word translation - I enjoy the creative liberty that Beast Morphers placed. For one, Beast Morphers has been, in some way, trying to be different from Go-Busters  which is a positive. What I'm not liking is how the series still links to Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers in a very blatant way as well as the other series. It even had to link to Power Rangers RPM when Evox is not surprisingly Venjix. I wonder was it even necessary for Colonel Truman to appear at ...

It's no secret that Shao Kahn is what I'd call the most popular Mortal Kombat villain. Why do you think Mortal Kombat 11 gave us what could be Netherrealm not liking him ? The beginning is one bloody torture scene where Raiden beats up a helpless Shinnok and beheads him. The ending in Mortal Kombat X gave us Shinnok tossing Raiden's severed head. Then, MK11 gave the biggest obvious "FU SHINNOK!" promotion - the ability to play as a depowered Shao Kahn! Shao Kahn becmes a regular character in MK11 for fans to play. I do love playing Shao Kahn in MK11 whenever I feel stressed and wnat to feel EEEEEVVVVVIIIILLLL. I could say I just love how MKX gave us Goro as a pre-order bonus but hate how he's NOT in Story Mode. Shinnok was fun to play as also. Though, everything may have started with Mortal Kombat 4 . I agree with all the criticisms that he was practically a lazy Shang Tsung. Shinnok was only the Great Imitator in that game. Even worse, I felt Shinnok being be...

  Right now, I have played what I'd call the Mortal Kombat Reboot Trilogy . After Mortal Kombat (2011) or better called  MK9 was done - there was another one called Mortal Kombat X in the works. I remembered how Netherrealm Studios tried to provide a seventh-generation version of the game, failed, and required stores to return the money or allow them to get another game. I did get a new game after that cancellation. We later had Mortal Kombat XL which was the grand compensation package that Netherrealm promised. I think one of them said, "Just save up some money, we have something for you." It was pretty much a hint to save money for a new system and wait for the compensation package. I did get the compensation package, bought a PS4 ON SALE, and I LMAOed at the console snobs.  I could remember playing MKXL and saying it's got better gameplay than what MK9 offered. Though, I felt the story mode was lacking. I think the Nostalgia Critic is bound to slam the Story Mode ...

  Back then, I remembered palette swap was a downside in classic gaming. Who could remember how Luigi was practically a palette swap of his older twin Mario? Who could remember playing the Super Mario World games only to realize that the Yoshis were all palette-swapped? Either it was a lazy way to do it or it was there to conserve memory space. Granted, I'm not a programmer or game designer so I can't really say what was going on. Mortal Kombat was no different with how it worked with new characters. There were cases of palette swap. Such was the case when the original costume was Scorpion then they decided to make a blue and green palette swap for two other characters. We had Sub-Zero (both Bi Han and Kuai Liang) as well as Reptile (who eventually got unique designs). I think one reason why I can't take any older Mortal Kombat series was the palette swap. We had a new character? Palette swap! We had introductions such as Ermac as a red ninja, Rain as a purple ninja, Smoke ...

  It's no secret that Mortal Kombat (2011)  is called MK9 by the fans (and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is called MK8 even if it's obviously NOT CANON and a stinker to many). I was wondering if MK9 could've benefited from a delay in its release. The reboot was released on April 19, 2011, which many were hyped. Yet, looking at the timeline - the first Mortal Kombat game was released on 1992 and not 1991. In short, it was 19 years after the first game was released. This is where I asked myself if the game was prematurely released. There was the hype but it seemed Netherrealm Studios may have not known what it was doing by releasing it a bit too early. Though, take note that the Komplete Edition was released in 2012 - the twentieth anniversary of the first game! This is my opinion that the game, in all its hype, could've learned a lot. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 came out on the arcade on September 2011. Mortal Kombat was a game no longer interested in the arcade market. Heck...

Last year was the tenth anniversary of Mortal Kombat's grand reboot. I wonder why Netherrelam Studios didn't decide to release the game on 2012 instead of 2011? It would've been a worthy competition to Tekken Tag Tournament 2 . I decided to take a look at some villains in Mortal Kombat which I feel have bene underappreciated. One of them is how I'm a fan of Kintaro even if more people preferred Goro as that legendary sub-boss. Now, I'd like to talk about how Rain is a cool but underappreciated villain. Rain started out as a joke character for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for the arcades. The home consoles brought him in as a playable character. I never had UMK3 but I had Mortal Kombat Trilogy where it's one incredibly broken game better off forgotten IMHO. I did think about MK9 and how it's probably the best game ever. Sure, the next two games had some cool mechanics. However, I'm afraid that the next two reboot entries of MK have been more focused on gettin...

I remembered watching Conan the Adventurer before watching that VERY ADULT Conan the Barbarian (1982) movie. What followed next was that I saw Conan and the Young Warriors followed by Conan the Destroyer. This is pretty much a coincidence (or not) that the performance of the two Conan films and the two Conan animated adaptations are VERY SIMILAR. Conan the Adventurer had a throwback to Conan the Destroyer with Queen Mesmira . Heck, I wanted Sarah Douglas to voice Mesmira as much as I wanted James Earl Jones to be Ram-Amon .  Conan the Barbarian (1982) was clearly a success that launched Arnold Schwarzenegger's career. The violent R-18 movie would make me think, "What was I thinking watching the cartoon?" The cartoon was launched. Rather than getting canceled like Galtar and the Golden Lance - Conan the Adventurer ended up having 65 episodes. The adventures of Cartoon Conan against Wrath-Amon and the serpent men made a good premise. Hasbro did put some clear references suc...