Batman Beyond (my thoughts)

Batman Beyond was the most memorable DC sequel ever made.

It told the story of what happens to Bruce Wayne when he could no longer physically be Batman.

For over half a century, the story of Bruce Wayne running around Gotham as Batman had been told and retold more times than anyone could count. A rich guy running a multi-billion dollar company by day and fighting sociopaths as Batman at night with the latest and greatest tech of the day.

This plot is great and all, but was becoming very stale by the late-1990’s.

Yet the question from the crowd always lingered, “What happens to Bruce Wayne when he could no longer physically be Batman?”

What Batman Beyond did was answer that question.

When the series officially launched, it brought a breath of fresh air to the DC universe than retelling the story of Bruce Wayne all over again with different tech.

The one-hour premier is the most unforgettable to kids who saw it air in the 1990’s.

It starts out with a semi-elderly Bruce Wayne doing his usual routine as Batman dealing with another hostage situation. Most of his gallery up to that point in time has died off, are locked up or left up to the viewer to speculate their fates. Things are all business as usual despite the upgrades to the Batsuit, until Bruce Wayne suffers a heart attack when dealing with the vigilantes. During the confrontation, Bruce Wayne picks up one of their handguns he knocked off one of their hands and points it at them.

To those who have read the comics from the various illustrators, Bruce Wayne has on occasion used handguns to fight crime. But this particular scene in the cartoon is the first time Wayne uses an actual gun against criminals. Although he saves the day, Wayne feels that he has betrayed himself for breaking one of his principles not to use actual guns against criminals as Batman.

After his last round, Bruce Wayne shuts down the Bat Cave containing all the things that made him who he was during his prime against his gallery of villains.

Time Skip forward a few decades to a futuristic Gotham.

Wayne Enterprises has recently merged with Powers Technologies creating Wayne-Powers. During the restructure, Derek Powers is made head of the company with the decline of Bruce Wayne’s health. Here we are introduced to Terry McGinnis. Terry is a troublemaker who has had issues with his folks, the authorities and everyone involving him. His day of dealing with other troublemakers, the Jokerz Gang (a cult who worships the original Joker) and the such are all routine.

 

Things change when Terry is chased by the Jokerz by bike all the way to Wayne Mansion where both Terry and an elderly Bruce Wayne fight off the gang like no one’s business.

After the gang flees, Terry helps Wayne back into his mansion after he collapses.

While in the mansion making sure that Wayne was alright, Terry accidently discovers his secret which gets him thrown off the grounds.

When Terry returns home, he learns the Jokerz had killed his dad over a disc containing Derek Power’s plan to sell deadly nerve gas to the Eastern Bloc Nation of Kaznia. This in turn prompts Terry to return to Wayne’s Mansion with the disc to get help from Bruce Wayne.

Wayne is at first very reluctant to help Terry halt this new wave of crime.

But towards the end, aids Terry in halting Power’s malicious plans.

At the end of the Premier, Wayne passes off the physical mantle of Batman to Terry, while Derek Powers becomes the prime antagonist “Blight.” 

Over the course of the rest of the series, Batman Beyond delves deep into the darker side of Bruce Wayne’s psychology, Terry’s adventures as Batman, Terry’s gallery of villains and what becomes of older characters (good and bad) decades after the fact. There is even a few episodes dedicated to an older Superman and the Future Justice League.

Much of the series is darker than any other Batman series in tone. Yet at the turn of the millennium, it was approved “okay” for audiences under 13. If this were to be released in today’s world, it wouldn’t be approved as “child friendly” from the darker undertones to some of its graphic content.

There was even a direct-to-video movie “Return of the Joker.” The movie is all about the Death of the Joker, how he was able to come back, how Terry deals with Wayne’s old arch-nemesis and what becomes of Harley Quinn. The movie is a conclusion to the series, not counting the Justice League Unlimited ending. To many including myself, the Death of the Joker in this movie is still considered the best out of all the other versions that have come before it. 

Batman Beyond despite being nearly two decades old still holds up after all these years. The story of the elderly Bruce Wayne, Terry taking up the mantle of Batman, and the real adventures of the new Batman. Every episode and character that aired were fresh and new to the audience. No rehashes of anything. Even if old characters from Bruce Wayne’s Gallery did come back, we got to learn how their stories ended.

The most significant episode is the one on Mister Freeze. The episode is about Derek Powers going to whatever length to reverse the effects of the chemicals that made him Blight. His researchers pull out Victor Freeze on life support from Cold Storage to begin the procedure. Research is going well, until Freeze’s body began to revert back to his previous cold climate state. When the procedure failed to yield solutions, Powers betrays Freeze for other research. Freeze luckily breaks out of the cell he was held in, retrieves his suit and goes on a rampage against Powers.

Although Victor Freeze dies in the end, what makes the whole episode interesting is that he can still hold his own despite the change of times, tech and characters. Yet despite his final suit being the most powerful from his previous ones, it wasn’t enough to beat Derek Powers as Blight.

There is a lot to say about this series. But I highly recommend watching for anyone who wanted something different than the usual Bruce Wayne affair. It won’t disappoint despite it being from the late-1990’s.

If DC decides to revisit Batman Beyond and revive it, I’d love to see what they do for the 2^nd go around. There is lot of space for development for Batman Beyond especially when DC has been expanding upon it in the comics. I’d love to see what comes of it when that time does come again.

Gun Control, The Greatest Scam in the World

Gun Control is the greatest scam in the world.

There is no such thing as “reasonable or sensible gun legislation.”

It’s a lie.

A deception.

Both a means to nick away the 2^nd Amendment in bits than at once.

The anti-2^nd Amendment Crowd uses “reasonable” and “sensible” to deceive the people to lower their guard that no such plans are in play. But it’s arouse to gradually take away all your weapons in the name of “fighting crime.” If they could take a centimeter, they could take an inch. If they could take an inch, then a foot, then a mile and eventually….everything.

The 1934 National Firearms Act was the start of it all for guns, and since then, the Federal, State and Local governments have been adding onto it with no end in sight. Yesteryear it was all about knives, swords and medieval weapons. Now its all about guns whether they’re gas-operated or not.

Once the guns are gone, the anti-2^nd Amendment Crowd move onto the rest as they usually do as they have in other countries. Whether it be swords, knives or anything else, it’s all the same as seen these past decades in Britain, where your home is no longer your castle.

Never let the camel under the tent.

Flushing them out is no fun game.

We play this Game, and everyone doesn't even know it.

There is a game we all play for which everyone doesn’t even know they are the players of it.

It’s called Real Life.

It has its own rules, pieces, timetables, financial systems and series of outcomes from each decision made.

Except the difference between this one from ones we define as an “actual game” is that there is no pause, reset or undo buttons.

Each move made is permeant and must be made sparingly.

Like computer coding or the U.S. Constitution, you can’t delete anything. All you can do is keep adding more and more onto what already exists, until the next in-line picks up where you left off.

Even when you sleep, the game keeps going on a never-ending cycle.

Players come, players go.

Each decision they make prior to the next affects what new moves are made along the branches.

Even when said decision is made, the other branches off into another path with its own series of outcomes.

How each player plays Real Life is up to them… until they go back in the box.

Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem, the great sequel to Marth's story the world never recieved

Fire Emblem New Mystery of the Emblem (FE12) is the last exclusive Fire Emblem Game not to be released outside of Japan. Like Shadow Dragon was a genuine remake of the very first game for the Famicom with new content, FE12 is a remake of the third game Mystery of the Emblem that was originally released for the Super Famicom with new content.

The general consensus from Nintendo is that the game wouldn’t sell well after a dismal commercial performance of 70,000 copies sold domestically.

While many players and major game review companies outside of Japan would consider Fire Emblem Awakening (FE13) to be the first game to introduce casual mode, a playable avatar, barracks chat, and DLC, that is absolutely false.

All of those features were all originally introduced in FE12.

Sure there was a customizable avatar in Fire Emblem Blazing Sword (FE7), but that character wasn’t a playable unit.

The story of the game picks up a few years after the events of Shadow Dragon (FE1/FE11), where Marth is now King of Altea. Things are going great in the reconstruction effort, but then go bad when a rebellion in Grust breaks out from how Hardin’s Generals are treating the populace.

When it is discovered that Hardin had gone mad on reviving Medeus through the powers of the Dark Orb, Marth embarks on a new quest to uncovering the Mystery of the Shield Emblem.

Instead of doing a complete copy and paste job of FE3 with better graphics, Intelligent Systems went back and retconned some of the story to fit with the new content. The first being the Avatar character and the other accounting for those that appeared in the Archanea Saga.

While FE3 threw you into action the moment a new game was started, FE12 starts with a series of prologue chapters to ease new players on how to play the game. Usually tutorials for Fire Emblem were it’s own separate thing as seen in FE6 and FE10. But for FE12 as they did with FE7, Intelligent Systems made it a part of the main story again in getting to know the Avatar.

Aside from the prologue chapters being the new addition, there are Gaiden Chapters. These chapters are part of a new subplot relating to the Avatar and the new character Katarina. The whole plot has to do mostly with the conspiracy party to assassinate King Marth by Katarina’s party. Upon completing these chapters, you gain Wrys and a FE11 exclusive character before ultimately gaining Katarina herself. Accessing them can be challenging as do all the other games that include them. But if you need the experience, the characters or want to be complete, then these chapters are what have to be completed.

Aside from the main game, the cart also contains a remake of the entire Archanea Saga.

For those not in the know, they were specifically made chapters that were part of the old Super Famicom broadcast service. The only thing that is missing from the remake is the voice acting and the timer to complete each of the chapters.

The saga is a prequel to the events of Shadow Dragon.

Each of the chapters can be played individually in any order you desire. Your score is determined by turns and forced retreats (your characters can’t die for story purposes). There are no special rewards for the main game for completing these chapters unlike recent releases. But these in turn laid down the ground work on how to tell side stories in Fire Emblem without shoehorning it into the main story. If you have played the 2^nd Wave DLC from FE14 or the Deliverance DLC from FE15, the ideas were originally developed here.

The FE12’s DLC, however, bridges the gap between the events of Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem.

It’s three chapters long chronicling what some of the characters did to pass the time between games.

This content was available through the DS E-Shop until May 20^th, 2014 for when Nintendo decided to finally shutdown the servers for the DS.

If Nintendo decides to re-release FE12 in the far off future this shall have to be included in some sort of definitive edition.

If you want to play these chapters now, you’ll need to do it through emulation and flash hacks, until then.

In conclusion, I believe that FE12 would have been a smash hit outside of Japan.

The game improved off of what was introduced from Shadow Dragon’s engine, made it a bit more accessible to new players, and allowed people to wrap up rest of Marth’s story, while setting the stage for FE13. Intelligent Systems did go above and beyond with this game in figuring out in improving on how to retcon an older game, while staying true to the original source content. How they did it for this game was well executed without having any new addition feeling shoehorned in.

For being a remake of FE3, this was far better than the original. If this had been released outside of Japan the sale numbers would have been better than not. But being that it was released toward the end of the DS’s life cycle combined with poor sales in Japan, ultimately led to it not being released internationally.

All the lessons learned from this game would carry over into future titles with DLC stories and Shadows of Valentia (FE15).