I'm Anthony Sitko from Capes on the Couch, a show that examines the mental health issues of comic book characters. Part of the Gun and Geek Network. Just like the show you're checking out now, shows on the network are individually owned and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other stupendously geeky shows@gunnageeknetwork.com and welcome to play Comics, where once again, we are here looking at a video game based on a comic property and how well it represents that source material. And today we're getting a little bit weird because we're looking at GI Joe. And does that work? Does it not work? Am I cheating way too much? There's only one way to find out, and I've brought Serpimat here on. You probably know him online that way to try to explain to me GI Joe, is this gonna work? So, Matt, how are you today?
I'm doing good, man. How are you?
I am so excited for this. This has been the most frustrating and most, I think, fun for me, all at the same time. Bit of research that I've had to do because as we kind of started to talk before recorded and as I alluded to with the intro here, GI Joe history gets weird. And there's a really weird, stretchy reason why we're talking about it today, but most of that is because you said you wanted to. And so I just have to know, what is it that made a GI Joe game jump into your head and say, hey, I want to do that, even though it's not really on your list of things.
So for me, when it comes down to GI Joe and the games, because I love what you've done and what really made me think about this is when you had the Terminator game. I think it was Terminator RoboCop, and like, okay, we might can pitch some GI Joe to Chris and see what he thinks. So with GI Joe, I never read a ton of the comics growing up, even though it's known big time for being comics. For me, it was about the cartoon. And I remember seeing this game on the shelves at the grocery store when we would go and you could rent games from grocery stores way back in the day. And I just remember this game being so difficult, but it was actually really good. Just the gameplay, the characters on it were awesome. And for me, when it comes down to GI Joe, it's all about the different characters, all about the different personalities that really make it something that anyone can get into, no matter who they are. And I thought that's kind of Why I thought it would be cool to explore this game with you.
I kind of did this with Transformers too. You've had comics and cartoons coming out all together, and when you have the game based on those, it's really hard to see is it based on the comic or is it based on the cartoon? GI Joe throws that wrench in there of there's the 60s and 70s 12 inch action figures, which are just a doll with more letters in their name. And even before that though, you had G.I. joe comics. One of the first things that had the GI Joe name on there. And that's what was so frustrating for me, because I knew that these comics existed, but I. I didn't know what kind of connection there was. And every time I was trying to look up GI Joe, old comics, origin comics, original things, I would get the 1982 stuff written by Larry Hama all day long or character origins. I would find absolutely nothing about these 40s comics unless I was specifically looking for 40s comics.
Yeah. When it comes to digging deep into the comics of G.I. joe, if you go to look at like the 40s stuff, the 60s doll action figure lines, what this game is really based on and what G.I. joe has really become is based on those 82 comics by what Larry Hama did. And when it comes to that, it's kind of changed throughout time too. It started a little bit as a way to push a toy line, make some sales. And the more Larry seemed to work with the line and develop the characters, you could see there were a few characters he loved more than others. And as a creative person, that's how things are going to be. And people kind of drift towards their favorites. But then you have little minor characters that make people happy. And that's where a lot of my favorites are. So whenever Larry picks them back up and drops them in a story, it kind of brightens your day. But the overall story is what makes people stick around for GI Joe.
I'm going to put a little button and a bow on the 1940s stuff and what came after that. In the 50s and 60s, they're not really related much at all besides the GI Joe name, government issue Joe. It's a thing that exists. It's the reason again, why GI Joe was named that way. For the toys and then for the comics and the animated series that you fell in love with. It's a thing that, I mean, it just. It is what it is. Like you have a common name going throughout and there's probably some kind of nostalgic, okay, I'm going to keep this thing going from creators as they're going through, but there's not really a through line to the story. And really, until the Animated Series and the comics that we know of that started in the 80s, there's not really much of a story anyway.
No, not really. With those, it was basically, here's an action figure. Go and play out your stories. See, build them how you want. They would have all the little accessory packs and the clothes and the different weapons. And now we're gonna make a bear. And now he's Adventure Joe and you have all the little adventure team stuff. And they kind of revamped that a little bit when they started making the smaller action figures. And with Larry giving us the comics and Sunbow giving us the cartoons, it started branching off into two different, entirely separate worlds. And even though the story was there, unlike with the GI Joe dolls and 12 inch figures, now we had something to kind of base our imagination play on and to build out from that, we had established characters.
So which characters was it for you that really jumped out from the Animated Series? So, from the Animated Series, for me, my favorite character didn't appear till 86, but before that, I loved Flint, I loved Lady J, Shipwreck, all those who were a lot of fun. But the more people see me online, the poor people know that I kind of enjoy the villains most of all. So Cobra Commander was always great, but for me, my number one character will always be Serpentor, hence my name.
I'm shocked. Like, are you going to throw a snake at me now? I don't know if we can continue this. I don't have any handy right now. They're actually waiting to be fed, so you're safe for the time being. I'll just put it that way. Okay, well, I will just make sure that I can see you on camera the whole time, and then I'll know that I'm safe, because I'm just going to pretend they're in another room, even if they're not.
That. That seems fair. That seems fair. So when it comes to Serpentor, though, for me, I enjoyed him in the cartoon because he was something different. You get, like, the creation of, like, the world's evil leaders and their DNA. So it started bringing in the science fiction aspect of it, which, when we get to the game, you will see the sci fi aspects a little bit with that. And for me, that's, I think, why I enjoyed the cartoon a little more than the comic initially. Like, I love the comics now, but as a Kid coming off of Star wars and Transformers and he, man, give me the fantastical stuff. Give me something that I'm not just going to see walking down the street. And Serpentor was definitely that.
Doing research for this, seeing that it jumped into more of that sci fi thing. Like, I knew that GI Joe crossed over with Transformers, but like anything could cross over with Transformers and it would be cool. So that didn't, that wasn't convincing me to go check it out. But seeing that they jump into more of a sci fi thing in the animated series especially is making me really want to go back and watch it. Because I have always seen GI Joe and just thought, all right, military toys. My dad's in the Air Force. Like I've kind of got a lot of military toys. I don't need another set of them. Especially one that's going to make me want to go out and buy 5,000 different figures.
Yeah, they're, they're good at that. And I'm not going to say that once you've bought a few, you can stop. Because I have quite a few of the vintage three and three quarter ones. And I tend to keep buying the new 6 inch ones as well, because in my brain I'm like, that's how I saw them as a kid. Now I have them that way. But the science fiction aspect of it is what really sets the cartoon apart. And if you like that sci fi stuff, I would tell you to go check it out. But I caution you, it is still an 80s cartoon and can be very cheesy at times. But if you grew up on that stuff, you kind of have a love for it.
Luckily for me, I was born in 86, so I grew up on those and I can handle that kind of cheesiness, even though my body maybe has recently decided it does not like lactose anymore.
Unfortunately, our body does like to play tricks like that on us as we get older. But we can always go back to those great days of watching those cartoons and enjoying them. So what I would tell you is definitely track them down. A lot of them are on YouTube now. I think there's like an official GI Joe channel. Put them on in the background, listen to them, but really start paying attention once you get to 1986 and Arise, Serpentor, Arise, that five part miniseries, greatest character of all time. But I may be the only person that ever tells you that. But, but you can take my word for it.
How much have you kept up with watching things since that original kind of original animated series ended? Because I know it Had a different production team pick up stuff for the back half. Ish of stuff.
I have not watched all of the DIC episodes. Sunbow did the large portion, then Deke picked up the. And that's kind of what this game was based around. But what they did to my boy in the first little episode of it, I was out on them at that point. But I've seen all the other animated series. I've seen all the movies. I still read the comics to this day. GI Joe is kind of one of my hobbies that if I dip out of, it's going to pull me back. My love for it was always there as a kid because it's something I could share with my cousins. It was something I shared with my friends when we started getting online and finding the evils of ebay and going, ooh, you can buy old figures again. And it was even to the point where I met my wife in an online GI Joe chat room. And we've been married now over 20 years, so GI Joe's given me a lot, so I'm not going to talk too bad about it.
How much is your wife enabling this bad habit of yours? I'm not going to say she's enabling it, but she's not stopping it, so I'll put it that way. Your wife sounds good. You should probably keep her, because when you have somebody like that that lets you continue to hold on to the things that you love, those kind of people are just very important.
Oh, 100%. That's what I always try to tell people. If you find someone who does not give you crap and doesn't make you want to change yourself and accept you and your hobbies. Life is so much easier at that point, especially as we get older. We need things that bring us joy, and if we have loved ones that can help that, that's a huge win. So, I mean, legitimately. We've got pictures taken with Larry Hama a few times. We both got sketches of our favorite characters from him at conventions. Probably the first thing I ever bought for her before I moved here. I actually bought her her favorite GI Joe vehicle and character still in the box and sent it to her. So, yeah, she's a keeper.
I do have to know, though, are you going to storm out of there knowing that they put one of the recent G.I. joe comics in my pull box at the comic store just because it was a David Nakayama cover and I put it back? No, because people like what they like. I'm not gonna judge you for that now. I might wanna know which issue it was because then I could tell you. Maybe you should go back and pick it up.
One of the earlier ones, maybe. Number one of. I don't know if it's the. If it's current, but it's. If it's not current, it's very, very recent runs. So do you remember if it was by Skybound? If it's in the Energon universe? Does that ring a bell? Oh, I have no idea. They gave it to me because it was a pretty David Nakayama cover.
Okay, I'd have to see the COVID The artist's name doesn't ring a bell to me. But if you like Transformers, I definitely recommend checking out the new Energon universe because they're blending GI Joe and Transformers without necessarily cramming them together. So they all play in a shared universe really well. And then Larry Hama's classic comic is still going on its own, so you have something new for people and enjoy and something that people who love the classic and want to read that is still continuing at 300 plus issues.
Well, on that note, we're going to try to wrap our heads around all kinds of how does this still exist? Will I drop some promos for a few other shows? Hey, play comics Podcast. What makes a blind date even more awkward? Zombies, of course. If you want a comic with horror. Romance, great merch, laughs, and a ton. Of action, then I hope you back my Zombie Date Night 2 Kickstarter campaign. There's only a couple days left and. We need your help. Prices start at just $3 and you.
Know that's cheaper than eggs. Want a comic with some bite? Swipe right on the Kickstarter for Zombie Date Night. Do you like the Transformers? Yes. Do you like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Do you like IDW Comics and comic book podcasts? Then come check out Ninjas and Bots. Each week we look at an issue. Of Transformers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from their IDW Comics incarnation. We drop episodes every Saturday morning, just like the cartoons we loved as a kid.
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Those are some great things to check out, but first, let's finish up here. So Matt, what we're here really to look at is this NES game from why didn't I write down the year 1991? Yeah, this 91 NES game that I totally didn't forget the year for. Put out on the regular Nintendo, developed by Kid and published by Taxon usa. It's a run and gun. I mean, it's what me from like four weeks ago would have expected fully out of a GI Joe game. You're going through and you're shooting people and punching people and playing an NES game with GI Joe. But it's also really good and fun.
What I will say is, while it is a run and gun type game, there's a little more to it than your typical Contra type game. You have five, eventually six different characters that you can choose from. They all have different weapons. Yeah, they all melee. Yeah, they can all throw grenades, but they actually have stats like in an rpg. So one guy has stronger physical attacks. One guy has the strongest gun attacks. One guy has the best jumping. So you really have to, like, pick your team. But it does fall into the trap of being Nintendo Hard. And if you die, you will regret it because everything you've built up goes away.
Nintendo Hard is the best and worst kind of hard. I know you were telling me that you were playing this with some kind of cheat codes going on. I was trying to play this without them because I am just stubborn with that kind of thing. And I was mad at my controller enough for disconnecting from the computer every five minutes, but trying to play this. I am so out of practice with regular Nintendo games. Like, newer stuff has made me soft.
You know, I was kind of thinking the same thing. Luckily for me, with the older games, like Nintendo Super Nintendo, once the game Genie came out, all bets were off. I would plug a game into the game genie, rent it for a weekend and beat it. And be happy now, because we have achievements in new games and those achievements don't pop. You don't get the little token of playing the game if you cheat. I don't do that anymore. But, man, like you were saying, yeah, the new games have made me kind of soft because I miss having a map screen. I miss being able to save in multiple places. I was playing it on an emulator, and about two thirds of the way through, I finally remembered, oh, I can save State. Oh, I didn't have to keep dying. Even with infinite health, infinite ammo, infinite everything. Because I Mistimed Jumps.
The basic plot of the game. You've got Duke, Snake Eyes, Blizzard, Captain, Gridiron, and Rock and Roll, getting their orders and mission things from General Hawke. What's really cool with this one is that in the first five levels, you have one of those five main characters has to be on your team. They're the team leader for that mission, and you get to pick two of your other fellow Joes to be on the team with you. So you've got that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles style, change characters wherever you want thing going on, which is great, but I really hope you pick the right people for that level, because otherwise it's really going to suck for you.
Yeah. If. If you have weaker guns and you need that ranged attack, or you really need to jump a little higher and you don't have Snake Eyes, you might be out of luck. Luckily, there are little things like vehicles from time to time, but for vehicles, they're surprisingly weak. And what surprises me is that you're taking vehicles from Cobra, which I guess makes sense. You're going in, trying to infiltrate everything, but, you know, it's just kind of weird that you don't have your own.
You know, the more you read the comics and watch the cartoons, that's. That's not going to sound too out of the ordinary for you, because I don't know how deep and nerdy you want me to get into this, but when you start looking at the character selection, the Duke, especially if you look in the instruction manual, he's Tiger Force Duke, which is a little sub team. And with that, they've basically taken Cobra's vehicles and repainted them. Yeah. To basically sell the same toy again to us. Yes, we all fell for it. Yes, we still bought it. But with this, you can just say, okay, that's the vehicles they commandeered from Cobra, and now they know how to use them, and they'll take them away. So when you're dropping in, especially since you're just a team of three, if they could drop in with Joe vehicles, that would be nice, but the gains levels would be over pretty quick if you didn't have to track those down.
From my understanding, these are not necessarily the most loved characters at the time, though.
Yeah. When we talk about, like, the actual Joe characters themselves, what confused me was, you know, you have Duke, you have Snake Eyes, you have Rock and Roll, you have General Hawk. Those are kind of big names. People love them. Like, they can't do a GI Joe game without including Snake Eyes. It would not sell. Even though he's not my favorite. I get it. But then you have Blizzard, you got to have, like, the Token Snow Guy. And then you have Captain Gridiron. Okay. They could have used a couple other people who were more well known, but it all kind of goes back to introduce the new toy that's coming out. Because when this game came out around 91, I looked it up, and Captain Gridiron was from 90, so he was kind of still on the shelves at the time. And Blizzard, there were two or three other snow guys that could have played that role. And as awful as Blizzard's stats were, it would have been better to have anyone else play that role and change the stats just a little bit.
And it's an NES game, so if you have an NES game without a snow level, then what are you even doing? That's very true. What I was thankful for on the snow levels, that at least it wasn't slippery snow levels. But they did have the backup version of. Now you have the levels with the rotating traction levels and platforms. Oh, those are almost as bad. I hate those. They're horrible. Those are the ones I get my wife to come play for me.
Yeah, with. With those. The problem is, like, you look at, you're like, okay, it's moving that way and you jump and you're like, wait, no, which way do I move? And if you land on the edge and you're moving the wrong way, time to start over, go back to square one. Looking at the villains that are in here, though, how did they do picking those out?
So when we're looking at the villains of this game, to me, if we're breaking down the game itself, to me, I love the sprite selection in this game. The art for this game is, like, right at the cusp of when the NES was transitioning to the Super Nintendo. So they had really owned their skills of crafting these character pixels. And when you look at it like the villains were pretty great. You have Cobra Commander, obviously, but then they kind of had a wild mix of, like, you have Raptor, you have Destro, you have Voltar, you have Road Pig. And then they have a ton of little grunts like Vipers and Hydro Vipers, televipers. But then they did something I was not expecting, that I don't think I ever recognized as a kid because renting this game. So how many games did you rent as a kid?
A lot. But a lot of them were the same one that I had already rented, so maybe not a lot.
So. So that's kind of how it was for me too, because we didn't own a lot of games. A lot of it was rental games. So if I rented a game and it was too hard, I did not rent it again because I wanted something I would enjoy. This game I rented maybe once or twice. Realized this is way too hard for me. I do not have the skill level. I did not have the game Genie codes at the time that it was there. So I never got to see the Kerber LA Troopers. I never got to see Globulus, which are some of my favorite characters, which are really, really deep in the science fiction portion of GI Joe, which a lot of people do not appreciate at all. So that's what I was talking about when some of the most hated characters show up in this game. But it made me so happy to see them until I struggled on that level and figured out, how do I do this? What is happening here?
Your basic mission throughout the entire thing is, hey, Cobra's doing a thing. Stop them. I mean, yeah, I really, really overgeneralized it there. But also, I'm not wrong at all.
I don't think you're overgeneralizing it. I think the only thing you could do to add to make that statement more correct is like, Cobra's doing a thing in this location. Now Cobra's doing a thing in this location. Okay, you've beat the first mini boss in the level. Second mission. Hey, you're in the Cobra base. Better go set some bombs and blow them up. Did you do it in time? Good. Now go fight the final boss. And you get a nice little cutscene. And now go to the desert, Go to the snow, Go to the city, go to the sewers. It's very platform of its days, and it does what it needed to do.
Looking at all of these, it really makes me have a lot of nostalgia for those older games where it was, they would have to go in, make their game. And don't ask me how I know this, but back around 2000, before coding could make things really, really small. You could definitely fit a regular Nintendo emulator and a few games on a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk. That's crazy talk. And no one would ever do such a thing at all, ever.
But I just love the way that you can go in here and you have your game. Nobody at the time is giving the developers any kind of crap for your game is too simple. It's. I mean, it's a game like, who cares? Half the people aren't even really reading the manual. They're just looking in it to see if there's a map real quick, see who their characters are, because they're driving home and they want to see all who's in it before they get to play it. You know, we just grabbed the games and we went and we played them. And if the game didn't tell you in the game anything that was important, then you know Then you go check the manual. If you get lost, see if there's Zelda and it gives you a map or something. But I just really appreciate these older games like this for getting in, doing their thing and being done.
Yeah, and going back to like looking things up in the manual. If you rented them, there was a pretty good chance you weren't going to get the manual with them to know what to do. So if you struggle, if you get stuck, you're either gonna keep beating your head against that same wall or you're gonna do something stupid like calling the Nintendo of America hotline and try to get help through a part of a game. Nobody would ever do that. I. I'm. No, I didn't call for this game, but I'm not gonna say I didn't call for another game after I got my parents permission first. So there were ways. But yeah, games were a lot simpler back in the day. But I think that was a good thing because when you look at things like Contra, you look at the old sports games, you look at the old wrestling games, it was simple, you had fewer buttons, so they had to make something interesting because they know you could bypass their game easily because there were a ton of options out there. So they had to do something to keep you coming back and being okay with that. Because the reviews were there. But also word of your friends on the playground would go a long way to what you asked for for your birthday. What'd you ask for for Christmas? Would you get it? Did enough people agree that it was worth doing? So the simple games were good, but you had to have a little bit of toughness in them, so it just wasn't a cakewalk all the time.
And looking at this one, you've got to leg up over a bunch of the other run and gun type games because, yeah, you have that opening run and gun level, but then you have that second part of the level where you, like you said you're going around dropping the bombs and stuff, so there's a different kind of gameplay. And then you have the boss level, which is a little shorter bit of stuff, but you're going to fight the big boss, so that's okay. It's not like you're playing Contra with a GI Joe skin, you're playing Contra, but combined with this other thing, and then combined with this other third thing.
I would say the more I think about it, it's almost like Contra combined with Mega man, but instead of swapping weapons or earning weapons from a boss, you are swapping team members with different weapon styles. And then you just watch the boss's pattern like you do in Mega man, until you finally figure it out. And then you know when to jump, you know when to dodge, you know when to fire your gun or throw a grenade.
And really, I think that is what really gets into everything, is that this game is such a simple premise. And then you realize, no, there's a lot more to this. Just like for me, I was thinking, okay, GI Joe, it's military guys going, having a military adventures and then, oh crap, there is a lot more to this.
Yeah, that's. That's the one thing about GI Joe you asked like you may have been asking rhetorically, like after all these years, how can people still be doing this? Well, because they revamp it so many times. You've got so many little things. So yeah, they're still doing this because strange little things like this. And there's even been like a new game recently, which I haven't got a chance to play yet, but I really want to. And there's another game coming out after that that's a different style. So the one good thing with GI Joe is it'll find a way to keep reinventing itself and trying to pull in new people. Just people need to give it a chance.
So as we start to wrap things up, what is it that this game you feel like are the highlights for what it gets right about GI Joe?
So I would say the highlights and what it really gets right about GI Joe is the team aspect of it. You can obviously run through with one person, especially if you're using cheat codes, and not worry about anything. But if you're legitimately playing this without cheat codes, you need to keep your teammates safe. You need to level everybody up, make sure their weapons are better, make sure their health is better. So it really bolsters that team feeling of GI Joe, of what people expect when they think about that. It also gets the wackiness of the villains correct. Because I don't want to give spoilers for like an almost 30 plus year old game, but when you get to some of the fights, you're going to have vultures flying around, you're going to have falcons flying around at you, chips that come up out of nowhere, missiles. You have Cobra Commander in the final boss. That he might turn you into a little rat or a bug or whatever it was, I don't remember, but makes for a really difficult gameplay. But it also engages you in the way that kind of puts you as a member of the Joe team, which is really cool for a lot of people.
And I just love how you're saying that about Cobra Commander in the last boss fight there, and it's not even phasing me anymore. Yeah, of course, you know, turn you into a little thing, and it just doesn't matter. Like, just the overall craziness of everything is just really jumping out at me. But what do you think, if anything really, does this get wrong? Outside of maybe this character should have been included instead of one of the ones that was in there.
So really wrong. The good thing about GI Joe is it's so many things to so many people. I would say there's not a ton that this game actually gets wrong, because you can tie it into the toy line or you can tie it into the comic, you can tie it into the cartoon. You can say it's part of everything. So if you want to get super nitpicky, maybe it doesn't tie to one world alone. And some people may not like that because they don't know where to shoot shoehorn it in. But the one thing that does annoy me a little bit is it gets the strength of the vehicles wrong. Give me more than three or four hits with a vehicle. Please keep. Keep our characters safe.
Yeah, vehicles are probably, like, the only thing I can really speak to, because when I think of GI Joe, not only do I think of the actual people in there, I think of a giant aircraft carrier or a helicopter or a tank or, you know, whatever kind of vehicle. And I wish there would have been more of those in here.
Yeah, I definitely agree. They did fit in a lot of the Cobra vehicles as bosses, mini bosses, things like that. But like you said, there was really a lack of GI Joe vehicles. You would see them fly in and drop you off at the start of the mission or pick you up at the end of the mission. If there was a way that you could maybe call a button to call in an airstrike or press a button to have a crate dropped, that would go, okay, now you've got the GI Joe Ram, the motorcycle that you can take and drive through this level, or any kind of little Skyhawk to fly around instead of the little Cobra Fang, those kind of options would have been great. But I don't know if that's where the game system, the coding and everything was at that time.
If you had somebody besides me that you thought was interested being into G.I. joe, would you give them this game as part of a primer course to try to make that happen?
As much as I Enjoy it. And as much as I enjoy GI Joe, I would almost say no, just because of how hard and unforgiving this game can be. And if I want someone to be interested in something, I want them to enjoy it and dig into it, where if they don't know the property, they may get so irritated by dying over and over again that they're just going to shut out everything and not look at it again.
Yeah, that's the main thing for me. Like, I mean, I'll be perfectly honest with everybody. I never got out of that very first opening stage because I was just horrible. And I am legitimately going to blame my controller. And the only reason I can do that without making myself throw up is because it was actually disconnecting from the control computer. So I do have some legitimacy there. But, I mean, it was still really hard. And, you know, maybe if the first level had been more of a cakewalk, and so you get yourself hooked into it and then you get into the second level and it jumps up to that hard. That makes. That would make me a lot more likely to recommend this one. But from everything you've told me here. Yeah. If you've got somebody who, you know, can get past the fact that this game is just ridiculous, then give that kind of person this game. But maybe not somebody who isn't going to appreciate Nintendo Hard for what it is.
Yeah. And what I'll say is, you talk about if the first level was a cakewalk compared to the other levels. The first level is a cakewalk because it gets absurd. I do want to check out the new Wrath of Cobra game that came out. It looks like something that I might give to people as a primer, but I need to grab it and play it, which, I don't know. I haven't done it yet, but I really need to.
And finally, if you were going to get to the end of the game and then Cobra Commander rips his helmet off and it's been a Muppet this whole time, which Muppet do you think is being that evil little piece of crap just tormenting you throughout this entire game? So if we're talking Cobra Commander, when you say Muppets, am I kind of locked into just Muppets, or can I do, like, Sesame street type characters, too?
Oh, you can definitely do them. I say Muppet because if you need that restriction, then you have it. But if you want, the whole world, have at it. So for me, just for the sheer absurdity of it, I can 100% see Oscar the Grouch being Cobra Commander at the end of this, on that little platform, riding up and down, shooting things at you, trying to stay out of the way.
Okay. Because that's exactly who I was thinking, too, honestly. And part of it is because Oscar is very possibly my favorite. There's, like, five of them that I can't decide between, so they all just kind of rotate around there. But Oscar at the end of there, just like, I'm tired of everybody's crap. Let me take care of this. Let me just fix everything myself, because you're all worthless, and I'm gonna get this done.
Yeah, I. I can kind of 100% see that, too. And for me, it was like, he's gonna be in the garbage can. He'll be hidden behind the face mask, just like Cobra Commander would be. But when he pops out, it's time for business, and you better watch out. The only other one that I can think of that would really be good that's just jumping out at me is specifically Bupit's show, Kermit, because it's after a show, and he's just so annoyed at everybody that he's going to just take them all out.
I could see that kind of runs onto this, the scene. Arms failing, freaking out. Like someone gunned down Piggy. It's over. I've had it with these Joes. Get them out of here. Matt, it has been great talking to you about all of this. If people want to hear more from you, where else can they find you? Around the Internet.
So you can find me around the Internet. Basically, I'm on Blue Sky. You can look me up at Serpimat. And what I'm doing a lot there is I kind of made a New Year's resolution to take a new toy picture every day. And today was day 77 or 78. So going strong with that. There's some GI Joe pics in there. Transformers, a little bit of everything. So that's kind of where my love is. And you'll see comic stuff posted there. And I do pop up from time to time on a few podcasts. I haven't taken the plunge and made my own yet. We'll see what happens one day, though.
What's stopping you? You need to do it. What's stopping me is time and too many hobbies. That's the problem. I don't know anything about that at all. But we will definitely have links down in the show notes to your Blue sky account, because clicking links is so much easier than trying to remember how to spell things. I definitely agree with that, because granted, Serpimat's not complicated, but the way the Blue sky links look, they do get complicated.
And as always, the best place to find me is over on playcomics.com where you can find links to all the social media things, especially Blue sky, because that's pretty much where I've decided to settle to be in. Although I've been getting tagged in a bunch of stuff on Mastodon lately. I don't know, we'll figure it out. There's links over there. Go look at the links. They're great because then they can be updated and this audio will never be updated because I'm too lazy to do that. If you want to be on the show yourself, then there's a link down in the show notes to a list of things I'm looking to get booked soonest. That list is always evolving, so keep your eyes on that. And as I add things, you can jump in and say, hey, Chris, I want to be on for that episode. And if you really want to, you can be added to a newsletter up there where you'll get early access to things that are on there. Because you'll know I'll send out the newsletter that I'm adding a bunch of stuff. You know, I'm kind of using early access to bribe a few people anyway. So, yeah, let's add that on there too. If you're paying enough attention, then you can get early access to what I'm looking to get booked. Let's do that. But mostly, you know, it's a link down in the show notes. It's what I'm looking to get booked the soonest. Just roll with it. Trust me, it works. If you want to support the show, then you can be like Dan McMahon and own a lit class and give the show money via Patreon. Um, I really need to get better at posting these episodes earlier. And I really need to get better about doing, like, monthly update videos, which I'm probably going to go record one right after I finish putting this episode together. But yeah, you know, it's a thing because making a podcast costs money. Or you can always just tell people about the show and get more people to listen to it and stuff. That's great. Or just, you know, come tell me that you enjoyed something. Part of being a podcast maker person is being a slight bit of a narcissist. So yeah, you know, just come tell me that you liked it because that'll just make my heart melt with happy and all those other fun things that the Grinch had happen. Don't forget the Play Comics is a part of the Gunageek.com network, home to such wonderful shows as Legends of Shield where right now we are continuing to look at Daredevil. It's just been a great ride so far and I can't wait to see how it ends. If you want to hear something else that I'm working on, then Frequent guests of the show, Karen to Martin and I are putting together a show called Sugar Spite and Everything Is Fine, where we're looking at all of that media we watched and otherwise consumed when we were children, whether it was made for kids or not. Took the lessons that we learned from there and you know, really started to wonder, why don't those lessons really apply when you're an adult? And why are they suddenly a bad thing? So listen as we take a dive into that, because that's going to be fun. We're looking at a mid April launch there, which somehow got to be this month. I have no idea how that happened. But yeah, check that out. There will be a link somewhere when a leak is actually worth sharing, because right now it's all just planning and stuff we haven't released yet. If you like the music that I'm really talking on top of right now, head over to BackingTrack GG, check out all the great music they have over there and maybe grab some of it for your own project. I mean, that is a lot of why it exists anyway, so go use it. It's fun. But preferably not this one because I'm selfish and I want it to only be for me. Most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics, and go find yourself a new favorite character.