The Invincible Iron Man with Zach Tonack

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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. Today I'm super excited because we're getting to look at a character that we haven't really gotten to look at in too much depth previously, and I have Zach Tonak here to help me look at Iron man in the 2002 game the invincible Iron Man. Zach, how are you today?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm just excited to get to talk about Iron man before the movies came out. So, like, there's no MCU influence on this game. It's all just straight up Iron man, and I haven't gotten to do that yet, which I think is pretty cool.

Yeah, it's great. But I still want to bring up MCU stuff because that's a lot of my favorite reference for Iron man because I know a lot about that, like, background of that and how they didn't actually want to do Iron man right away, but they had no choice, basically, in 2008, because that's all they had rights for, basically, was Iron man and Hulk.

I mean, that really leads us into kind of what was going on with Iron man in those early two thousands anyway, because that's something that I'm not too familiar with outside of some crossover he had with other characters.

I think Iron armor Wars was late eighties, early nineties. I don't really think there was a big Iron man story in the two thousands. I mean, he'd just come off of, I want to say hero's return just happened where he was shoved into the alternate universe. Uh, I, this is pre, before he became director of S H I E l D because of Civil War. I know that. Which, that was a weird time when they just, alright, Tony, you're director of S H I e l D now. Cause, well, Cap's in jail, so, or I think it was dead, actually. But that was a strange time.

Iron man is kind of built on strange times. Anyway, he's one of those characters whose origin just keeps getting updated as we get further into the existence of the world.

That's the problem with Stan Lee directly. Like, all right, this is the Vietnam war. He's a weapons guy. Here's a weapons demo.

It's just kind of weird to me because for some reason, Captain America can always be world War two. You can keep so many other people tied to a specific incident in history, but Iron man just keeps getting updated so that he is continually somewhere in the 30 year old range.

Well, like, Spider Man's perpetually early twenties now, Cap, it makes sense because he was trapped in ice for so many years, you just extend the period he was on ice. Magneto, they had him de age into a baby. So you can still keep him tied to the holocaust. Uh, I mean, those are the two big ones, I think, tied to specific events. Wolver. Well, Wolverine, but Wolverine's immortal. He kind of stopped aging to a point, so don't really have to worry about that. But yeah, so many other characters. Hunter Shur has to keep having his origin shifted. Like, what war he was in Iron man. What war he got the shrapnel in his chest with. It is weird. But as the thing about Marvel sliding timescale is, it ends up being all this stuff that just happened was like, oh, that was all one week. One week. Like, you'll notice it's like, I read early fantastic four. And to a point I always mention, oh, this was two weeks ago or whatever, and it's like, huh, that issue that came out three months ago was two weeks ago. Alright, guess that means now it's a day ago with the sliding timescale.

So what is it that really draws you to Iron man as a character?

One of the things is that he doesn't have powers. I like characters that are either. They go through a physical transformation. They have to, they can't hide their early. So many of the early years of Iron man. He's literally take off the sleeves of the armor, the helmet, the pants, and he's just wearing the chest piece under his suit. And like, like, I'm reading tales of suspense 40 and he's like, I gotta go plug in. So he gets a wall outlet plug and plugs it into the armor and just sits there letting the armor charge. Like, I just, I like characters like that where they don't like, you can, you can have stakes by, like, oh, shit, I'm out of charge on this armor blast or whatever. Like, it's always better than, like, superman. Well, I love Superman. I feel like I could be Tony Stark if I ever get the money to build a cool suit of armor and rocket powered skates and whatnot. Like, he's just in that realm of, oh, my dad and I talk about this all the time, but Marvel characters especially are, oh, I'm one accident away from being that character. That's why I like most of the Marvel characters more than the DC characters. Like, I love daredevil. It's just like I'm one accident away from being daredevil. That's kind of why I like the Marvel characters. But Iron man, sorry if I get rambly.

That's why I like having guests on because every single one is going to go start rambling in a direction that I just can't do myself. And getting that other viewpoint, I think is probably one of the coolest aspects of doing a show like this. So one of the cool things with Iron man two is just the enemies that he has going after him are a pretty wide range of things. You've got people going after him because of the tech. You've got people going after him because he just happens to be the person who messed up their plans. It's a nice mix of like tech backed people and more traditional superhero or superpower backed people. And I don't see too many people with this kind of rogues gallery in other comics.

Yeah, I mean, Spider man and daredevil handle street level stuff. The Fantastic Four is very cosmic. The X Men is magneto apocalypse, evil mutants in general, prejudice. I mean, Iron man one week, oh, it's aim and they want to steal my armor the next, oh, now I gotta go fight Mandarin in China. Now I'm fighting Blizzard for some reason. And oh, I'm foiling crimson dynamo this week because I stumbled upon his plan. Alright, it's great because you can do a story like armor wars where he's alright, I gotta keep people from getting my tech. But then it's like then you can do a big superhero thing, then you can have him fight Doctor doom. And it's because Doom wants his tech to help his magic. Yeah, there's not many other superheroes that do that. I mean, Superman kind of comes close, but Superman's invulnerable. So you kind of gotta right around that.

And somehow Iron man also keeps getting to be the leader of a bunch of groups that he's in, which I think coming from somebody who is pretty much out mostly for himself, somebody who developed all of his powers basically by himself. Being able to work on a team like that was a nice surprise for me.

Yeah, it especially if you really. The funny thing though is they don't really have like early Avengers. They don't really have a strong lead they rotate whoever's chair, then they get, like, cap as leader, and then they just kind of shift around. But, yeah, you're right. He is very good at being a leader when he's like, I'm all about me. I'm gonna hijack this sound system to play my favorite rock song as I come in and land and blast you. It is refreshing that a narcissist can actually be a leader.

And as we alluded to before, Iron man was one of Marvel's, let's call him C or D list characters, probably going into the MCU. So they'd already sold off rights to a lot of their big hitters. And so just having somebody with the history of Iron Man, I think, you know, it's cool because there's a bunch of history there. But I guess they thought it wasn't enough for somebody else to want to buy the rights, but it was enough to be the tentpole of what became the MCU as we know it today.

Well, funny enough about that, it wasn't supposed to be Iron man to be the tentpole movie. They actually didn't expect the Iron man movie to do well. That's why they didn't advertise it as heavily as the incredible Hulk movie, because people already had the recognition of the tv show. They're like, oh, the Hulk movie is going to be much more successful. That's why they were okay with Robert Downey Junior getting cast as Tony Stark, not having a script. So they ad lib a bunch of dialogue. Like, a lot of their choices in the first Iron man movie are because they didn't have as much. Like, they didn't think it'd be successful. So, like, all right, we're gonna do this Iron man movie, but here's where we're really gonna make the money. A giant green monster.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I really like what happened with the Iron man movie and stuff, but Hulk's my boy.

I'm also a big Hulk fan. Hulk is like, in terms of ranking Marvel characters, probably goes daredevil, the thing from the Fantastic Four, then the Hulk, in that order.

I mean, for me, it's no surprise to anybody who listens to the show that my number one far and away is Ghost Spider. But Hulk is right there in that next tier. But, you know, next tier, because Ghost Spider is all by herself, because that's how much I love her. But I don't know anybody who would have said that Iron man was their favorite before the MCU came out.

You're right, because I will go online and I see people say Iron man was a. You'll get on Reddit and people arguing Iron man wasn't a CEO. Yes, he was. To the public at large. If you ask the public, name three Marvel superheroes before 2008, they probably would have gone Spider man, the Hulk, and one of the X Men, probably Wolverine. Cause that's who Marvel's big three characters were at the time. Like, they had Marvel themed popsicles, and it was Hulk, Spider man, and Wolverine. Nowadays you go and it's Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and Silver Hulk. But now they do four because they have four big tentpole characters now.

Oh, we're gonna go try to find some other Marvel themed foods to munch on while I drop some promos for a few other things.

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That was some great stuff to check out. But first, let's finish up here. So, Zach, Invincible Iron man was put out by Activision and Taurus games sometime around December of 2002 on the Game Boy advance that gets you right up into the Christmas game buying season. Was this something that you had growing up at all?

Yes, it is. I actually have my original, well, my second Game Boy advance and my copy of the game next to me. But, yeah, I have my original cartridge. I play it from time to time. Yeah, it is one of the games I had for my Game Boy advance when I was younger. I played it a lot. I also played X Men, the official game. I want to say I had a SpongeBob game. I had the Yu Gi oh game. I had a yu gi oh game. I had a lot of games. Iron man was one that I played a lot because it's simple. It reminds me a lot of mega man.

Honestly, that was something I've heard a lot of people say. And playing through this a little bit, watching a bunch of gameplay videos, I totally understand that the whole plot of this game is somebody steals Iron Man's armor, so he goes to get it and then he has to go get somebody else to get it. And then he has to go find somebody else to get it. And I mean, it's a Game Boy advance game. So you didn't have a ton of plot in those, but you had enough plot. I mean, honestly, do you need enough plot because it's Iron man, you're gonna walk around shooting people.

Honestly, when I was a kid, I ignored most of the plot. Cause really you're just going around shooting, shooting, aim. I think they're aim soldiers, but then it's aim soldiers in different colors when you're in the next level. It's, yeah, it's, it didn't need a plot. But having the plot is nice.

You could argue that this is the first Iron man game that was put out. Also the first one I've looked at here on the show. But, you know. Cause it depends on. Do you wanna count Iron man and Exo Man O war that split one as an Iron man game or any of the other games that he was in?

I mean, you could count them if they, if you were just talking Marvel games. Yeah, Iron Man's been in games, but a soul Iron man game. I think you're right. This is the first one because I don't think his next one was till the movie in 2008. Like that. That was the gap. It's like, alright, we'll make this one off Iron man game. All right, who's the next character we've got to make a game for?

We kind of glossed over the plot a little bit, really, just because it's so simple. But I mean, this one is not based on anything specific from the comics. And there are literally dozens of comic story arcs that are basically. Somebody stole my armor. I have to go get it back.

Yeah, yeah.

This time you're looking at Tony's first little point of contention there being his cousin, Morgan Stark, who I'm really hoping is a different person than his daughter. Morgan Stark from the MCU.

Yes, it is. Uh, it's his cousin. Like, like you said, uh, beyond that, I know. I, I don't know much about him. Off the top of my head. I know Iron Man's cousin. He first appeared in tales of suspense, number 68. So in the original run, before Iron man got his solo book, according to Wikipedia, Morgan believed growing up that his uncle cheated his father out of the Stark company fortune. Edward actually asked Howard to be bought out because Edward didn't want to part in the Stark family business, which Morgan has always tried to take stark industries from Tony, such as trying to convince his cousin to sell it. Basically he's your standard jealous relative who's like, I should have this. Give me, give me it. From easier standard. I'm jealous of you trope in the comics and they turned him in the movies to his and pepper's daughter.

I think that's a nice little touch to pull up a character like that as an antagonist in the game.

Yeah, it is.

You know, it's not somebody that you're going to have popping up now very often, but it's a nice touch.

It definitely is.

Thankfully we get some other Iron man villains as well because as cool as it is having Tony fight against his cousin like that, if that was the whole game, that might be kind of weird. So you get Blizzard.

Blizzard. Wait, you don't mean. No, not Captain Golder, Mister Freeze. You're right. Blizzard. Blizzard. Also from the original tales of suspense. Tales of suspense 45. That's like one of the first. Well, actually multiple versions. But the original Blizzard originally went by Jack Froste and then in Iron Man 86 he was renamed, he renamed himself Blizzard. But yeah, so he's your standard ice powers villain again. Captain Cole, Mister Freeze type type guy. And appropriately enough, one of the levels you fight him in is the snow level. Cause you fight him twice.

I think having you fight him first in just a forest is a cool little touch.

It is. Because then it's like, oh, now we're gonna go to my hideout in this frozen tundra.

And then being an Iron man game, you've gotta have one of his big villains as the big boss here this time it is Crimson Dynamo, who I know I should know more about, but I don't because I am a hack and a fraud.

Oh, I barely. I know there are. I know what Wikipedia knows right now. There are three versions of him. The first one you'd recognize as whiplash in the movies, Anton Vanko. Then there's a Boris tungenove, if I'm pronouncing that right. And then Alex Nesvesky. It could really be any one of them. I don't know which one it's. There's like 123-44-5678 910 1112. There's twelve different people who have been Pimpson Dynamo. So that is, that is intense. But the, the concept first appeared in tales of suspense number 46. Let me see which one they make. Okay, so they give us a specific one that the final boss is supposed to be. Looks like it's supposed to be the 6th version. First appearing in Iron Man Hash 255. That tells you that's a long lasting identity. If there have been twelve of them.

They'Re really digging back for the enemies here, which I can appreciate. Get the enemies that people who are fans of Iron man are going to know. It's almost like they knew this was going to be their only chance for a while to make an Iron man game, and so they just kind of threw everything at it that they could.

Yeah, that's the vibe I get from this. It's like, all right, we're going to make an Iron man game and we're probably not going to do it again. All right, let's just go ham with who we're picking. Let's pick three characters. One of them, who's probably the most recognizable would probably be Crimson Dynamo, maybe, or Blizzard if you know, ice villains. Cause there's, that's. That's been done to death.

I mean, let's be real though. Ice villains are just cool.

Oh, you're right, they are. I was gonna make that pun anyway, so don't worry about making that.

I would be disappointed in myself if one of us hadn't have said it.

That's honestly my favorite part of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mister Freeze is the lame ice.

Puns playing through this one as well. I feel like you get a really good sense of who Iron man is, at least as far as the powers go, because you've got a meter that you need to worry about for shooting off your projectiles. So you can't just go through super spamming fire throughout the entire levels. And that's something that I've noticed throughout the Iron man that I've experienced is he's got to kind of be aware of how much energy he's using and how much energy he has left.

Yeah, he definitely tries to watch his power levels. Like I mentioned before, early on, he literally would plug his armor into the wall. He taken out like an extension cord that he plugged into the wall, plug it into the suit, and like, alright, let's charge it. Oh, shit. Villain attack. It's not fully charged yet. Let's go. Like, you'll see. Especially like, he sparingly uses like, his jet skates and his rays, and oftentimes early on, especially, he just end up punching them in the suit of armor.

But you've got your regular pulsar rays. You've got your bigger EMP style things. You've got your giant blast that takes up, like, half the screen.

Yeah.

So it's really cool that those are all things that you can use as long as you've got the resources to pull it off.

Or you throw in the cheat code, and they give you unlimited unibeam blast, which I did on my recent playthrough of ithood. So I'm very bad at the game. It's a simple game, but I. I get shot at, and I die way too frequently when I play. So I put invincibility on and unlimited uni beams. Cause I found a list of cheat codes for it, ironically enough, on the Marvel wiki itself.

I mean, you could argue that Iron man is just using a cheat code for everything anyway with his suit, so even that kind of fits in.

Yeah, you're right. I also think the invincibility should have been there from the beginning because it's a suit of armor. Takes a lot to stop his suit of armor, because even, like, early comics, they mentioned, like, oh, crap, I can't penetrate you with my gun. It's your suit of armor. I'm doomed. Even if they were just lasers, the suit of armor is still stopping the lasers, unless you're focused. Unless it's, like, a real laser and you're melting a hole through it. Not video game or GI Joe cartoon or Transformer lasers, where it's just, like, can of bullets. Crud. Laser gun.

So, starting to wrap things up. What do you think this game really gets wrong about Iron man as a character?

One power doesn't get wrong. I think he should be flying for more than the brief double jump time, because when I think of Iron Man, I think of him flying around. I don't think of him running on the ground unless it's early on, before they gave him the flight. That's something they get wrong just in terms of power. Weirdly enough, the armor in the cutscenes and the actual game are slightly different from each other. So, like, they have the, like, the COVID art and the one that you see in game is based on the hero's return with Kurt busick. But then in the cutscenes, they show you the classic armor with, like, caps on the sleeves. So it's like, okay, why is it suddenly changing armor from cutscene to gameplay? I mean, Iron Man's a quick change. I'll give it that. But he's not that quick.

There wasn't anything that really jumped out at me. I mean, this is also me, the not super, super Iron man fan. But I think you can go on a lot more about what this game gets right about the character.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely. They do his powers, what his armor can do really well. Honestly, there should have been a missile too. But beyond that, I mean, you got the repulsor blasts, the unibeam flight, as limited as you get it, and then the dash can be like his jet skates from the sixties, because I love that he had those originally, and he actually, in tails of suspense, 40, presents them to the army who buys them from him. It's really ridiculous.

I mean, if you want to get super ridiculous about things, you can also just look at the fact that different iterations of his armor have different powers. So if you think a power is missing, maybe he just doesn't have the suit that has that power installed on it.

Oh, you're right. I mean, I have the Marvel Legends versions of different Iron man armors, and it's like, okay, I can see that suit not having. Well, like, the early suits, they don't have flight. They barely have repulsor blasts. They have the weird antenna.

If you knew somebody who wanted to get into Iron man as a character, would you give them this game as a bit of a primer course?

A little bit of a primer course? I'd say play this game. Fun. Give an afternoon. But I'd honestly rather give them an Iron man trade paperback or tell them to watch the MCU movie, because the MCU movie does get a lot right too. And that. That's a better, like, boiled down Iron man. You could. You can have him play the game, but you don't really get a lot of the charm and the snark of Tony Stark that exists.

Yeah, this one sits in a weird middle ground for me because it doesn't get anything wrong that I would worry about somebody picking up and imprinting on, but, like, it doesn't really. I feel like it doesn't do anything for people who aren't familiar with Iron man anyway. More like it was definitely made for people who were already fans of Iron man.

You're right. You're right. And that. That's a lot of the earlier Marvel games. Too. Early Marvel games aren't really a good introductory to the character. I mean, I think the best examples of that are any of the ultimate alliance games where you could give them an ultimate alliance game and they'd know they'd have a better understanding of civil war if you gave them ultimate alliance two than if you gave them this and had them understand Iron Manda.

And finally, if you had to take one Muppet and have them be Iron Man's sidekick, which Muppet would you pick?

Beaker the scientist. Cause Iron Man's a big scientist engineer guy. I think that it either be that or animal because Tony Stark's a bit of a party playboy and I just like animal.

Either one of those would be so cool, though.

Yes, they would.

Well, Zach, 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.

I have a Twitter. I don't really post on it that much. The biggest place you can find me and my ramblings and writings is fanfiction websites. Although I haven't updated those stories in a while. Those are the biggest places. The fanfiction is a zero three. The only one on there is my hero academia Fantastic Four loose crossover, and then I have another Percy Jackson Power Ranger crossover on Fanfiction.net. but that one I haven't updated in like since high school. And then just Ztonak on both Twitter and Bluesky. I don't really post much though, and.

As always, we'll have links to all that stuff down in the show notes because links are so much easier than trying to remember how to spell things. Yes, as always, the best place to find me is over@playcomics.com. and there's links to all the social media things, including Twitter, which is the place where I am right now because that is where I just happen to be. And that's all we're going to say about that. If you want to be on the show yourself, then there's a link down in the show notes. You can check out the list of things I'm looking to get booked the soonest. There's a nice form down there to fill out, and you don't have to fill out the form, but I'm going to ask you all those questions anyway, so it's really easy. Just fill out the form. It's pretty much, hey, what's your name and what games do you want and how do I get in touch with you? Like, it's super simple. Just, you should just do it. If you want to help support the show, the best thing you can do is to leave reviews over on podchase or Apple Podcasts or other places that accept reviews. I'm sure there are others but I don't use them or know what they would be off the top of my head. But if you can show me that you left a review, you know, just grab a screenshot or something, then I will send you a sticker. And another surprise that I picked up at the comic shop. It is not a full size comic and I am not dumping quarterbin stuff on you. It is something that will fit in a regular letter envelope. And that's all of the hints I'm going to give you. Or you can be like oh no, lit class and Dan McMahon and give the show money because it does cost money to make podcasts. But you know, don't feel pressured to do that. That's cool if you don't just tell me that you like the show and make my heart happy or something like that. Don't forget that play Comics is a part of the Guinea Geek network, home to such other wonderful shows as Legends of S H I E l D, where we pretty recently, I don't remember how time works anymore, but we did look at the Wolverine and Deadpool movie and we're going to be going back to looking at X Men evolution and we're going to get to a nice, convenient stopping point there in time so that we can start looking at Agatha. After all, when that starts up, conveniently on my birthday, the show release, not the Legends of S H I E l D release that. That would be weird. Also, I don't think we can edit that fastenitive. If you like the music that I'm rudely talking on top of right now, you can go absolutely nowhere because Soundcloud.com best day seems to have gotten all the stuff wiped from it, and I'm not sure how long that's been going on, but I might go change the music now just because I would rather talk about somebody who exists on the Internet and can benefit from it. Also, I've had this music for a while. It just feels like it's a good time to change. Most of all, though, just grab a game, grab a comic, and go find yourself a new favorite character. And you could argue that this is the first Iron man game. Not only that I've looked at, you could argue that not only you could argue boom man, I can't say words.