If Frankenstein’s Monster isn’t your idea of the perfect Saint Valentine’s Day gift, maybe Charlie Brown is a better choice. Super7’s latest ReAction figure is another holiday-centric classic character. Charles Schulz’s iconic bald punching bag certainly doesn’t look happy to be encased in a Valentine’s Day-themed blister pack. However, if you have a Peanuts fan in your life, this would be a great gift.
The I Hate Valentine’s Day Charlie Brown action figure stands 3.75″ tall and is limited to five points of articulation. He can be picked up for $25 right now.
While I’d usually point out that this figure is a re-release of a previous Super7 Charlie Brown, he actually looks different. The head shape appears to be different, and … that’s it. The one picture Super7 has of the physical product looks a bit too shiny. Hopefully, this is fixed when the blockhead ships.
“Inspired by the 1975 television special Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, this 3.75″ articulated Peanuts ReAction Figure of “I Hate Valentine’s Day” Charlie Brown depicts him experiencing the turbulent emotions of the day.”
Super7’s ReAction Peanuts figures haven’t been as prevalent as the G.I. Joe line, but they’re still endearing. It’s unfortunate that most of the toys are various versions of Snoopy.
Honestly, I think the Peanuts series is one of Super7’s best because they’re not trying to recreate the 3.75″ gimmick. Instead, each action figure looks like the comic strip’s version. The series even gave us OG Charlie Brown before he got the redesign we’re all familiar with today.
What are your thoughts on the various Peanuts collectibles that have recently made their way to the market? Are there certain characters you’d like to see Super7 make? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
Anybody you talk to about first-person shooters will eventually bring up RARE’s iconic Nintendo 64 game GoldenEye 007 at some point. The game was popular among many people on the N64 for many reasons, including being tied to one of the biggest movies released a few years earlier. GoldenEye was released in theaters in 1995, while the game came out on the Nintendo 64 in 1997. But GoldenEye the game is most notable for being one of the bigger FPS multiplayer games on the console and pushing other developers to include split-screen multiplayer into their games. So the idea of a remaster or rerelease of the game on modern consoles would get a lot of attention. But is GoldenEye on the Xbox Series consoles and Nintendo Switch as good as fans wanted it to be?
The giant elephant in the room for GoldenEye 007 on both platforms is online multiplayer, with the Nintendo Switch having it and the Xbox version not. Before anything else, if you care about playing this game online with other people then the Switch version is what you’ll most likely get. However, this comes at a few costs. The Nintendo Switch version has online multiplayer but suffers from the same issues as many other Nintendo Switch games online, including classic games of the Nintendo Switch Online service.
Getting into an online match with others will also be a hassle, depending on your internet connection and how many people you will find online. Some people have been vocal about the difficulty of getting into matches, but once you’re matched up with others things go exactly as expected. The game still plays out with a 4-player split screen format, so you’ll have everyone peaking at each other’s view, but that is part of the fun. If you played GoldenEye multiplayer back in the day then you’ll feel right at home, while everyone else may or may not be OK with how primitive the game feels to play today.
At the same time, the Switch version of GoldenEye outputs the game at a standard resolution that can be stretched to widescreen format. But the biggest hurdle for Switch owners, outside of only getting the game through the Switch online service, is the controls. By default, the controls for GoldenEye 007 on Switch will feel weird and awkward from the start. Luckily, you can remap the controls how you like by creating a new control scheme by going into the settings for the game and changing things up. The sad truth is that you shouldn’t have to do this at all, especially for a game that is as highly regarded as this.
But what about the Xbox version on Xbox Game Pass? While there is no online connectivity for GoldenEye 007, the game does have 4K Ultra HD support and native widescreen resolution. In addition to that, the control scheme is similar to what you’d find in modern first-person shooters now, which works out for everyone. For Xbox owners the game also has a list of achievements that you can go for which touch on nearly every aspect of the game, 00 Agent difficulty included. You can still play multiplayer split-screen matches locally, so if you want to get friends together and relive the good times together it’s still possible.
As far as the content of the game itself on both platforms, everything is pretty much the same. Nothing more or less, this is GoldenEye as you remember it. If you were hoping to find anything new or cut content from the original release, you’re going to be disappointed. One major issue that both versions have is the pixilation of the text that appears on the screen, which can look illegible at times. Despite the perspective being stretched out, the text in menus and during gameplay isn’t cleaned up. This might not bother most people who know this game inside and out, but it is notable throughout the entire experience.
Whether you grew up with GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 or not, you most likely heard of the legendary status it has within the gaming community. Does this rerelease of GoldenEye live up to the hype that people have built up over the years? Probably not for some, but that doesn’t take away from the legacy the game has within the first-person genre. Certain aspects of the gameplay haven’t aged too well because of the advancements we’ve gotten in video games since the days of the N64, especially the clunky movement and pacing in some sections. But this is still GoldenEye with all of the bells, whistles, and shortcomings that were there. It’s unfortunate that there’s no definitive version of the game between both the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series consoles. Where you decide to play it will ultimately come down to what you value most, visual fidelity or online connectivity.
Did you grow up playing GoldenEye 007 back in the day? Were you excited about the release of this classic game? Post a comment with your thoughts about GoldenEye 007 and let us know!
Our 2023 interview series welcomes its next guest, Az, from the YouTube channel HeelvsBabyface. Az started his YouTube career in 2012 and currently has 321K subscribers. His content includes reviews of film and television, gaming live streams, and collaborations with several other YouTubers with Nerdrotic’s Friday Night Tights.
Az told us the story of how his YouTube career started after he was burnt out from the corporate rat race.
As for the video Az spoke about during our interview, check out his take on the upcoming Phoebe Waller-Bridge Tomb Raider series for Amazon:
I first found the HeelvsBabyface channel while looking for more info on the CW’s Batwoman series. Another website had asked me if I could interview Sam Littlefield, the actor who played Mouse. Unfortunately, at the time, only one episode of Batwoman had aired, and Mouse had not yet been introduced. With so little information on the character, I had to learn more about the show to ask meaningful questions.
While watching the first episode, I noticed Batwoman courted a specific audience. Unfortunately, the writing was sloppy, and the acting was terrible even for The CW’s standards. I thought I might be too hard on the show and started looking at other reviews and observations on YouTube. The first channel I visited was HeelvsBabyface, and Az noticed the same oddities I did.
Az’s energy and presentation earned me a subscriber. Thankfully, he didn’t fall into the typical trap many YouTubers do and focus solely on a single topic. Nor does he turn every video into an overblown hyperbolic hate-fest like an Angry Video Game Nerd knockoff. Instead, diversifying content appears to be the route YouTube content creators must take to keep from burning out or losing an audience.
Check out our previous interview with Limited Run Games’ ex-community manager Kara Lynne.
Shoulders of Giants on the Xbox Series consoles is a good example of when a concept sounds great but is ruined by poor execution. The idea of animals controlling robots to help them battle enemies and explore planets seems like a cool idea. And honestly, it can be very much. However, something as interesting as that can be overshadowed in a game filled with bugs, poor framerates, and randomly generated issues that can appear at the worst of times. Not even the cutest animal piloting the greatest mech could remedy such a bad combination of problems.
The plot of the game has you and a group of anthropomorphic creatures working together to save planets from falling to darkness to the forces of Entropy. You do this by restoring the heat, or light, of planets by defeating enemies and destroying monoliths that are corrupting planets. Saving planets not only restores life to those worlds but helps power up your weapons and abilities. Add in some animal allies to help you along the way and large environments to explore, and you have a good foundation for what could be a good time. While Shoulders of Giants has the elements of a good sci-fi adventure, it’s everything else about the game that takes away the charm of its story.
The best and worst aspects of the game can be found in the combat and the randomly generated locations. Because this is a rogue-like experience no two locations are ever truly the same, which can be said for their high and low points. From the powerful abilities and attacks, you can find and use, to the weird visual filters and obstacles that can obscure your view of the action as you explore. This can often lead to some very frustrating and highly-inconsistent spikes in difficulty, depending on the planet you visit and what abilities you end up using while there.
Visually the game can be colorful in some moments and then look like a mess in others. The framerate can be jarring when you’re running around or dropping into new areas, especially in tight spaces with multiple enemies. Some planets can make it incredibly hard for you to see around with ridiculous stipulations, such as putting you into a place where there’s no light and you have to find to navigate around you. It’s incredibly frustrating and not fun when this happens and you have no indication of something like that happening when you enter a planet. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens enough to be a notable hassle that feels like a cheap obstacle to deal with.
Most enemies you encounter will have varying degrees of strength, with some enemies feeling overpowered compared to others for no reason. Most situations will require you constantly move around and avoid getting hit, but the degree that enemies pursue you or the amount of damage they deal won’t always feel like it makes total sense. This could be due to the randomly generated aspects of the planets, but it never seems clear while in the game.
Moving around on your robot will be hit or miss for most people. The controls aren’t mapped out poorly, but how you and your robot will often feel stifled. At first, you have few options for mobility until you find abilities to help out. Defeating enemies with your attacks and destroying monoliths can drop stronger attacks and other helpful abilities. But because this is a rogue-like, you won’t always find the same abilities open to you, let alone dropped by your adversaries. It can be annoying when you’re forced to get around obstacles in ways that feel like they’re wasting time or made inconvenient without any real purpose. It doesn’t help either on some planets when your objectives are spread out so far apart or placed in difficult locations that are frustrating to get to and back from, and it doesn’t make it easier when you need to fight enemies that lurk around.
What makes the game infuriating at times is you can lose a lot of your progress if you end up failing on a planet. Dying not only takes away the heat you generate from liberating planets, but you also don’t keep any items or equipment you pick up beforehand. Even if you finish a section of a planet and fail on the next, you lose both your loot and the planet itself. This can make getting situated with the game at the start a hassle when you’re being severely punished before you even get a chance to fully engage with everything.
The only thing you get to keep is the experience generated from defeating enemies, which can be used to unlock perks and boosts in the hub area. However, it doesn’t feel like has a significant impact on your ability to deal with challenges on new planets until you are able to unlock multiple boosts over an extended period. Getting new equipment, such as new blades for your robot or projectiles for your animal, is a better alternative to make things more manageable. But unless you’re able to complete a planet and save it by completing all objectives and defeating the boss enemy in the end, you won’t be able to keep anything you find.
But what about the multiplayer? Does it make any difference when trying to open up options for your character and how you approach planets? Not always, especially if you find yourself running into trouble during multiplayer lobbies. You can team up with three other players and liberate planets for big rewards, but that depends on whether or not you have a stable connection to everyone else and don’t get thrown into a very difficult planet to explore. Enemies can be very powerful and hit incredibly hard, depleting your life before you know it and forcing you to wait until the start of the next area to get back in. Teammates can’t respawn or assist you if you’re taken out, so you’re forced to wait until they finish up the area or fail.
As an indie game that is trying something different than usual, Shoulders of Giants has a few neat ideas that can work. But as is now, much of the game doesn’t pan out well. There are way too many technical issues that can make for a frustrating experience and make parts of the game difficult to play through and enjoy. Even with updates to the presentation and gameplay to come post-release, it’s very hard to recommend Shoulders of Giants to anyone given many of the problems that it currently has. There’s something good in here, but everything around it is too much of a pain to deal with.
Do you like playing indie games on any platform? Have you gotten to play Shoulders of Giants yet? Tell us everything in the comments below!
Factory Entertainment announced a 1:1 replica of He-Man’s Power Sword two years ago. Skeletor’s sword will also be made available in just over a month! In truth, it’s the same weapon, but in purple.
Suppose you want to get your hands on a rock-hard purple … sword, head over to Factory Entertainment to get yours. Skeletor’s second favorite weapon is listed at $599.99 and is ready to ship out now! Unfortunately, only 500 of these will be produced.
The 40″ long replica has all the same features as He-Man’s iconic Power Sword. However, it is made of steel. The handle is wrapped in black leather. The steel has an antique foundry finish.
Also, like the previously released prop, Skeletor’s sword comes with a shield-shaped wall mount. Sadly, it’s not themed like something you’d find in Snake Mountain. However, it also comes with the same Castle Grayskull-themed box.
Photo Credit: Factory Entertainment
Photo Credit: Factory Entertainment
Photo Credit: Factory Entertainment
Photo Credit: Factory Entertainment
“This officially licensed 40-inch long Skeletor Sword prop replica features a full tang steel blade. Adding realism to this iconic sword, the metal guard features an antique foundry finish and a leather-wrapped handle. Every replica is supplied in a full color collector box and comes with a wall hanging display plaque and a certificate of authenticity.”
He-Man’s sword is on a waitlist if you try to buy it through F.E. However, the Big Bad Toy Store currently has them in stock. You’ll pay a little more, but they’re ready to ship. The current price is $649.99.
This same company also makes several other Masters of the Universe replicas:
Trigun was a post-apocalyptic action manga created by Yasuhiro Nightow and serialized by the Tokyo-based publisher Shōnen Gahōsha. The manga ran from 1995 to 1997 and was adapted into an anime that was released in 1998 by the Japanese animation studio Madhouse.
In 2022, Studio Orange announced they were doing a remake of the series directed by Kenji Mutō. They premiered it in January 2023 with both Crunchyroll and Hulu streaming it, but the former announced they were producing an English dub.
Johnny Yong Bosch is reprising the role of vigilante Vash the Stampede after voicing him in the nineties anime.
They announced the rest of the cast on their website:
Vash (Young) voiced by Kristen McGuire (Milim in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime)
Knives voiced by Austin Tindle (Accelerator in A Certain Magical Index)
Knives (Young) voiced by Megan Shipman (Anya in SPY x FAMILY)
Meryl voiced by Sarah Roach (Maki in Fire Force)
Roberto voiced by Ben Bryant (Sekijiro in My Hero Academia)
Rosa voiced by Lydia Mackay (Kyoko in Fruits Basket)
Rem voiced by Emily Fajardo (Kousetsu in Shinobi no Ittoki)
Jeremy Inman is working on the project as the ADR Director.
“Vash the Stampede’s a joyful gunslinging pacifist, so why does he have a $$6 million bounty on his head? That’s what’s puzzling rookie reporter Meryl Stryfe and her jaded veteran partner when looking into the vigilante only to find someone who hates blood. But their investigation turns out to uncover something heinous—his evil twin brother, Millions Knives.”
Nightow created a sequel manga titled ‘Trigun Maximum’ that ran from 1997 to 2007 published by Shōnen Gahōsha and released in the United States by Dark Horse Comics.
The original manga was previously released by the Japanese publisher Tokuma Shoten.
‘The Reincarnation of the Strongest Exorcist in Another World’ is a fantasy isekai light novel series written by Kiichi Kosuzu and currently illustrated by Kihiro Yuzuki. It was originally published as a web novel, but was picked up by Futabasha in 2019 for a print edition. The Japanese animation Studio Blanc picked up the series for an anime in January 2023.
Crunchyroll announced that they had acquired the rights to distribute the anime in the United States along with an English dub.
“After the betrayal of his companions, Haruyoshi, the strongest diviner, was on the verge of dying. Hoping to be happy in the next life, he attempted the secret reincarnation technique and was sent to a different world!
Born into a family of magicians, the magic he didn’t inherit paled in comparison to his previous abilities as an onmyouji. ‘Who needs magic? I’ll survive in this world with my old techniques!'”
Futabasha began producing a manga version in 2020 illustrated by Toshinori Okazaki. It was serialized in their ‘Gaugau Monster’ magazine.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been covering an incident between Limited Run Games, its community manager, and the Twitter mob. Former LRG employee Kara Lynne recently went public with her story about what happened on the day she lost her job at the video game publisher. Unfortunately, someone or multiple people overseeing LRG decided that a Twitter tempest in a teapot was of enough concern to terminate an otherwise stellar employee.
I contacted Kara Lynne to see if she’d be willing to discuss the situation. We wanted to know what got her into the gaming industry and if she still has that passion after leaving Limited Run Games. With a massive outpouring of support, we wanted to know what Lynne had on the horizon. What words of support would she give to someone else who faced the cancel culture mob? Check out our interview below!
Kara Lynne was in good spirits when I spoke with her. She’s a friendly young woman with a passion for gaming and everything in nerdom. While saddened by the events that removed her from a company she loved, Lynne harbors no ill will towards Limited Run Games. Although she understands that people will vote with their wallets, she rightfully points out that not supporting the publisher also hurts the developers who rely on LRG to get their art out to the public.
She informed me that she would appear on a much larger platform later in the day. That being the Tucker Carlson show. Check out her interview with Fox News below:
Companies worldwide need to understand that social media makes up only a tiny part of reality. A couple hundred or thousand people posting angry words or memes does not indicate the real world. Instead, pay attention to who is leading a charge and demanding someone be fired. Look into that “leader” and if they have a track record of calling for heads to roll to satiate some misplaced righteousness.
Do not treat groups as infallible monoliths. No group of people is immune from criticism or parody. Tweets are not the actual test of a person’s character. If that were the case, most of the “righteous warriors” working the mobs into frenzies would face the same repercussions in a just world.
Originally published as a 2015 web novel by the author known as Funa, ‘Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement’ is a light novel series published by Kodansha since 2017. Felix Film picked up the series for an anime adaption directed by Hiroshi Tamada and released it in January 2023. Crunchyroll announced that they had acquired the license to release it in the United States and to produce an English dub.
“Mitsuha Amano lost her parents and older brother in an accident, and she wasn’t sure how she would survive the next month. After contemplating her uncertain future on a cliff, some bullies started harassing her. Mitsuha was pushed off the cliff in the scuffle, and she fell, screaming that she didn’t want to die, before hitting the rocks below. But Mitsuha then awakened in a place that definitively wasn’t her world. After remembering what her brother said about “another world,” she started wandering around until she fainted from exhaustion and hunger. Mitsuha was rescued in a forest by a little girl. Mitsuha couldn’t understand her language but decided to stay in her village. After an encounter with a pack of wolves, Mitsuha lured them away from the little girl. Again, not wanting to die, she screamed just before the wolves got her…
But then Mitsuha returned to her house! After discovering that she can jump between the two worlds just by thinking about it, she quickly gathered supplies and her brother’s knife and returned to save the little girl. After saving her and collapsing again, she was met by a mysterious entity. It explains that Mitsuha grabbed a part of the entity while she was falling off the cliff. This caused Mitsuha to get the ability to travel between her world and the other (and giving her self-healing abilities too). Mitsuha then asked the entity to give her the ability to understand any language, so it was granted. Now with those abilities, Mitsuha now has a new goal: gather 80000 gold coins so she can retire leisurely in her world!”
Kodansha began publishing a manga version of the light novel in 2017 with illustrations from Keisuke Motoe.
‘Handyman Saitō in Another World’ is an isekai fantasy manga created by Kazutomo Ichitomo and published by Kadokawa Shoten. The Japanese animation studio C2C premiered an anime adaptation in January 2023 directed by Toshiyuki Kubooka. Crunchyroll announced that they would be producing an English dub.
“Saitō, a young handyman from Japan, has been feeling inadequate in his job on Earth, despite the skills he developed. In his dejection over getting fired by his unappreciative boss, he accidentally walked in front of a speeding truck and was subsequently displaced into a fantasy world, where he was taken in by an adventuring party. With the party members’ personal quirks hindering their performance, Saitō begins lending them a helping hand, carrying essentials, picking locks and giving them vital reminders, thus making him indispensable to his new friends.”
Kadokawa Shoten began publishing the series in 2018, serialized in their magazine ‘ComicWalker.’ Yen Press releases the manga in the United States.
