Episode 33 General
This episode is a Guilty Pleasure favorite of mine (in what is a Guilty Pleasure series), for a few reasons: it has Rumble Roses, and a game for the 3DO system!
Let's talk about RR first. They focused on a few of the entrance videos for the... ladies. Unfortunately, Konami/Yuke's changed the way that they conducted the videos for this game. They are edited in such a way as to resemble a music video with multiple cuts and even backdrops, unlike in the first, which represented the spectacle of a live wrestling event.
The first video is for Dixie Clemets (that last name has always bothered me - isn't it missing an "N"? It's first grade, Konami!). Nothing too wacky, it's played to a cover of "Yankee Rose" with a female singer instead of David Lee Roth. Dixie performs a dance that flaunts her... assets on her way to the stage, discarding a cowboy hat along the way. Once in the ring, she playfully shoots some pop gun six shooters.
The next one is for "The Task Master", Miss Spencer. Her entrance song is derived from Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher" by Akira Yamaoka. It sounds all well and good, but for the actual video, Spencer dances on a school desk with a creepily inexpressive face. Does a female character performing a sexy dance with no expression whatsoever sound appealing to you?
The third video is for the "Dark Nightingale" Anathesia, the dark-skinned nurse. Theme: "Keep On Lifin'". Anathesia does a seductive dance behind an X-ray screen... and it sees through her costume. Of course! Anime Anatomy is in full effect. It's not as creepy as Spencer's, at least.
The fourth video is for "Bloody Shadow", or Benikage. Theme: "Crimson Shadow". Benikage jumps off of a giant frog, performs some martial arts, then teleports into the ring with her giant frog friend in tow. Ew, slimy ring.
The fifth video is for Candy Cane. She performs a pretty cool song with her band. The concept for this video isn't bad, but the execution is lazy as hell. Neither the band's playing or Candy's lips are in sync with the song. Still inexplicably fun to watch, though. Candy rips a guitar out of its player's hands and skips down to the ring.
The sixth video is for Reiko Hinomoto, the "Zero Fighter". As the faceiest of the game's faces, her intro is very standard. She does some warmup exercises and poses for the camera.
The final video is for Evil Rose, the "Beast from the Underground". Her theme is "Pluck the Roses!" by Akira Yamaoka, again. This intro has Evil Rose locked up in a cage. Her eyes glow, and she breaks her bonds. Before escaping, she does a very stripperesque dance with the bars of her "prison", before bending the bars enough for her to escape and somersault into the ring. She throws her head back and roars as pink lights glow all around her. Uh... okay.
Bonus - 12:00: I implore you to watch intro
to the super-obscure 3DO game Blade Force. I don't know anything about the game except for what's in the intro - and the game is allegedly a lot worse than the intro.
The game takes place in 2110, in a city called Meggagrid - which is UNDER SIEGE by criminal masterminds, such as... Terrence Pitt, head of the Pitt crime family; the Steel Medusa Sisters, "the result of a biometallurgical experiment gone bad"; Pryo Megaly, who is obviously a serial arsonist; drug kingpin Eddie Ecstasy; Reverend Beeyotch, a televangelist that capitalizes on doomsday hysteria; Ugly Twohead, a terrible surgeon that deals in black market clone body parts; and Horus Cheata (note that I can't quite make out his name), a sleazy defense lawyer that only represents criminals. The developers should be applauded for somehow predicting the rise of Jack Thompson years before he started trying to demonize gamers and telling that woman who tried to call Mass Effect a sex simulator that her outrage was baseless.
Anyway, the cops are of course hopeless to stop these no-goodniks, and Dr. Grubert, who takes his crippling at the hands of the Pitt family rather personally enough to equip the player character with the tools he needs to crush these criminals with force - blade force.
