Bots Master

Yes, that’s right. Bots Master. So I add another old TV show to my ever-expanding list of articles. I hope you like this one as much as the first! Or more, if you didn’t like the first one. I guess this is kind of a tenth anniversary thing too, because the show first aired 10 years ago.

Actually, some credit goes to my friend, from whom I got the idea to do the article on Bots Master. We were just talking about stuff and it came up. A couple nights later I was bored and this is the finished product of that boredom. Of course, there was a test I should have been studying for, but I have my priorities straight. And besides, no matter how much I study, I’m not gonna pass that test. It’s not like history is important anyway.

It’s kinda sad that on all the internet, there is very little dedicated to this show. It wasn’t super-popular or anything, but it had a toy line, so you can tell they were hoping it was gonna go somewhere. But, I was able to find just enough info to fill up a whole article, and even some media too. We’ll save that for later though…

Bots Master. Ah, yet another classic cartoon. Originally I thought it was another one of those 1-season wonders, but it turns out I made a little mistake. There was a walloping 40 episodes of Bots Master. But even then, that’s not a whole lot.

Bots Master was run waaaaay back in ’93 when robots were all the rage. Of course, Transformers were the leaders, and everyone else could only hope for a piece of their popularity. Bots Master just happened to be one of those wannabes, and one of the more popular wannabes in my household. For me and my brothers, Bots Master was the robot show to watch. Mostly because we didn’t know when Transformers was on.

The show was about a kid named Ziv Zulander, or ZZ for short, his sister Blitzy, and their robot pals, the BOYZZ (Brain Operated Young Zygoetopic Zoids). Now I was pretty sure that “zygoetopic” wasn’t a word. A short visit to dictionary.com confirmed my hypothesis. I’m not too sure how “zygoetopic” is pronounced, or even if it can be pronounced. Luckily for them, the producers set the show far into the future, so they can get away with making up words… this time.

Anyways, ZZ and the gang had a mission. Like all good heroes, they were rebels. Like all good plots, there was an evil company trying to take over the world. The Robotic Megafact Corporation, or The Corp,was led by Dr. Hissss, Sir Louis Leon Paradim, and Lady Frenzy. They would take innocent robots, and put evil mind-warping chips in them. Yup, your standard take over the world scheme. But it had robots, so it was cool.

At this point, you’re wondering “Who are these robots you speak so fondly of?” I guess I have to tell you. first we have the Street BOYZZ, comprised of Toolzz and Jammerzz. These two are prety standard street punk fare, except for they fight for the good guys. Next up are the Sports BOYZZ, Ace, Batzz, and All-Ball. I’m pretty sure there was another one of these guys. A few others were Genesix and D’Nerd, the smart bots and Watson, the doctor bot. There were a whole bunch of others, but I’m damn lazy so I won’t be covering them all.

OK, you convinced me. One more. Luckily, he’s my all-time favorite BOYZZ. Ninjzz. Logic would denote, that since robots are cool and ninjas are cool, a ninja robot(or a robot ninja if you will) would be cool X2. It’s so very true. Ninjzz was indeed the best bot. He had three arms, three weapons, and rollerblades. Plus a whole lot of 1337 ninja skillz. Oddly enough, he was given a speech impediment that slurred his “s”es into long z sounds. But the ninja robot thing covered that blemish up pretty well.


Oh Hell, for the sake of the length of this article, I’ll tell you about a few more bots. I can’t remember(or find) their names, but they had a special talent. These five bots had a very unique talent. They could transform! As if that wasn’t enough, they could turn into a big bot named Jungle Fiver! Wow! It’s so original it blows my mind! *coughconstructiconscough* Did I mention how original this idea was?

Not only did Bots Master have a TV show, it also had a line of toys. Maybe they predicted it would be successful, who knows? Even if the show wasn’t all that big, there were still toys which would last much longer than the show did, presuming you took somewhat good care of your toys. I can’t be held responsible if you played so rough that they broke within the week. There weren’t a whole lot of toys. A couple good guys, a few bad guys and maybe Jungle Fiver. Not as huge a line as say, Star Wars, but they were pretty fun. I think I still have Ninjzz.

You know what? As I was writing this article, I realized something. When I was little, I was really into Nintendo, still am, but almost moreso then. And because of that, I never really got into toys. Oh, of course I had (almost) every Ninja Turtle and Crash Dummy, plus some random other ones, but I was never into toys as much as the non-videogame-having kids. Some might say I was lucky, but now that I look back, I feel deprived. Maybe that’s why I’m really getting into toys now. Nintendo, if you’re reading this, I want my childhood back!!


While I’m on the subject of video games, I’m at least 74% sure that there was never a Bots Master video game. If there was I would have played it. And if I had played it, I would remember it. This could be for our own good though, because games based on TV shows rarely work out (unless it uses a Disney license and is made by Capcom). The other way around has a much higher success ratio, in my opinion anyway. But yeah, I’m pretty sure there isn’t a video games with Ninjzz in it. But I’m gonna go ROM searching just to make sure. If there is one, I’ll be sure to make it available to my loyal readers.

Anyone who watched the show was also given a little treat. There was a small segment of the show which lasted approximately two minutes that was in mind-boggling 3-D. The catch was that you needed some fancy cardboard glasses to see it properly. Needless to say, I never had any such “3-D Shades”, so I really can’t tell you what that was all about.

I guess the last topic I need to touch on is how good the storyline of the show was. To be completely honest, I haven’t got a frickin’ clue. But if the general story is any indication of the episode plots, I’d say it’s pretty weak. But on the bright side, it’s a cartoon about robots. And of course, robots don’t need a good story, simply because they’re robots.

In conclusion, Bots Master seemed to be a pretty decent cartoon. Of course, I haven’t seen it for about nine years, so I really can’t be sure. All I know is I liked it back then. Then again, I liked everything back then. Except girl stuff. Oh no. I’m a manly friggin’ man. Not some stupid girl-stuff liking girly boy. Not me. At all. Nope. So as I was saying, Bots Master was indeed a cool show. Although I’d much rather have the original MegaMan cartoon revived. After all, who can resist CutMan’s charms?

First of many

Remember what I said about not having anything to put on the site for a while? Well, it was all a lie.

Today, I put up my very first article! Hooray for me! What is it about? You’ll have to go find out for yourself. What are you waiting for? Go here to read it. I know it’s not very funny(I wasn’t aiming for funny, but there are a couple “jokes”), but is is an interesting read, and it’s a good way to invest ten minutes. So go on, read it, and send me your thoughts.

UPDATE – I just changed the look of the site a little bit. Now the logo is above the ad, and the page links are up at the top too instead of down at the bottom. I think it looks better and more professional this way. Now I’m ranked a lot higher on Newgrounds too. Huzzah!

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

Welcome one and all to the very first article on Mr. Hotshot64 v.2’s PAGE OF DEATH!! Torrential Equilibrium I just thought I’d whip up a test page so anybody out there who is actually visiting the site can see what it’s gonna look like. I’m not gonna really write anything much, just a little bit about a certain show…

Seeing as this marks my very first article, we will all mark the date on our calendars and celebrate it as a national holiday every year from now on. And EVERYONE will celebrate. I don’t care what “religion” you’re a part of, this is the new holiday of holidays. Presents and no school/work for all! I shall call it “Uber-Friday”. Ironically, today is Saturday.

As some of you may notice, it looks a lot like the old X-Entertainment did. Well, mostly because I copied and pasted the HTML and then just changed a whole bunch of stuff around. Call it plagiarism if you wish, but I have to figure it out somehow. Copying someone else’s work just happened to be the quickest way for me to do it.

Actually, this whole intro is pretty much a sneaky way to keep the surprise topic a surprise. I don’t want you guys to know what you’re reading about before you’re done reading the intro. If you did, you would just skip the intro and go straight for the good stuff, like a kid would run right past the vegetable stand in front of the candy factory. But like those vegetables, the intro contains many essential vitamins that you must take, even though the article itself is the much more delicious part. So now that I’ve put in my necessary metaphor, let’s get on to the topic!

Today, I present to you one of the most amazing things ever to hit the small screen, the one show that changed the lives of so very many young children and one old wrestler. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

THE SUPER
MARIO BROS.
SUPER SHOW!

Yes, that’s right pizanos! It’s everyone’s favorite Nintendo-based cartoon show! I’m certain that everyone I know remembers and loves the show dearly. Sadly, a limited number of episodes are available to download and the show itself has been off the air for several years. But that won’t stop us from having super-sized fun! So grab a Super Mushroom or two and get ready for some nostalgic reading.

It all started way back in 1989 (or so I’ve been told), when the first episode aired. Nintendo lovers all around the… North America were eagerly anticipating the new show starring Super Mario and his buddies. Actually, I don’t know if anyone was anticipating it. Maybe it just came along and got popular. Like The Legend of Zelda cartoon that was also featured on the Super Show, but I’ll get to that later.In any case, kids were expecting to have a half hour of animated Mario goodness…

Boy did they get stiffed.

There was only about 12 minutes of animated footage on the Super Show. The rest was live action Mario and Luigi bumbling around what I’m presuming was their home/office. Mario was played by the famous wrestler Captain Lou Albano. Luigi was played by some guy that nobody knows. Yes, that’s right, Danny Wells donned the green overalls for the first ten minutes of the Super Show. They also got to voice the animated versions of their characters. Who would have guessed? I would have thought the execs at DIC would have hired some other guys. Oh well, win some, lose some.The one “upside”, if you will, of the live action segments was that there was always a guest star who happened to be rather popular during that era. None spring to mind, but I’m sure they used to be household names.

The bros also had some kind of weird Ninja Turtles-esque pizza fetish. Their phone was covered in pizza, and there were pieces of the stuff strewn all about the place, along with the probably empty boxes. This just goes to show that not all Italians who live in Brooklyn fly the straight and narrow. No, these guys were rebels. They made their place messy, and they liked it that way. Danny Tanner would have several heart attacks. Actually, I think Bob Saget might have been a guest star once. Damned if I can remember.

Well, to say the least, the cartoon was excellent. It came out after Super Mario Bros. 2 for the NES, and it featured all the bosses that everyone loved, including German-tongued Mouser, three-headed snake Triclyde, and of course the infamous King Koopa (who has more recently been named Bowser.) It seemed really authentic, if you only consider the characters. All the good guys and bad guys from SMB2 were there, but the plots and scenery were unlike anything ever seen in the video game. Not to say that any of the plots were better than SMB2’s. They were all pretty bad.The last episode I can remember seeing was entitled “Mario Meets Koop-Zilla” in which Mario and the gang (Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool(Peach)) traveled to some far away town to get the Super Sushi, which would make Mario giant, and hopefully enable him to squish King Koopa out of existence once and for all.

Unfortunately, Koopa got there first, and stole the Super Sushi, thereby making him “Koop-zilla” and enabling him to stomp the city to rubble. Luckily, some scientist whips up another batch of this Super Sushi and Mario gains a beer belly, pot belly, jelly belly, love handles, and lots of fat. Really, most of the growth was in the stomach area. It was gross and hilarious at the same time. Like farting. Although that is more of a perspective thing.

So eventually the good guys triumph, and all is well again as once again normal sized King Koopa escapes into the night. Back at the scientist’s lab, the gang celebrates the victory and Mario gobbles up a plate of Shrinking (Something), and becomes Mini-Mario. hilarity ensues. The end.See, nothing special story wise, but the one-liners were always great. Of course, nobody who was actually watching the show back then had the mental capacity to absorb any of this. They just liked the bright colors and the recognizable characters. Nowadays we can see how uninspired the plots were. It’s not like today’s cartoon plots are any better though.

The last thing I should mention about the Super Show is the extra special Friday episodes. This was the day everyone waited for. This was the day that made the week worth living through. This was the day where The Legend of Zelda would air instead of Super Mario Bros.

It’s really a shame that Zelda only got 13 episodes before it was cancelled. Everyone I know prefers it over Mario’s offering. Maybe that’s because they don’t remember it very well. The Link of today and Link on the show are two very different people. Today’s Link is a serious adventurer and Hero of Time, with blond hair. The Link on the show was a joker who just wanted a piece of Zelda’s sweet, sweet can. Plus he had brown hair. Needless to say, I prefer old Link. I’m just not a fan of blond hair. This show wouldn’t have been a comedy if it weren’t for good old Link. He truly did save the day.The stories on The Legend of Zelda weren’t much better than what Mario had, and with the exception of Link’s snappy dialogue, they weren’t half as funny. Of course, there was a lot more action and magic in Zelda. And as everyone knows, action + magic = cool. So do we have a winning formula on our hands? Apparently not. 13 episodes more or less means failure. But, there is that slim chance that failures can be good though. Just look at Undergrads, Mission Hill, and Clone High. All dropped after a single season, yet they’re all great shows.

All I have to say is that Zelda could have gone somewhere. I don’t see why it didn’t. It had the potential, it had the franchise, it had the theme song. But it seems the general public has failed us again and just didn’t want to give it the ratings necessary to keep it going. Oh well.

All in all, The Super Mario Bros Super Show was a pretty decent show. Some may argue that the live action was good, but I would rather have more cartoony fun. A few of you may criticize me for saying a couple bad words about the Legend of Zelda, and all I have to say to you is “Excuuuuuuuuse me, princess.” They weren’t the best cartoons on TV, but they were damn good while they lasted. So if you can, build some kind of show developing company some day and revive these shows. It will benefit all of mankind and make many, many fans very happy people.

***

Hey, I’m even going to give you a little bonus for visiting my site and reading this. Download away!
Do The Mario and enjoy! *offer expired*

Networking

Check it out! I joined the Newgrounds Fan-Net and got a cool little linky thing! It’s on The Other Page, so make sure you click it just so I get some points and my site get ranked higher. Right now I’m ranked 175 of over 8800. So I’m doing pretty good.
Other than that I really haven’t done much work yet, so don’t expect to see anything up until I get a digital cam, or at least get the one I have working. Well, thanks for stopping by. Later!

Post #3

Well, I found several things that I could use for my first “article”, but unfortunately, one is at a store off in Lac du Bonnet, and even if I did try one of my other options, I don’t have a digital camera for the photographic evidence. I need a job. So in other words, don’t expect to see much content for a while. If you can point me towards a cheap digital cam that is of reasonable quality, make your voice be heard. Please.

Post title

Hey! It’s been some time since I updated… Oh well, not like I ever get anything done. So I’ve figured out what I’m doing with the site! Yay progress! I’m gonna make like X-Entertainment and review stuff! Hooray for me! And you will read and enjoy and laugh at my funny funny jokes! so make sure you check out X-E to see what I’m so blatantly copying. But Matt has a lot more funny in him than I do, so you’ll probably enjoy his stuff a lot more than mine. At the same time I’m trying to learn how to do HTML so if a page looks really weird you know I didn’t use the easy page creator. Well, that about sums up the news for today. CHAO!

UPDATE – If anyone knows where I can find a hit counter graphic and how to make it work in HTML, please contact me. It’s probably really simple, but I’m lazy, so there.