Ghost Pilots (Arcade Classics Archives Neo Geo) NSWITCHDDL [REVIEW] | My Very Own 194X

I love the Neo Geo, as in, i was a wee child that did always light up when the arcade cabinets started up with that logo and name, letting me know i was in for a good time.

I never owned a Neo Geo cabinet or one of their home consoles, so aside from the odd port on PS1 or PS2 collections, for me Neo Geo was something you went to the arcades, which already tells you how ancient (in prospective) i am, given how that market/scene ended up in the following decades.

That said, i’m glad i never encounted a Ghost Pilots machine, and to be honest i never even heard of this one until i found it and bought its Arcade Classics Archives release on the Nintendo eshop.

As to why, it’s because its one of those early releases for the Neo Geo based hardware that are better forgotten, left in their own little burrow in the ground, their own little cubicle in videogame history.

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[EXPRESSO] The Ugly Stepsister (2025) | Body Horrorella ( 🎶rella rella rella 🎶)

So we’re doing a horror version of Cinderella, and it’s not a Jagged Edge Productions joint?

Color me surprised, it’s an actual film with real budgets, a Norwegian produced retelling of the Cinderella fable in a more twisted fashion, with the widow Rebekka marrying an old nobleman that almost immediatly dies, meaning her daughters Elvira and Alma are joined by their new step-sister, Agnes, a stark contrast to Elvira, who’s considered fat and ugly but is groomed (as is prepped) by her mother to undergo grueling surgery and training to become beautiful, in order to marry into royalty, especially the prince, whom Elvira pines for.

It’s a satirical black comedy take on the fairytale (also taking some of the more graphic ideas from the Grimm’s version) that’s also heavy on body horror, because The Substance made that a trend again…. and surprisingly a lot of straight up gross out graphic content, both played for humour as well as simple shock value.

If you expected a more psychological horror affair this ain’t it, The Ugly Stepsister will see horror films that have subtlety and nail their hypothetical balls to the walls, and put salt maggots on the opened sack, as it revels in its bluntness and its “period piece” with faux classical styled version of modern pop songs in the background.

It is funny, the main conflict between Elvira and Agnes is compelling as neither is depicted as an actual “evil” figure, as their pushed into it by societal standards, but on this regard, anything else that isn’t about them (well, mostly Elvira) feels underdeveloped or lost in its own stylistical pot-pourry, like how the satyrical, modern feminist take on the fable almost ends up reafferming the very values its so obviously wants to mock.

Still quite entertaining and decently realized.

[EXPRESSO] The Toxic Avenger (2023) | Punk Pretend

Yes, Troma is still around, and just the fact the Toxic Avenger reboot is a big budget PG-13 rated film with big Hollywood actors is already indicative that yes, in this case – to paraphrase Grasshopper Manifacture’s motto – “Punk Is Dead”, coming off as a clear admission that, despite all that clammering, now they do actually want to be like Hollywood and ain’t even trying to mask it.

The plot is basically the same as the 1984 original, but tries to update the concept for modernity, changing some details and adding new characters, and making it more about family (since “Toxie” has a troubled stepson to care for) but basically keeping the idea of a derided janitor falling victim to radioactive waste, which mutate him into a superhero monster, The Toxic Avenger, ready to take down evil, and in this case exact revenge on the evil big pharma company that bamboozled the entire town of St. Roma Ville ( ah ah), harassed its citizens and pollute its waters.

And it’s all presented as subversive like the original was… in 1984.

Sure there is some splatter violence, but it’s kinda tame, even in the international unrated cut, today the ol’ excesses of the company are nothing.

It’s not even that unwatchable, ironically, it’s still trash like the original but that became a cult film for reasons, which do include its sincerity, here completely gone, as this remake also sucks out any of its anti-establishment, alternative, subversive and controversial qualities, being just domesticated and tarted up hollow trash.

Even worse, it’s just so desperate in wanting people to like it, to elect it as their new favourite “so bad it’s good” flick, which itself it’s old hat too.

It’s just fuckin pathetic, even more than it wants to come off as.

The Spooktacular Eight #31: Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)

As an Italian, it always tickled me silly how back in the late 2000s EA’s idea for competiting with Sony’s God Of War franchise was to pillage The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri and basically transform it into a power fantasy action game about saving a damsel in distress, which happens to be done by traversing Hell as described by the Tuscanian poet.

I guess because it was a well known public domain literary work that would also work as a quick and dirty band-aid to feign some refinement, and to be honest everyone was jumping on the hack n slash action game bandwagon at the time, so of course EA would have tried their hands at it.

Still feels fuckin random because they could just have made a Roman Empire themed hack n slash, but i guess they couldn’t push a marketing campaign literally encouraging to “go to hell” and the “sin to win” marketing shizzle.

I’m not even offended because this is so fuckin american it’s hilarious, i mean, sure, it’s based on Alighieri’s first book of The Divine Comedy as in it has the concept of venturing through Hell, it has a guy named Dante, a gal named Beatrice, and The Devil(TM) sure, it’s the same thing.

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[EXPRESSO] Pokemon Legends ZA NSWITCH 2 | Mega Starmie From Space

Pokemon spin-off time with Pokemon Legends ZA, bringing us back to the 7^th gen and the Kalos region of Pokemon X & Y.

5 years have passed from the defeat of Team Flare, and as a new trainer, you get involved in not only the new main attraction of Lumiose City, the night-bound Royale ZA, but also the strange events that see wild Pokemon undergo uncontrolled Mega Evolutions in the city, maybe related to the new company hired to rebuilt the city, and the reapparance of the mythical pokemon Zygarde…

Gameplay iterates on Legend Arceus foundations, but changing the focus from exploration to battles, now a real time affair with moves operating on cooldowns, which is strangely intuitive, works really well and provides some needed freshness to the classic formulas.

Also, i love how often deliberately goofy the new Mega Evolutions are.

On the downside, it does indeed take all place in a big open world city, which is bigger than i anticipated, has some fun sidequests and some internal variety (thanks to designated wild areas where to catch pokemons) but isn’t quite as packed or varied as a Yakuza game, and also suffers some incredibly archaic movement mechanics.

Speaking of archaic, even on Switch 2 we have the same modern issue of Game Freak being handled EDF style budgets (comparatively) for games that sells gorillions, but have jpeg windows and characters with great designs sporting lypsynched words with no voice acting.

The story is good, even the NPCs have hilarious shit to say, the city it still rewarding to explore and there is a decent amount of content, i had a good time with it, more than i expected, but this could and should have been even better, for many – that should by now be obvious – reasons.

The Spooktacular Eight # 30: Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead (2012)

Can’t believe we’re finally doing this, but after post-poning it for years and basically featuring every other Noburo Iguchi film, it’s time to go deeper into the septic tank with one of the lesser known films from the well known (among the expected circles) gonzo gorefest-pink film-tokusatsu extraordinarie director, his Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead.

What a fuckin title. Can’t say you didn’t know what it was about when you walked in.

I would love to play the “what has this blog gone to?” bit more but i was this close to feature Monsturd in a previous Spooktacular Eight, but didn’t, not yet, hope this literal zombie shit fest will do as i also consider it kinda the “cut off” film for Iguchi, even though he didn’t actually stop making films like these, heck, the same year as Zombie Ass he also directed the aptly titled segment “Fart” for ABCs Of Death, and his last movie is 2023’s romance anthology Tales Of Bliss And Heresy.

So while his career didn’t die, i guess the foreign fan and specialized press interest around japanese horror gorefest with ludicrous premises, excessive displays and absurd special effects kinda petered out around that time, and i would assume this would be the case in Japan too, though that didn’t stop other directors to put out similar stuff like Bloody Delinquent Chainsaw Girls live action adaptation (which i didn’t know got two sequels in 2019, taking notes).

Enough foreplay, what is Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead about?

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[EXPRESSO] After The Hunt (2025) | Woke Chungus Season

Luca Guadagnino’s new movie is out here as well, After The Hunt.

The plot sees a philosophy professor at Yale finding herself in a thorny situation when, close to receiving a professorship in the teaching subject, a student of hers confesses that the professor’s assistant raped her, but him denies the accusation and rebukes of the student also blatantly plagiarizing her thesis.

It’s a battle of optics-vs-ethics, academy drama and also a bout of pretending that the movie its actually trying to present the characters so you won’t be able to label anyone as “right” or “wrong”, as the script so obviously takes sides it’s almost funny in how paper thinly disguises what it actually thinks, like if we have high profile actors discussing philosophy it will have make movie and dialogue smart.

Even more intellectually insulting are the weak attempts to backpedal towards the end, with the rushed as hell epilogue set 4/5 years laters that feels like it realized last second this is all old hat, and not really worth rediscussing when the current situation is so much worse … not that the epilogue itself helps in anything but making the whole thing even more of a farce.

Also, it’s confusingly toothless for a Guadagnino directed film, that should be provocative and uncomfortable but feels comforting as in, this is reheating the #metoo talking points in a meandering, meaningless and way too late to the party fashion it’s almost “cute”.

If it wasn’t so goddamn boring and shallow, heck, i had my issues with Eddington but even that was more entertaining and aware of the themes and events of the recent past and how they factored in the current sociopolitical scenarios.

Some great performances mean little when the film feels engineered for fishing nominations more than anythin else.

The Spooktacular Eight #28: Suburban Sasquatch (2004)

Enough of Mark Polonia’s stuff, let’s go deeper into the homegrown cinema territory with a “classic” by David Wascavage, Suburban Sasquatch.

Sometimes you think you know a certain genre, then see shit like this or Fungicide that makes you realize, yes, we can go lower than an early Polonia Bros direct-to-video film made in the late 90s, there is a 10^th circle of movie hell… or heaven, depending on whom you ask.

If you ever wondered what those Donald Trump VS Bigfoot VS Nazi Shark fuckin movies would have looked like if they were made in the 90s, and were somehow worse than Curse Of Bigfoot… well, wonder no more, because while this was made in 2004, it looks like the first Feeders film or something like that, it’s that territory of shooting your own shit with pocket change (and some “locally sourced” weed as stand-in for salaries) as budget, with your friends as “actors” and location shooting meaning you most likely recorded the footage (“filmed” is too strong of a word) somewhere in some woods or field near your home, or inside a friends’ house.

This is HIGH amateur hour stuff, my fellows bad movie buffs, so amateur it hurts.

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Pokemon Scarlet/Violet DLC: Treasures Of The Area Zero (Indigo Mask and Indigo DISK) NSWITCH [REVIEW] | Ogremaxxin

Figured i’ve write down my thoughts on the DLC for Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, i said it would take me a while because i wanted to wait for patches before even considering paying for the expansion pass, alongside any news on Pokemon Legends ZA, which i will cover in an EXPRESSO review soon enough and will do a full lenght review at my own leisure.

I’m gonna do a single review because unlike with Pokemon Sword/Shield, the DLC content is actually structured to be two parts that follow up on each other, instead of unrelated new locations in the map with their contained story and actitivities, but i’m gonna split the review in two, for the sake of argument and critique more than utilitarian observation that – once again – it not like you can pick and choose to buy either part; if there is DLC for a Pokemon game, you either buy it all or none, this has been the recent trend for the Game Freak developed mainline titles so far.

Before that, i will comment that i honestly i barely notice whatever the patches have done, aside from less crashes and weird glitches, but i was already lucky on that regard, and i haven’t revisited thouroghly the main base game world and its locations to notice any big change or fix, apparently there are less NPCs in some hub areas or cities now in order to improve framerate, which is pathetic. It is.

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[EXPRESSO] The Black Phone 2 (2025) | Nightmare Lake Camp Winter Massacre

The Black Phone 2 it’s a direct sequel, yes, but one to a movie with a definitive, unambigous ending, as Blumhouse figured it could order a sequel regardless since the first one was a critical and financial success, with most of the same cast and director too.

I guess why not since the Nightmare In Elm Street series has been MIA since 2010, so might as well turn a sequel that really didn’t need to exist into a replacement of sorts for that, with a dash of Friday The 13^th.

Yeah, it’s the MEGAN 2.0 kind of sequel, minus the fact that this is still a horror film, just a different one than the first.

At the end of the first movie, Finn did manage to kill the serial killer known as The Grabber and escape from his murder basement, becoming famous as the killer only survivor.

4 years after, Finn’s sister, Gwen, is suddendly getting dreams of getting phone calls from a black phone and seeing visions of 3 boys getting chased in a winter mountain camp called “Alpine Lake”, alongside ones of the deceased serial killer…

It’s actually good, they did manage to actually pull off this kind of sequel by working around what was done in the script for the first film (in this case by leveraging the supernatural aspect), managing to spun a follow up that might actually have been intended to exist all along, bring back the villain and have a solid atmosphere, good characters and some creepy shit.

It’s a bit longer than it needed to, the 80s filter it’s a bit excessive, but it also does enough to add its own flavor to the formula, and despite the concept it works, giving even more closure and being even more “sequel proof”. Hopefully.