[EXPRESSO] Kensuke’s Kingdom (2023) | Island Survival Of Age

While i wasn’t able to see the French animated film Arco, i was able to see this one, Kensuke’s Kingdom, which actually debutted at Annecy 3 years ago, but just now is in theathers here.

Better late than never, i guess.

Based on a children novel of the same name by Michael Molpurgo, Kensuke’s Kingdom is the story of Michael, whom is travelling with his family in a worlwide sailing trip, when he and his dog Stella (sneaked aboard by the boy) fall overboard during a storm, only to find themselves swept into an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean, which turns out to be inhabited by Kensuke, a WWII japanese struggler from Nagasaki….

I’ll be honest, i decided to see this mostly because i felt like spotting a unicorn when i saw the trailer for a modern animated film actually done in 2D animation that isn’t spun from some popular battle shonen manga, and indeed the 2D animation is as gorgeous as it looks, expecially the backgrounds are amazing, though i find it funny that this also shares an island survival theme with that Ghibli coproduced French-Belgian film from 2016, The Red Turtle.

Most likely a coincidence since this one takes more stylistical clues from French-Belgian comics and it’s more a family film, down to being a fairly typical coming of age story at heart, complete with the boy and his dog, but it’s done fairly well, because you end up caring for the characters, and the themes of friendship and caring for nature don’t feel preachy because the movie also doesn’t shy away from darker scenes to balance things out, and it doesn’t gloss over Kensuke’s backstory and what it obviously entails.

Overall a familiar but well done coming of age story that’s moving AND sports amazing visuals.

Juufuutei Raden’s Guide for Pixel Museum STEAM [REVIEW] | In It For The (Picross) Art

I usually stick to Nintendo consoles for Picross titles, but since this is basically the first time Jupiter releases one of their Picross game across multiple platforms (and it was on sale) i opted for the Steam version, this is also on Switch and it has since released on PS4/PS5 and Xbox consoles too.

Plus, i figured it would be a perfect fit for mouse controls… and it is.

The only difference is that Nintendo owns the Picross brand, so the Steam and other releases just drop the “Picross” moniker from the title, and refer to the puzzles themselves as “picture puzzles”, as in nonograms, more commonly known for the “sudoku” type of configuration.

Seems kinda pointless to discuss gameplay as the series has basically been Jupiter’s Dynasty Warriors, meaning they put out a lot of Picross games that basically play the same (even more than most Dynasty Warriors subseries, actually) but have a different license/s sticked onto to entice the various fanbases into trying the formula, like the Kemono Friends one, the Overlord one, and this time Hololive themed, specifically about Juufutei Raden from the REGLOSS unit.

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[EXPRESSO] Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition (2026) | 50 Years Of Eddie

To celebrate their 50^th anniversary, Iron Maiden released this new film biopic thingie, Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition, in theathers, i mean, why the fuck not?

This being an anniversary milestone film, it does do what you’d expect from most music biopics or docs, as in, we get a chronological recollection of the band history over it’s 50 years history, from the humble beginnings, the rise to fame, them being on top of the world, the falls from graces, etc.

Burning Ambition i will admit does give the formula a little neat twist by letting the fans chime in themselves and not just as disembodied audio, with the band members instead providing voiceover commentary and narration over archive footage without appearing themselves, and we get fans from all kinds of backgrounds, be other rock-metal celebrities like Lars Ulrich, actor Javier Bardem (no kidding), or – more interestingly – Polish fans that in the 80s got to see the band despite the Soviet regime rule, or survivors of the conflicts in Lebanon connect with their music.

While the “fan focus” is a nice thing, it makes the whole thing come off as less sincere, basically using them to validate opinions they already wanted/expected to hear, plus there isn’t much we haven’t seen before, the pacing is kinda weird, with the narration skimping over some of the less “glorious” periods like the 90s or most of the less flattering details, and while obviously fans already know the songs by heart, i feel the music itself could have been given a bit more space.

Overall, Burning Ambition it’s a bit too “domesticated” all things considered, more interested in being a nostalgic trip down memory lane to promote their new upcoming tour, yet it’s perfectly watchable and entertaining, a decent time for Iron Maiden fans.

Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All! 2 PS4 [REVIEW] | Fist Of The Roman Star: Ceasar’s Rage 2

As i said in the review of the first Slap Them All, they quickly made a follow up game 2 years later (as in 2022 Mr. Nutz Studio released that awful Joe & Mac port-remake), simply titled Asterix & Obelix: Slap Em All! 2, and while i was planning to review this next year… by coincidence i ended up playing it and finishing it far earlier than planned, so

Sure, that will leave Mission Babylon as the only new Asterix & Obelix game by Microids to review next year, but whatever,

This time around the plot is original, and concerns the theft of an important Roman insigna, the Aquila (literally “Eagle”, a golden eagle insigna), which is blamed on Lutetian friends of the Gaul duo, and so Asterix & Obelix venture to find out who actually stole the Aquila and why, before they execute the entire Lutetian village as retribution, so important is the Aquila in political leverage terms for the Roman Empire than losing it is seen as a great public shame for the reigning emperor.

It’s not a bad plot, it’s fine, and at least it’s not just Ceasar once again throwing a scheme to finally conquer those pesky Gaul villagers.

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Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All! PS4 [REVIEW] | Rock Em & Sock Em Romans

Because i’m slowly turning April into the “Asterix & Obelix” month, and due to a new CGI animated film, Asterix & Obelix: The Kingdom Of Nubia, releasing this October, we’re doing more of the Microids published Asterix titles.

Since we did all the titles in the XXL subseries of Asterix & Obelix games, we’re now tackling a retro styled 2D beat em up, the fittingly titled Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All!

The story is based on 5 classic Asterix & Obelix stories, plus an original final act, so if you were hoping for an original story, you aren’t getting that here, but the picks are indeed some of the more recognizable and beloved stories from the comic book series, like Asterix and The Normans, Asterix In Spain and Asterix & Cleopatra.

The game is fuckin gorgeous, to the point i believe they blew their entire budget on the hand-drawn style graphics, as the cutscenes are just cheap character sprites/portraits talking at each other while the portraits just fade in an out, and while the art style it’s loyal to the comic strips, it means there also some sadly fitting “ethnic stereotypes” brought over as is from the decade olds comics, like the poor black guy that is the sightseeing dude on the pirate ship and is routinely knocked over when Asterix & Obelix casually terrorize them when traveling, or the random “asian pirate with nunchuks” mid-tier enemies that might as well have “Mickey Rooney doing yellowface” masks on.

Speaking of the cutscenes, at least they voiced these, can’t say the same for Asterix & Obelix XXXL: The Ram From Hibernia… but in similar fashion to that they cheaped out and didn’t bother to dub it in italian as well, despite the franchise being really popular here still.

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30 Years Of ROCKET LAWNCHAIR, Kombat In The Street and The Shark Summer Parter

SNK released an official video celebrating the Metal Slug’s 30th anniversary a few days ago.

The video itself it’s nothing too special, just a thank you using footage from all mainline Metal Slug games (and Metal Slug Defense-Attack too), but it ends with a message displayed on a NEO GEO cabinet: “MISSION REBOOT”.

Obviously a teaser for a potential new mailine game in the future, i’d argue about damn time since the new Saudi prince-owned SNK had been pushing out a plethora of F2P gacha titles using the Metal Slug license, ranging from crap to ok, MS Awakening was actually ok as in it was as close as you could get to a proper MS title…. for a F2P thing, so getting an actual, proper Metal Slug game would be nice.

I mean, given the current nostalgia-driven market and how it has been almost 2 decades since the last mainline MS game, Metal Slug 7, released for the DS in 2008, then ported-expanded on PSP, Metal Slug XX came out in 2009, and that version was rereleased on modern consoles back in 2018, almost a decade ago already.

So the fans have been starved enough, and this comes alongside PlayOn rereleasing a new version of the home console version of the Neo Geo hardware, the NEO GEO AES +, which will have newly made carts for the console but also will be compatible with the old ones.

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The Mummy Resurrection (2022) [REVIEW] | Budget Mummies

Since we’re getting a new Mummy movie meant as a stand-alone thing unrelated to the old, forsaken Dark Universe, i’ve figured instead of reviewing again 2017’s The Mummy and boring myself to tears, i might be more interesting to review a random mummy themed horror film i found new on Amazon for 4 bucks and bought sight unseen.

No prior research, just unwrapped the thing from my library and saw it, for a change.

The result of this dice throw is both not good, but also kinda interesting and not as bad as i would have assumed.

Still bad, but the more interesting kind of “bad”.

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Platformation Time Again #8: Yoshi’s Story N64

HISTORY

While nowadays the Yoshi Island subseries has mixed reception, the original sequel to Super Mario World was indeed (and still is) a classic, peculiar spin-off of the Mario formula, and Yoshi Story was the first follow up/sequel of sort to reiterate on the formula, developed by pretty much all the original team for the original Yoshi’s Island, minus Shigeru Miyamoto, here just supervisor instead of producer or director, that here being Hideki Konno, whose portfolio already included the original Yoshi’s Island and Super Mario Kart.

This one doesn’t have much in terms of production history or weird tidbits about its inception.

It was originally just called Yoshi Island 64 and meant for the ill-fated Japan only N64DD peripheral, the game – like many others – was moved from the floppy drive format to cartridge, and when revealed it was meant to also “flex” the 3D capabilities of the N64 alongside its 2D craft, which was peculiar of a stance to take when 3D was the new fangled tech and the industry was more than happy to join on the bandwagon of immediatly shaming the previous tech as obsolete junk in favour of “the future”, regardless the fact that in this case 3D turned out to be the future.

Also yes, you might remember this one in how Nintendo made the soundtrack available on a CD shaped like Yoshi’s face, similar to the one for Diddy Kong Racing.

While i possess a copy of its Virtual Console rerelease back on the Wii, i have used the version included in the N64 Nintendo Classics catalogue for Switch and Switch 2 (which requires to also have the Expansion Pak tier subscription), and yes, it was also available on the chinese N64-based IQue Player.

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Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank/Blazing Samurai (2022) [REVIEW] | “You know…. morons”

While i’m no Saberspark, i feel this deserves to be spotlighted for it’s such a weird, messy and obtuse piece of animation cinema and its tale has all the juicy bits, from misguided inception, development hell rot, leeching off an already established film, Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank has it all.

If nothing else because somehow a sequel/tie-in game for it was released last year and i recently found out to my complete bewilderment.

Nothing to with the Sega Genesis videogame Brutal: Paws Of Fury, they both just happened to be recycling Bubsy naming conventions for when you can’t be arsed to make jokes, just puns, and taking a martial arts-asian aesthetics, though for different reasons since The Legend Of Hank is not a ’90s film, but a product of the late 2000s-2010s, when it was still in vogue to remake foreign (often Asian) films for the “american-internation market”, in a way also a product of the same vein of racism already tapped into the 90s by most western shows and games.

For the youngins it might sound strange, but especially in the late 2000s you couldn’t blink without seeing America remake a Japanese horror film, heck, they even remade Park Chan Wook’s Old Boy, they couldn’t stand the idea of something not being western enough at the time, especially if it dared ail from a country in the Asian sphere, so to speak.

Unless Tarantino did it.

I say this because this movie was pitched in this climate, back in 2010, as Blazing Samurai, an animated remake of Mel Brook’s beloved western parody Blazing Saddles.

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Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman (1958) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

One thing that might surprise younger people is that despite its popularity, Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman ain’t a precursor on the trend of giant/miniaturized people, quite the opposite.

It’s also funny how is such a movie obviously conceived for the drive-in circuits, since it’s so short than of course it had to be shown as a double feature, that being Corman’s War Of The Satellites.

So short than to expand the runtime from 66 minutes to 75 for the TV version they had to basically reuse sequences, add a long crawl at the beginning and even fuck around with frames manipulation to artificially lenghten the thing. Jesus Christ, the desperation indeed.

In hindsight, one does learn to appreciate the efficiency of these cheap movies from the era, for better or worse they ended up not wasting your time as much as some crap movies now do, even if they clearly wanted to reach the standard 90 minutes, but in the “age of content”, these films being to the point are quite welcome in their brevity.

Even though often they are so more due to budget than anything else.

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