Thoughts about Action 52

Action 52 is one of the most infamous games ever made. The games have poor graphics and controls, are riddled with bugs and game-breaking glitches, and overall, the whole package seems like it has very little care put into it - and it cost $200 on release. By now, these points have been beaten to death and driven into the ground a million times over. By the time the Angry Video Game Nerd did several videos on it back in 2010, I was 14 years old and had already been interested in the game for some time; for some reason, I had developed a fascination with bad bootlegs from an era of consoles I'd never even played. There's about a million snarky webpages from around that era (and even modern) explaining in agonizing detail how every game in the collection is a putrid fuckload of ass-cheeks... you get the point.

So anyway, how did it turn out this way? Why does Action 52 exist the way that it does? Well, in the early 2010s, stories from its creators started to come out, telling the tale of an old guy who saw his son playing a bootleg multicart, and thought it would be a great idea to sell one of those legitimately. Clearly though, he didn't understand anything about how video games were made, since he ended up hiring a couple of teenagers and giving them three months to create 52 games after one week of training. This, in my opinion, makes Action 52 The American Dream Game, and frankly, I don't think anyone could have done a significantly better job under those circumstances. And recently, I realized that despite all the times that this game took over some of my thinking patterns, I had not given the games on it a honest shot! I'm sure I lightly touched them on an emulator a long time ago, but most of these games are in fact somewhat playable, and you can choose to meet them where they're at! So for the time being, I've decided to do just that.

Obviously, these games aren't exactly the cream of the crop, so I want to give them some kind of "interest rating", a vague evaluation of the ways the games work/suck tickle my brain or not. I also want to detail, if I can, the way the games make me feel while it's still fresh in my mind. It'll be fairly surface-level stuff, I'm not some kind of writing genius who has a lot to say about games, or an oddball person with revolutionary thoughts about this sort of thing. In fact, I don't really play a lot of games at all, because they tend to bounce off me very easily. In my opinion, it's probably easier for me to think about the oddities in these because they are so simple and small.

Fire Breathers	Star Evil	Illuminator	G-Force Fighters
Ooze

Game #1: Fire Breathers

TBA

Game #2: Star Evil

Since this is the first single-player game in the collection, it's often considered the first "real game" in Action 52. Somewhat famously, Star Evil starts you right in front of a box that kills you within the first second if you don't move to the left right away. It's a very simple vertical space shooter. Enemies hardly pose a threat in this game, since you can fire as much as you like, and it seems that enemies don't even spawn if you fire constantly (possibly due to object limits). The primary threat in this game is the walls in the levels, and if you're anything like me, you'll notice that your hitbox in this game seems to be somewhat to the left of where you'd expect it to be. Somehow, this is the part of the game that felt the most interesting to me; it meant that I had to dodge walls more widely on the left, and could hug them really closely on the right, I could even overlap a little bit, although I didn't really test the limits too hard.

It's commonly noted that the boss sometimes doesn't spawn, and I figured this might be due to some sort of object limit, so I stopped spamming fire as much as I could, and it seemed to stop happening? That said, there was one time where I killed the boss and it still didn't take me to the next stage, which I guess is not the kind of bug that's very interesting at all. Thankfully, the stages are short, and at only three stages, the game itself isn't too long. The boss is the same on every stage, and it's just a big square ship that moves around randomly in the cardinal directions. It's not like it's completely brainless; if you expect to survive if you just stay at the bottom of the screen the entire time, the boss can hit you if it decides to move around at its lowest point, so you might have to cut your losses and move up to dodge it. If your health is high enough, you can also move in the opposite direction as the boss to sort of "damage boost" through it in a pinch.

Hilariously, the second stage also starts with a chunk of wall in your face, but it's even closer than on the first stage, and you're guaranteed to take damage from it. The second stage is also more difficult than the first, because there are a lot more walls coming down the middle, with the aforementioned weird dodging due to the off-center hitbox. Stage 3 is pretty unremarkable, however, and after completing it, "Stage 4" is just a pink screen with slowed down music that plays the shooting noise if you try to shoot, so it's considered the end of the game. All in all, it was interesting enough to give me some confidence that it might be a good idea to look at more of these games.
Personal Interest Rating: 5.5/10

Game #3: Illuminator

Illuminator is a side-view game where you mostly just climb up and down ladders. You also have a jump, and a gun, although I think it's a flashlight? All of the jumping in Action 52 controls rather strangely, and this one is probably worse than most, since it won't register a jump at all if you're not moving. On top of that, holding the jump button down while moving won't let you move horizontally, so you have to tap the button and let go immediately to get horizontal movement out of your jump. Thankfully, it doesn't get in the way that much.

This game is hilarious. The standard enemies simply move left and right, turning around when they hit a gap or come too close to the edge of the screen. The shadow enemies move slightly faster, but also tend to bug out and not move at all. A few seconds after killing an enemy, the lights go out and you can't see much other than the floor, and when the enemies move in front of a ladder. After you kill an enemy, another one spawns, and most commonly, it'll spawn on the same layer you just got a kill on. This can happen basically in front of you, perhaps even on top of you, and when the lights are off, good luck noticing that!

There are ten stages total. To win a stage, you have to kill a certain number of enemies; at some point, enemies will stop spawning, and killing off the remaining ones will let you move on. In the first two stages, there are no gaps at all, and in most other stages, there's not much of a reason to interact with gaps at all. Falling into a gap kills you in mid-air, which will be a recurring theme throughout the collection. However, you don't even need to jump to cross the gaps; by walking over the gaps, you will sink into the floor, allowing you to jump out afterwards, so overall, the gaps have far lower stakes than intended. Another thing about the game that's rather helpful is that only stage 1 and 3 have walls at the edges; all other stages let you wrap around the screen horizontally, keeping you safe against all enemies, and letting you easily despawn the bats that appear from level 4 onward, which would be an absolute menace otherwise.

Because of all the ways this game functions, trying to beat the game at all costs turns into an increasingly abstract experience, as the enemies move faster every stage. I ended up spending most of the time waiting at the edges, for enemies to spawn on the same layer as me. Level 10 felt the weirdest, as it seemed to take a lot more time to spawn the enemy on occasion; due to the darkness, I'm not really sure why that was, but it still kept me scared to move. So I guess it's sort of effective? I don't dislike this game at all, figuring it out was kind of like a weird tedious puzzle box, which is likely the best I can hope for from these games.

Additional notes: One time when spawning in on level 7, I was immediately feasted on by several bat spawns. It's really funny that halfway through the game, battery pickups start spawning, and they don't have any effect on the gameplay. The music is pretty good.
Personal Interest Rating: 7/10

Game #4: G-Force Fighters

Unfortunately, this one is basically completely unremarkable. It's a side-scrolling shooter with basically no stakes, just enemies that die right away. You can move in all directions, and shoot right. You can have one bullet out at a time. It has three extremely short stages, after which it loops. It's very easy to beat. The only thing worth noting about it is that enemies sometimes shoot tiny bullets that move left very slowly. Music is not interesting. That's all.
Personal Interest Rating: 1/10

Game #5: Ooze

Ooze is a big deal. It always comes pre-selected on the game selection screen, despite being the fifth game in the collection. This is because of its funny backstory: a contest to win $104,000 if you could prove that you beat the game, that no one completed because the game crashed after level 2. However, in the revised version of the game, this crash is fixed, and the game is actually beatable. It's also a big deal because I spent several days trying to actually beat it. As I've had so much time to look at it at this point, I am going to divide this part into subsections.

Levels

Ooze is a platformer where your character has a gun; you can have one bullet on screen at a time. Level 1 introduces the basics of the gameplay. There is a floor running across the bottom of the level. There are occasional gaps in the floor, and singular bubble blocks are strewn all over the screen. These bubble blocks are semi-solid; you can atop them, but they do not block your movement, and you cannot hit your head on them. This level introduces three enemies. Most common is the basic slime, which can shoot bullets in the player's direction seemingly at random. Next is the drops coming from the ceiling, which cannot be killed with the gun. Lastly, there are occasional big blue blobs that move rather cutely across the floor, which also cannot be killed. They're big and rather difficult to jump over reliably, so if there are any bubble platforms nearby, it's safest to jump on those. Level 1 is not very difficult once you get used to it, and the gameplay probably makes the most sense out of all the levels.

Level 2 is the easiest level in the game. There are no enemies on the floor; there are mostly only drops coming from the ceiling, and this time, they can be shot. There is the occasional slime perched on a bubble block, and they might shoot occasionally, but they don't pose much of a threat. This is the only stage where the bubble platforms are fully solid. You can run through it very fast, and generally, you only have to watch out for a few bubble blocks that can cut your jumps short.

Level 3 is a lot like Level 2, but somewhat more annoying. There's no bubble platforms at all in this one, but many of the drops start close to the floor, so you might have to stop or take more risks to get to the end. Otherwise, it's completely unremarkable.

In Level 4, things get serious. It's more similar to Level 1, although there are no bubble platforms, and there are no slimes shooting down, although there are falling drops. However, the slimes on the ground now move much faster, and your bullets can miss them... more on that later. There are a few "bridges" made of blocks with gaps between them, which are raised from where the floor normally is. There are four big blue blobs in this stage.

Level 5 has more height variety still; as a result, it feels a little more designed compared to what came before. Unfortunately, the gameplay doesn't really feel like it at all now that the slimes move even faster than they did in Level 4! It's very difficult, and basically only for the wrong reasons. There are a few blue blobs, but they hardly feel like a threat in this stage. Some of the slimes appear in places where you cannot hit them without dropping down into their path, and it's tough! Some of them get additional help from a well-placed drop falling from the ceiling, which will slow you down and give the enemies time to shoot at you.

Finally, the last level, Level 6 arrives, and it's completely different from the rest of the stages. It was probably the most "interesting" of all the stages. Most of what you'll be walking on is bubble platforms; there are very few normal platforms left, and some of them will leave you with no way off of them, so you'll have to avoid getting on them entirely. Thankfully, this means that there are very few moving slimes, since they're all sitting still on the bubble platforms. However, this does mean you'll be jumping around quite a bit, getting to the right heights to deal with them, to give you the best chance to move forward; a poorly placed random bullet can really screw you over in this stage. This is likely the first stage where you'll be jumping high enough to notice that the spike-shaped-ish ceiling in this game kills you, which means you shouldn't jump from blocks that are too high up. It's also the stage where you're most likely to die in mid-air from falling more than 4 blocks in height. There are no more blue blobs, just you and this weird puzzle-ish environment where you're trying to kill as many things as possible from afar, and making the occasional risky jump. At the end, you get your epic reward: a screen telling you to take a photo of it and send it to an address, including the personal code which is the same in every copy of the game. Gnarly.

Quirks & Bugs

This game has problems. While Illuminator was somewhat unfair, most of its unfairness could be avoided entirely by playing it very safely. This will help a lot in Ooze, but you cannot avoid its gameplay issues completely. The bullets have a chance to miss the slimes and travel through them, which seems to happen much more often in the later levels where the slimes move faster. This makes levels 4 and 5 far more difficult than they probably should be; you cannot move fast and play reactively to enemies spawning, as there is a very chance you will just not hit them, and since they walk faster than you and the jump is finicky, you likely won't be able to avoid them at this point. Your best bet is to remember where the enemies spawn, or just walk slowly, and once they appear, shoot as much as you can while standing still.

The bullets also behave oddly when the screen moves: they move along with the screen, seemingly making them even more likely to miss enemies, further increasing the effectiveness of slow, safe gameplay. And in Level 5, you're never really safe from missing; you need luck to be on your side a little bit.

The jumping has most of the same problems as it did in Illuminator, although you can at least jump without holding a movement key now. However, the gaps will actually kill you in this game.

Some of the things that happen in this game are just plain strange. Level 2 and 3 are prone to strange bugs and glitches. I've seen tiles that aren't supposed to be there, drop patterns that I'm pretty sure weren't there before, and on two occasions, the entire game glitched out; I happened to get a recording of it, which is shown above. However, perhaps weirdest of all, I've seen the unused enemy from this game spawn twice in Level 3... I'd really like to see an in-depth technical resource on this game that could explain why stuff like this happens.

Other things & verdict

Early on, this game made me realize that the music in Action 52 is honestly pretty good. It's much better than I thought it was in the past. I liked the song in Illuminator already, but this one is really quite charming. The instrumentation is simple, but when the little triangle melody comes in, you might understand what I'm talking about. It has like, progressions, and stuff. It's nice, and I didn't completely hate it after playing this frustrating game over and over.

This game is hard and unfair. Whether the things it does made me laugh or just kind of irritated me depended mostly on my mood and mindset, it can be quite funny to get fucked over by some nonsense. That said, I don't really like that it can't be played very reliably. I guess that simultaneously makes it more and less interesting, and the rest of the game is kind of middling. It's like, fine. It's difficult mostly because of the bugs. I'm glad I beat it.
Personal Interest Rating: 5/10