Later this month, it’ll be time for WWE’s annual PPV the Royal Rumble. Despite the Rock/CM Punk main event, the real draw for me is – and always will be – the 30-man Royal Rumble match. No matter my feelings on the current WWE product, I’ll always be game for this annual match. I’ve already shown my love for it with a big list of my favorites, so it’s not like I can visit that well again.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the pie that the Rumble is a piece of. It’s an offshoot of the whole battle royal concept and while the “one man enters every two minutes” thing makes it the best version of the battle royal, there’s much to be said about the match type. I have no idea when the first battle royal started, but there’s something so fun about a gigantic match of every dude in the area fighting it out at once to see who’s the best. It gives a real feeling of unpredictability as even though a couple guys in there may have a real shot at winning, the idea that it’s anyone’s game from the very beginning is appealing.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to begin 20 Days of Battle Royals. No list of worst-to-best like I’d usually do. Just a look, in chronological order, of notable battle royals from the various big wrestling companies. A lot of these I’ve seen and recall fondly. Some are terrible pieces of wrestling history that are worth poking fun at. A couple I’ve never even seen before, but recognize them as notable enough to discuss.

Some honorable mentions that I won’t give full entries to because I’ve covered them in some way before over the years:

– The Royal Rumbles, natch. This includes the 15-man Rumble they had on Smackdown in 2004 to create a #1 contender for Brock Lesnar at No Way Out.

– The ECW King of the Hill Battle Royal, which was like a Royal Rumble only tag teams were allowed to enter together under the idea that if they won, they’d split the winnings. Coincidentally, the first episode of ECW TV I’ve ever seen.

– A ridiculous 108-man Royal Rumble put together on New Year’s Eve by Big Japan Pro Wrestling, Dramatic Dream Team and Kaientai Dojo.

– The Wrestlemania battle royals. I’ve also covered these in my old Wrestlemania Countdown and while I suppose I could touch on the dark match battle royals they’ve done, none were notable enough to make the final cut. Though Heidenreich and Hurricane briefly befriending each other sure was fun.

Look how pumped Simon Dean is!

– The Immunity Battle Royal from Survivor Series 2001. With the main event being WWF vs. the WCW/ECW Alliance with the winning side getting complete control, they had a battle royal of midcarders where the winner was immune to being fired. Alliance member Test winning made the main event even more obvious than it already was.

– The 15-man Brisbane Cup Battle Royal in 2009. I haven’t mentioned this one before and I really don’t know who won and there’s no footage of the entire thing. I only mention it here as an excuse to post this clip.

I’ll start it off tomorrow as we go all the way back to 1987.

It’s been a long time… I shouldn’t have left you. But:

Next week. 0900 each day.

1. “Coded Language, Man-Made Laws”
2. “If they had my sense they would not serve any master in the world.”
3. “There could never really be justice on stolen land.”
4. “I can’t pay no doctor bills (but Whitey’s on the moon).”
5. “…if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”
6. “Jump at de sun.”
7. “Negro from necro, meaning death: I overcame it so they named me after it.”
Bonus track: “Am I wrong ’cause I wanna get it on ’til I die?”
Stay tuned.

Welcome to a peculiar edition of ThWiP. You see, barely anything came out this week in terms of American comics. That means that for once, Gaijin Dan is the star of the show, dominating the floor with all of his manga offerings. Jody and I each have one panel to share while Space Jawa has something from last week that I’m including for the hell of it.

Aquaman #15
Geoff Johns and Paul Pelletier

Avenging Spider-Man #15.1
Chris Yost and Paco Medina

Bleach #519
Tite Kubo

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I wanted to write a Rocky article on December 26th because of it being Boxing Day and all, but then I got in a rotten blizzard-based car accident and that ruined my last couple of days. Luckily, nobody was hurt, but my wallet’s taking a hit. Feeling a bit down, I figured to hell with it. Writing about Dolph Lundgren might cheer me up a little.

I love the Rocky series. The first one is a genuinely great film and what follows is an excessive tour through the 80’s. It loses its inspiration for Rocky II, becomes cartoony fun in Rocky III and Rocky IV, becomes a complete shell of itself in Rocky V (though let’s be fair, “Get up, you son of a bitch! Because Mickey loves you…” redeemed it ever so slightly) and Stallone went out of his way to make Rocky Balboa happen, thereby leaving the series on a critical high note. Despite my unhealthy love for Mr. T and the way Rocky III is responsible for helping shape the landscape of mainstream professional wrestling, my favorite of the series has always been Rocky IV.

Rocky IV is so enjoyable in its simplicity. It’s a movie with two plot points: Drago kills Apollo and Rocky defeats Drago. Also, there’s a robot in it for no reason. There’s a robot and Rocky’s brother-in-law reprograms it to have a sexy lady voice.

The thing the movie is mostly remembered for is the antagonist, Ivan Drago. Of all the Rocky opponents, Drago gets the least screen time. He’s mostly spoken for by the Soviet representatives and his wife. When he does speak (he has a total of nine lines), he usually comes off as a cold monster, devoid of any humanity. That’s on the surface, though. On the surface, Rocky IV is the story of the Soviets coming to America to smugly show off their boxing superman, leading to Rocky Balboa watching his good friend Apollo Creed die in an attempt to defend his country’s honor. Rocky then avenges his friend by taking down the big Russian and gives a rallying speech that wins over the commies.

I’ve watched the movie enough to notice that there’s more to it and especially more to Drago. You see, while Rocky is indeed a pawn in a Cold War battle, he doesn’t appear to understand the true nature of what’s going on around him. What I’m saying is that as far as I see it, Ivan Drago is the true protagonist of Rocky IV.

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The exact moment the atomic bomb stopped being abstract, a symbol of America’s cultural and military superiority, was partway through my first and — so far — only viewing of the anime adaptation of Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen. I don’t remember exactly when I saw it, but I googled around and it was probably around 1994 or 1995. I’d have been a pre-teen at the time, old enough to rent movies but not old enough to have my own money to rent those. I cajoled my mom into bringing that one home because the other options were probably some Masami Obari flicks with sexy girls on the cover. Barefoot Gen was the safest choice, I guess because it looked like a movie for kids. It had a little boy running on the cover, right?

It’s about Gen, a young child living in Hiroshima, and it chronicles his life before and after Little Boy was dropped on the town. It’s really good, but I’ve only ever watched it once. I dubbed it off onto a tape after, and I later bought it on DVD, because I feel like it’s a movie that I need to own. It feels important.

It feels important because it devastated me as a kid. It’s been long enough that I don’t remember every little detail, or even how it ended. But I do remember the shots of the plane flying over the town, the way the map of the town snapped from color to black and white with a bright orange cloud once the bomb went off, and the horrors that followed. Humans flashing to dust, melting in the heat, and dying slowly in their own homes while begging and praying for someone to help their children.

I still don’t really cry at movies, but I sobbed my guts out watching Barefoot Gen and probably would if I watched it again. The last movie to give me that reaction was Spike Lee’s When The Levees Broke. I got so mad and sad at the utterly pointless loss of life and needless trauma that I just couldn’t take it. I bought the sequel, God Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise, like 18 months ago and still haven’t watched it, because I figure I’ll react the same way again.

Barefoot Gen is an important movie to me because it turned an abstract idea concrete. “The atomic bomb is awe-inspiring and amazing, a true triumph for America!” turned into “The atomic bomb is awful. We murdered innocent people and the effects are still being felt today.” I’ve spent most of my life on or around air force bases, and as a kid, war was exciting. Fighter pilots, right? Glamorous. Awesome. But I didn’t understand the cost. I didn’t understand collateral damage, acceptable losses, and war crimes.

I was a kid then. I’m glad I learned better.

Keiji Nakazawa died of lung cancer on 12/19/2012. He was born on 03/14/1939, and was in Hiroshima when Little Boy was dropped out of the Enola Gay at 0815 on 08/06/1945. He survived, but many of his family members didn’t. His baby sister survived the bombing, but died later.

Barefoot Gen is on DVD, but it looks like prices have skyrocketed since Nakazawa died. If you can find it at a price that works for you, give it a watch.

Merry Christmas, you filthy animals. Service will resume at a later date.

(this is piracy, so if it makes you laugh until you cry like I know it’s going to, pay what you owe and cop those boxed sets. this show is a+.)

First off, merry Christmas. Hope you’re having a great holiday. I myself have been blessed with some nice gifts like a Superman bathrobe, a broken Mr. T boxing puppet, a Duff Beer wallet and a La Parka mask.

Look at that style. Is it just me or does this look like it was taken in the 70’s?

Anyway, that’s not why I’m posting.

I’ve been hanging around the internet for many years. David and I have known each other for, what, 12 years at this point? Fact is, I’ve been around and I’ve moved around. Like back in the day, I was a writer on a site called Higher Voltage that’s long gone. It was a middle-ranking but funny site about fighting games, which were everywhere during the late 90’s/early 2000’s. On the forums, I wrote up a poem as a goof of a writing exercise where I retold the story of the Grinch with Akuma from Street Fighter. Under the gag name “Vokter Seuss”, I entitled it “How Akuma Kicked Christmas’ Ass”.

Some people liked the poem and it got reposted onto the forum of Shoryuken.com, the top fighting game community site, which, unlike Higher Voltage, hasn’t fallen into internet obscurity so many years later. I don’t recall when I wrote it, but it’s about ten or eleven years ago. Definitely college time. It got brought up again every few years and it’s even been retold through some really impressive animated gifs, which I sadly cannot find a link to at this moment.

As the years continued, it was pretty much forgotten. I, for one, had forgotten I wrote it. A brief Google search shows that some forums still repost it every couple years, which is really nice. The real shock came when an old internet acquaintance from the Higher Voltage days NeoChaosX found me on Twitter to tell me that the story has been revitalized once more. This time by Maximilian, a big name in the fighting game community who is known as a pretty good mind when it comes to the game genre.

Renamed “How Akuma Stole Christmas”, the thing absolutely made my day.

For a little context, I was really big into obscure Capcom game Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure at this time and there are a handful of references to it in here. From Iggi the dog in the Max role to the head-shaking namedrop of Death 13 (just pretend he says “Freddy Krueger” and it’ll make more sense). The knowledge that only three people will know what I’m talking about there is pretty embarrassing, but that’s not on Maximilian. Everything else is wonderful and I can’t thank him enough. That was a great Christmas gift.

I feel like Honey in that old Tiny Toon Adventures episode where Babs Bunny is showing those old Bosko and Honey cartoons and– see, there I go again. None of you have any idea what I’m talking about.

A fairly late edition of ThWiP, but that couldn’t be helped. I haven’t even had a moment to write a single paragraph of an article over the past week. Plus thanks to crazy holiday retail hours, I got home at 2:30am. So I’m just gonna post this thing and go sleep because closing early for Christmas Eve means waking up earlier for the start of the shift.

Got Jody, Was Taters, Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa backing me up.

All-New X-Men #4
Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen

Avengers #2 (Jody’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Jerome Opena

Avengers #2 (Gavin’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Jerome Opena

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An ongoing series about my time playing Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked, divided up according to the stages of the game. Once a week, I think, I’m going to hit a few big topics that have stuck in my head and then a lot of little ones. Fridays. I’m still working out the format.

This is like a Let’s Play, but only I get to play and you’re required by law to read it and like it.

Story So Far: black power, his dumb nerd friend, and his dumb girly-girl friend (but not his girlfriend!) are trapped within the Yamanote Circle. Demons have begun invading, and black power’s cousin Naoya just ever-so-happened to not only give our threesome the devices they need to battle the demons, but also didn’t bother to let them know that Hell on Earth was coming. What a jerk, right?

The Defense Sciences Office spent the night in a park last night, lost and lonely.

Right now: Today is 1st day, the beginning of the end, and it’s time for the Demonic Schoolfriends Cipher to figure out exactly what’s going on, or maybe just escape. Escape is my main guess actually.

black power Status:
Level: 12
HP: 114
MP: 42
St: 9
Ma: 5
Vi: 7
Ag: 7
Move: 4
Speed: 50
Skills: Agi, Zan, Hero Aid, Mana Bonus, Leader Soul

Demon 1: Pixie (Fairy)
Level: 9
HP: 75
MP: 58
St: 4
Ma: 10
Vi: 6
Ag: 5
Skills: Dia, Zio, Charm

Demon 2: Waira (Wilder)
Level: 10
HP: 106
MP: 47
St: 9
Ma: 9
Vi: 5
Ag: 6
Skills: Zan, Dia, Hero Aid, Life Bonus, Devil Speed

Battle Anybody I Don’t Care: I was tricked! This is only barely a strategy RPG. It’s a meta-strategy RPG that is secretly actually an old, old, old school RPG.

Here’s the deal. You dont walk around on your own. You select locations from a menu. After selecting a location, a sub-menu pops up that gives you a chance to talk to your party members, gab with other people, or take a look around. In certain situations, you can get into a fight.

The fight certainly looks like a strategy RPG should. You have a grid you must follow when moving, your move stat determines how far you can move, and you have a selection of attacks you can use before or after going into battle. When you choose Attack, however, Dead Star Orion betrays you.

The actual battle system is the oldest of old school. The kind that existed before Final Fantasy 7, you know? RPGs with a hand crank and a muzzle loader. Enemy characters don’t animate at all. They just sit there, in all their sprite-based glory, and sometimes shake or turn colors as you battle them. You don’t see your squad at all. Selecting a command from a menu results in a minor animation that is overlaid onto the enemy sprite. After your turn is up, you return to the SRPG portion of things, ready to react again.

You could make a case for this giving you fine control over the details of SRPG battles, but I’m going to reject your case in favor of a different one: this is boring. The boringest. Questionable design choices aside — I want to make a “too much booby in the butt” joke here as a twist on Trina’s “too much booty in the butt” but I can’t make it work without sounding stupid — Dark Skies Onlimited is a pretty solid looking game. The sprites are cute, like Paul Robertson’s work on Scott Pilgrim, but RPGs are the absolute last genre that needs to be simplified visually. They’re already geared around math and intricate relationships between elements — why would you make that more boring? Where’s the flash?

Time: Part of David Stop Obscuring is managing your time. You get an email each morning with a list of horrible things that are going to happen to you or others. Since you’re plucky high schoolers, you’re going to go out and save people because… that is what children do? I’m not entirely clear on why we’re doing any of this instead of panicking, but I figure that’s just the plot.

Anyway, I’m curious to see if I can miss out on things. Will characters leave areas if you don’t visit them fast enough? It doesn’t seem like it thus far, but I’m sure it’ll happen eventually. Maybe I’ll have to choose between Yoohoo and Atsuwrong at the end of the game?

Devil Auction: There’s basically eBay for demons. After you fight them, you can bid on them. It works about as you’d expect.

At one point, though, I beat up a demon and he was all, “aughghg i guess i have to have a contract now.” That was weird, because why would he be surprised that humans and demons have contracts when the Devil Auction exists? Is it some kind of underground slavetrading ring? It doesn’t sound like it, though most of the demons are so dumb that it probably isn’t legal for them to enter into any contracts. I swear this tree-based demon I have is senile.

black power is a lie: This was the chapter where I realized that if you pick the “wrong” answer in a dialogue box, people will tell you what you already know and generally be a real jerk about things. So, while I’m still refining the character, I try to play black power as being the most honest and forthright guy in the team. He’ll tell the truth, even when it seems like a bad decision, just so that no one else will beat him to the punch and make me sit through dialogue that tells me things I already know. Call it antagonistic altruism.

It’s weird, though. It feels like admitting the truth in certain situations, and by that I specifically mean telling my friends that there is no exit from the Yamanote Circle, is a bad decision. There’s been nothing in the game to suggest that saying so would bring the team down, but it would, wouldn’t it? So black power lies, just a little, but always in the service of hope.

Yoohoo: Yuzu talks about her sweaty body like, all the time. I know this is a fetish thing in real life, dirty girls or whatever, but is this a nod to fetishists or some kind of weird attempt at verisimilitude? “All I want is a shower to wash all this sticky sweat off my body and now you’re imagining me naked,” says the teenager, ad nauseam. It’s not weird to want a shower when you can’t shower, but it is weird that she says it so often. Does that make sense? It feels significant, but it isn’t, I don’t think.

つづく: “Oh no! We’re in the exact same situation we were in last night! How will we get out of this one, Yoohoo?”

“I’m so sweatyyyyyy, and it’s just pouring in rivers and rivers down my supple–”

“NEXT TIME, on Devil Survivor Overblogged: Silent Heroes for Quiet Storms! We’re gonna survive this, I promise!”

Rocket Juice & The Moon is a collaborative project from Damon Albarn, Tony Allen and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It’s pointedly African in sound, which is cool. I like Albarn, but Tony Allen is a real cool dude, too. I don’t know how they traded off responsibilities, but I’m thankful they made the album. It’s an aight record, not too exceptional, but one line from it, courtesy of rapper M.anifest, has been stuck in my head for months: “Oh, what a life! Cheat on Death ’til she upset!” It’s from “The Unfadable,” definitely a highlight of the album.

Sometimes you receive wisdom and you don’t even realize it until later. This line, or some mangled version of it, came to mind when I was outside taking a walk one day. It was long after I’d rotated Rocket Juice & The Moon off my iPod, so it wasn’t fresh in my head or anything. It popped into my head out of nowhere — it took me forever to even remember where it was from — and it really struck me as maybe being the realest thing ever wrote.

It’s not deep. It’s just aware of what life is and how we live it. Life sucks. Late night calls never bring good news, your job can be a slog even if you love it, and things are going to go wrong. It’ll make you feel bad, blue, and black and blue, and you won’t be able to do much about it.

But. Life is still amazing. The long rhythms of cars passing through stoplights, the sun setting behind buildings… have you seen the fake stars in cities? The ones that are just antenna or airplane lights? All of that stuff is amazing. “Breathe in: inhale smoke from bright stars that shine. Breathe out: weed smoke retrace the skyline.” We did that. The trick is learning to appreciate it, or letting it pull you out of a black mood.

“Oh, what a life! Cheat on Death ’til she upset” crawled its way up into my brain and came out just when I needed it most.