Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey Analysis.

   How do you do, 

   For the first review of a computer game, I chose one from my childhood that I played endlessly from grade six onward. Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey was a game for Windows 95, produced by Palladium in 1996 (making this twenty-two years old, but since I have other things turning twenty the nostalgia won me over for this entry), featuring Wishbone, the famous Jack Russell terrier pup with a big imagination. Wishbone had a television series already, on the verge of being renewed for another season when the game came out, and a series of books that either featured a plot of Wishbone and his human friends encountering a situation similar to a book he read, or there's be a book that is based on the classic work done in a format for children to read. I once had two of the latter, one of them being The Odyssey by Homer (which became one of my favorite stories when I was twelve years old). Wishbone had played Odysseus once, in the episode of the series called "Homer Sweet Homer", though it covered only a small part of a larger drama.

    For background, Homer's epic, The Odyssey was composed more than two thousand years ago, in Ancient Greece, as the story of the return of Odysseus as ruler of Ithaca. Much of known story is told in flashback by Odysseus himself, with the greater part dealing of his son, Telemachus, searching for him and the two returning to remove pestering suitors to Penelope, Odysseus' wife. As with any epic from Ancient Greece, the gods play a role in this one, with supportive Athena and Poseidon opposing the hero, plus several characters of mythical origin like a cyclops, a group of giants, and a witch, plus a journey into the Underworld. When we think of such epics that have all that, we might be thinking of recent fantasy works like The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and even Star Wars, but The Odyssey predated them all. Along with its prequel, The Iliad, The Odyssey has held an enduring power in as the adventure story of a generation, which is still felt with each passing generation, inspiring many clones and imitations, like the Roman poet, Virgil, doing his with The Anaied, to the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? in which the setting is placed in Depression Era South. So, this game is basically one of the latest retellings. 

     As an eleven year old boy upon first playing it, I found it marvelous and exciting. Now that I am a man, having read Homer a lot and some critical works on his poems, I know there were a few things changed in the game, but it hasn't lost its attraction in the slightest degree. 

    The game set is simple. Wishbone is showing the viewer the virtual library and a new computer called the Electronic Pictographic Interactive Combopulator, (or EPIC 3000), which is supposedly something like the old VCR for books (twenty years later, we have books on computers and tablets, yet we still don't have something like that). It's never explained how it works, just shown with Wishbone putting in a book and the scanners bring up the image on the screen. Yet, when Wishbone has some trouble, he tries to get his copy of Homer out, only to wind up inside the computer. Now, Wishbone is inside the computer, animated, and placed in the role of Odysseus, and it's up to the player to get Wishbone out by playing the epic. 

    As a computer game, certain liberties to the plot are taken, just like with Dune did a few years prior with its material, the namesake book by Frank Herbert and the movie. Because many details of the Fall of Troy are not in the epic, there is not much done for the Troy scene, other than get Wishbone on the boat and shove off. The character Eurylocus, who only appeared in two books (chapters) is expanded upon as something of a lazy sailor who has to be made into helping Wishbone out. At least, he is kept his character of the epic in his cowardliness. The Lotus Eaters part is dropped and the journey goes straight to the Island of the Cyclops, where there is an out of place temple of Athena with a broken statue. Athena is given a larger role as well, appearing early in the epic and she gives Wishbone her Palladium (in case anyone didn't know, another name for Athena was Pallas), to which a hint will come when clicked on (three times, to be exact, but it's advised not to overuse it), and to tell Eurylocus to get his butt in gear at one point. 

    Great care to keep it child friendly is another thing in the game. The Cyclops, Polythemus, is made a little more comical and his eating of crewman made less graphic (though still done on the screen). The game is a choose-your-own adventure set up, and one path leads to trouble. In this case, chose to let the Cyclops nap after drinking some wine until he wakes up will lead to him eating everyone up, which is covered by a black out. By the same token, if the real name is given and the other cyclopses arrive, another black out is done to hide those neighbors crushing the Cyclops' tormentors. In the epic, Odysseus and his men make a spear and drive it into the Cyclops' eye, which is too violent for children. So, Wishbone puts a blue carpet over his head, which some how hurts the Cyclops' eye and renders him blind (yet the Cyclops never thinks of pulling the blanket off). This is just the beginning, of course. When on the Island of Circe's, Aeaea, we don't see Wishbone turned into a pig, if one doesn't get the right flower on. The same with Elphenor's death being done off camera, or the eating of crewmen by Scylla. When one chooses to let the men eat the cows, we are also spared of the butchering of the cattle, instead shown the bones and men clutching their full stomachs. Even in times when Wishbone is killed, it's done in a way to not scare the kids too much and even give a chance to revive him (but declining that chance ends the game). Remarkably, the setting of Hades is kept it's dark side with even the Palladium not working at one point (plus the scary noises to remind one what Tartarus is about).

   Other changes are less scary. Circe is shown to be somewhat seductive, yet helpful. I like Wishbone's reaction to her being a witch (if possible, I'd have a meme of Hermione Granger rolling her eyes at what he said). Then comes Tiresias, the Blind Prophet, who comes off as a gramps caricature in a tunic with a staff and Agamemnon is shown to be a bored spirit who turned his fame making war into a game (kind of like if President Grant decided to do the same with the Civil War). Even Calypso is shown to be depressed and pitiful, which makes her seem needy at one point. In a strange inversion to mythology, Agamemnon awards Wishbone with a coin after being defeated, which he should have given to Charon upon entering the Underworld. Telemachus doesn't do any traveling in the game. If anything, his and his mother's roles are the ones reduced in the game. Even Poseidon appears early in the journey, instead of late, which actually works as a plot point (I can't figure out why he waited years before confronting Odysseus about how his son, the Cyclops, was hurt). The god's anger at Odysseus becomes the plot point of the epic in the game and basically makes the odyssey possible. 

    Besides the characters, the plot line is changed so one can visit Calypso's island of Ogygia before the Island of Thrinachia, thus showing Scylla and Charybdis as the obstacle to bar the way, though they don't show the Island of Sirens at any point. That part makes good sense, when one thinks about it, as Calypso is meant to be a concealing entity and what better way to conceal than to have something dangerous between her and the outside world. However, this means that the crewmen have to live and be with Wishbone on the island, but none follow him into Calypso's cave, in fact no one goes anywhere with Wishbone after the Cyclops. At the same time, it provides Thrinachia as the turning point that decides the game because it merges two separate islands from the epic together. In the epic, Odysseus stops by Aeolus, master of the winds, and he gives him a bag with the four winds. However, the crew opened it before they reach home and they are blown off course. Later, when they reach Thrinachia, they come near to wade out for help, only for the crew to do wrong by eating Helios' sacred cattle, resulting in them being killed and only Odysseus left alive. Because Aeolus is not in the game, they decided to merge the two together where one could get the winds blowing the right way while dealing with the temptation of beef. I'm sure the Old Bard might know of this from the afterlife and thinking how he could have had it done the same way. Also absent are the Laestrygones, a group of giants who eat humans and destroyed Odysseus' fleet, as well as the Phaecians. The giants are kept out for the sake of keeping things child friendly, and to avoid making it redundant with the cyclopes. The Phaecians are excised to speed up the plot. Even the cameo of Menelaus and Helen are kept out for the same reason (and Helen was the reason for the Trojan War, ergo the reason for Odysseus to be away from home, in the first place). 

    Finally, there are characters and situations not in the epic. Using Circe's magic torch, you could navigate a forest and bring Wishbone up to Mount Olympus to actually talk to the gods, in an effort to get them convinced he is worthy of entering the tower. Odysseus never actually visited Mount Olympus in the epic. Athena and Zeus never had a moment of that convincing needed as they could see for themselves. Besides, regardless of how one goes through the dialogue choices, the doors will open (Zeus does say "I will open the way" at one point, a play on words). When Wishbone is killed, one gets to meet Pluto (not the dog, but the God of the Underworld), who should have been called Hades, yet is given the Roman name to match up to his status as the unmentionable, and to avoid confusion between him and his realm (Disney's Hercules came out later and actually used the Greek name). Either way, he is not in the Homeric epic, but there is a point in the epic where Odysseus prays to Persephone (who also never appears in the game). One god in the epic is not in the game, Hermes the messenger. In his place, Athena comes down to warn of Circe and suggest the Moly Plant. Athena is also called upon to convince Calypso to release Wishbone (removing the seven years of imprisonment to a few minutes). One last character who is not in The Odyssey is neither god nor man, but an animal. It's the Duck; a white one that was keyed in during the prologue and just hangs around for no purpose other than to quack when clicked on. That is, until near the end when getting a key to the storage pit requires the Duck's help, though getting the key from the Duck requires help from another duck (shown black like Daffy). Duck's sex is never said in the game, so Wishbone refers to the Duck as it, though the chasing off by another duck could imply it to be a female "harassed" by a male, or a male by a female, or what have you. Still, Wishbone says it best early in the game when he says, "I don't remember reading anything about a duck in The Odyssey." There is a dog in the epic, however, who never shows in the game. Odysseus' dog, Argos, who waited years for his masters' return only to die upon seeing him. The only reason for the exclusion is one, Wishbone is a dog and there wouldn't be room for two, and two, that part was tragic and wouldn't be suited for the finale.

     Besides the liberties with the settings and characters, the game comes with puzzles. To get Athena to help, you have to build her statue, and offer a sacrifice (yet one wonders why doesn't the statue count). Another puzzle is figuring out the flowers in Circe's garden, and how to get to them with the Big Bad Wolf in the way. Third is getting an alternative to cows to feed the men, as well as opening the tower. When shipwrecked on Calypso's island, you also have to repair the ship to sail (though I learned it could be used even without Calypso's sail). Finally, there's getting the bow to prove Wishbone is Odysseus. These puzzles, of course, exist to advance the plot. There are also games within the game. First, Circe challenges Wishbone to checkers, where the pieces are pigs. Next, Wishbone takes on Agamemnon in The Trojan War where to win one has to fill up Troy with blue pieces against the pink ones. Though you overwhelm the pink pieces by a large margin, they can jump the blue pieces like in checkers, while they can't be jumped by the blue. The final game is the shooting the arrow through the axes where the axes have to be aligned so the arrow hits the target. Lose in this one twice and you lose the entire game. Should Wishbone meet Pluto, he faces him in a snakes and ladders style game without the ladders, but with plenty of snakes, in order to be revived in the land of the living. Wishbone can collect coins and bypass them all on the River Styx. Losing in this game also ends the game, and this one is only accessed when Wishbone is killed. In the end, three of the four can be replayed after winning the game.

    When one has completed the game, Wishbone is sent back into reality and the player is awarded a plaque. On this one sees his rank from row man as the lowest to hero at the highest (all based on how many crewmen are killed, how many times Wishbone dies, and how often one sought Athena's advice). I got hero more times than any other ranking when I played this game, though getting the Hades game does make one lose the hero ranking for captain. From this point, the player has the option of starting all over again, or explore the library, which gets one introduced to Ancient Greece, its mythology, Homer, and many other things. In one place, you can watch clips of "Homer Sweet Homer" episode, or read Bulfinch's Mythologies, Wishbone's take on The Odyssey, and of course The Odyssey itself. During the game, you can come back for help whenever the menu slab on the bottom right corner side of the screen flashes a green light. One thing to date the image is the red phone that stands for America Online (AOL), which was a way to get on the internet from the game. Of course, that tied up the phone lines in those days. 

    Along with Bill Nye the Science Guy: Stop the Rock, Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey was the right sort of game for kids in the 1990s and 2000s, being that it was educational and fun at once. It's a pity they haven't rereleased the game with an updated engine so it could work on Windows 10, or make it HD. It would be better than watching the game played on a video of YouTube, if you ask me, and wishing you could one thing different. Besides, a new generation of kids should be introduced to the little pup with a big imagination as well as Homer's epic, and this game is the way to it. 

Going Twenty: Godzilla

  How do you do, 

  Sometime in 1997, you flipped on the television and saw a skeleton of a T-Rex crushed by a giant foot. Later, it's New Year's and something big knocks down the ball and a voice calls 1998, "the year of Godzilla".

  That is the start of the marketing gimmick for Godzilla, which included all the commercializing tie ends for merchandising. Finally, on Memorial Day Weekend, Godzilla came stomping into theaters and then comes one of the infamous reveals in movie history, if not one of the most shocking let downs on one's expectations of the decade.

  Plenty of things have been said of this movie already, in blogs and videos. If I were to make a thorough analysis here, I'm gonna need a bigger blog. So, it's best to be brief. For one, this isn't the first Godzilla movie, not by a long shot.
  The history of Godzilla goes back to Japan in the 1950s, though the genesis of it is in Hiroshima in 1945. The Atomic bombings left a scar on Japan's psyche and the fears of a nuclear war became global as the US and the USSR underwent a nuclear arms race. The massive destruction, plus the incident with the fishing boat, led to Tomoyuki Tanaka to create the movie that went down in history. In 1954, via the Japanese film making company Toho Co., Ltd, he produced Gojira, introducing the world to the title character as an all destroying monster who is immune to anything the military has to offer. Godzilla lays waste to Tokyo in one scene that recreates Hiroshima. Eventually, a scientist with a weapon of mass destruction of his own decides to use it on the Big G and takes him with him. However, Godzilla wasn't out of the picture for long. From that, all through the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, Godzilla appeared on the big screen in a series of movies, sometimes as the destroyer, sometimes as the hero. The scenes with Godzilla were always done with a man in a suit filmed on a sound stage (which inspired the mecha battles to the "Super Sentai" series, the inspiration to Power Rangers).
   The first time Godzilla was introduced to the States was in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where like in Power Rangers has original footage of an American actor spliced up with Japanese footage and dubbing of extras. From there, Godzilla entered the American pop culture, including a 1970s cartoon where he is given a side kick, Godzookie, while foiling the bad guys. But, it wasn't really until the early 1990s that Hollywood got into work on making a movie to feature the Big G and Tri-Star got the rights from Toho. It was quite a project to make and it took years, and frequent changes to the creature and the story, before we got our finished project. Starring Matthew Broderick and directed by Robert Emmerich, the United States had a film adaptation of Godzilla, in a sort of remake of Gojira, though with many changes. The setting is moved to New York City (one might say, the Big G. has come to the Big Apple). They also decided to recreate Godzilla into a different monster for realism. This meant keeping him from standing erect, mostly, and having animal like movements. One thing Broderick's character, Nick Totopoulas, claims, "it's just an animal." One controversial thing that came out of this making Godzilla more realistic was the subtraction of his atomic breath, which the film makers sought to placate by having him send out gale force winds in a roar, sometimes blowing fire or causing objects to combust in the process, creating the illusion of the said attack. But that isn't the worst of it.

   I find the suspense in the early scenes a vital hook, especially since the original movie doesn't always show Godzilla. It's like with the film Them! where you see wreckage and shell shocked people, and hear strange sounds, early in but you don't see the ants right away. They don't show up until we are thirty minutes into the movie. Godzilla does the same, showing almost forty minutes into this one. One term used for this is basically "Jaws affect", named for the 1975 movie where due to mechanical failures of the shark they wound using it less than intended, leading much of the movie having scenes where you didn't see the shark, but you saw the fin and heard the music.
    The best moment in my opinion is when Godzilla enters New York. First his yanks on the fishing rod of an old man. Then comes into the fishing market by the dock and wreaks havoc in the streets. For the most part, we don't actually see all of Godzilla in these moments. Just bits of him, such as his feet. As Godzilla walks by, buildings take damage and cars fly, and some people seem to be killed. Now from here is where it begins to deviate (or things begin to go downhill, to some). In the 1954 version, Godzilla would destroy a few buildings and then head back to Tokyo Bay, saving the worst for later in the movie. Here, he stumps around, leaving a mess like a tornado, then "disappears". Logically, there is no way a creature that size could vanish. But he did. Turns out, they gave Godzilla the ability to burrow underground and he is under New York. Noting his taste for fish, Nick suggests they use it as bate to lure him out and it works, thus we finally see the Big G on screen.
    As you would expect, the military gets a little trigger happy and open fires while Godzilla is eating, and the communications are messed up. Godzilla does take the bullets and tank shells as though he were made of titanium, but he ducks as missiles come at him. Then he runs about the streets with helicopters in pursuit. One thing everyone has caught on is that it seems Godzilla is running away from the military and most of the damage is done by the helicopters (sometimes coming across where the US military is idiotic in the process). To me, it seems he is actually leading the helicopters into a trap, as evidenced by the way he defeats them. When they fire a building and think they got him, he comes out from behind them as though to say, "on the contrary, I got you!" The military tries again, but Godzilla doesn't fall for the same trick twice. Instead, he withdraws and ducks into the bay, allowing us to see underwater battles. The US Navy comes in with submarines that seem to get Godzilla with their torpedoes. However, Godzilla is revealed to be playing dead and appeared again. Before that happens, Godzilla spends about twenty minutes of screen time absent.
    A subplot is added to make Godzilla more menacing, though it seems to have backfired to some, which has him laying eggs that hatch out into little Godzillas. When we see the little monsters, they show that they are dangerous in that they can kill people for smelling like fish. Of course, they are vulnerable and are dispatched with. If there are other things to bring in, it's that the sequences with the babies seems too much like the velociraptor scenes in Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Once they are taken out, Godzilla returns and we get a climactic chase through the streets of New York (Matthew Broderick, by the way, is husband of Sarah Jessica Parker who was about to be made famous in Sex and the City, which aired in June of 1998, but I won't say the setting of New York in this movie and that show was anything other than a coincidence)
   The chase becomes confusing, with Godzilla cornering everyone in the Park Avenue tunnel and then attempt to swallow them. Then they dash onto the bridge with Godzilla right behind them. Now, most see the climatic scene and think that this Godzilla was brought down by conventional weapons (considering it took twelve missiles from fighter jets that could sink a ship to bring him down). However, I disagree. It wasn't the missiles that killed Godzilla. They did hurt, but not kill. Hearing how he was letting out painful roars when he got caught in the suspension cables suggestions the bridge was tearing something inside him. Then, he falls over in a final attempt to crush the car, which is enough to break a few bones and something else (like his windpipe). Noting how earlier in the chase that Godzilla slipped and fell at one point shows that it did hurt, adding evidence to it. That is logical since a creature Godzilla's size, if it was knocked over the way the Japanese version was by another monster, would have broken every bone in his body.

   There is plenty of things said about the movie and its depiction of Big G. It's a fact Toho was also displeased with the product that they (not the movie) took God out of Godzilla and renamed the creature as Zilla, or sometimes American Godzilla, and made a lot of pop shots at it. The term GINO has also been coined (meaning Godzilla In Name Only), which is something I never understood until I saw Avengers: Civil War and how it portrayed Spiderman. Back in 2014, Hollywood made another movie on Godzilla, only this time they made him resemble the Japanese counterpart and got rid of some of the taints from the 1998 movie. However, they also made Godzilla go from all destroyer to protector while having the Muto for the antagonist (might work better if this was a sequel instead of reboot, like with T2: Judgement Day).
    But, so much is said about how it treats Big G that we almost never bring up the humans. I could never tell if Nick is supposed to be the hero or a comic relief, because he switches between them frequently. I also don't need to mention that Emmerich has replayed the nerd trope in his other movies. In each, he has a nerd hero who is goofy and awkward, often given words that are ignored. But, at least in Independence Day and Star Gate, their nerds actually do something in the film's climax, while Nick finds the nest and tells the military to roast it, before going on a chase to avoid the Big G. His former fling, Audrey, is a single woman working in New York as a journalist yet is not taken seriously by her boss. It's the standard plot line where a working woman tries to be treated in a serious manner and it doesn't happen from the start, all because of her quirks, or because she's a woman. Audrey complains of it to her friends, who are the standard married couple filling in for female friend and gay guy trope, while showing double standard abuse in another scene. When Audrey sees Nick, she tries to win him over by stealing her bosses tag and sneaking into a secret tent to see him at work, then comes upon the video not seen by the public and uses it for a report. The last gets Nick booted off the team and Audrey loses her story to her sleazy boss, anyway, and it ruins her reconciliation with Nick. Then we have Philippe, a French agent. The French are added as a third country, which one could imply were put there to avoid guilt of nuclear testing. Of course, Philippe mentions how his country makes mistakes that are costly, which is something that speaks to anyone. The military is given characters, such as Sergeant O'Neal, though not fleshed out. Plus, there is Mayor Ebert and his aid, Gene, who are obviously parodies of the film critic dual, Siskell and Ebert. I always find the mayor annoying. He shows no care for his people or the servicemen who die trying to kill Godzilla and makes a fuss about some building destroyed by the military.
    Though we can learn from Godzilla how media hype is not what it's cracked up to be, the human characters will always be secondary to Big G, and even if you don't see this monster as the actual Godzilla, even saying this movie was wrongly titled, I do believe this movie can be comparable to many anti-nuke films of the past. Though parts of the film seem like rip offs of movies not related to Godzilla, the movie as a whole has aged well. The special effects are much better looking than some of things used in the 2014 movie (though the babies do seem fake) and the tension is really high when necessary. Will conclude that there is a good move in reducing Big G in this movie some. If Godzilla had his speed like in the movie coupled with his indestructible skin and atomic breath, imagine how great trouble it would be for the humans in the movie.