Action 52

"The incarnation of all evil has come to flesh- er uh... plastic!"

Having to be an avid gamer means having to realize that you will either be sucking hard earned cash that you could be investing into hours of mind-numbing bliss or that you will hardly ever get to play the good, expensive stuff because you're paying the necessary evils or investing cash. With new games costing an average of $50 in the States, it's not hard to see why most casual gamers give up on gaming by age 27 or so. It was this fact of life that spawned the game (or collection of games) in question, Action 52. According to the history of the game, someone awoke one morning to a rather large bug nipping at the inside of his rectum and decided that paying $50 or more for a new game was heinous! Why pay all that much for one game when these companies could (at least in his mind) sell multiple games on one cartridge? Thus, Action 52 was born, showcasing 52 "unbelievable" games for the low, low price of... $200 US. 52 games for only $200? Well, there's a catch... Every game sucks. Thus, the idea of cost effectiveness became null and void.

You see, the creator seems to have forgotten a few things about most of the top games (by this, I mean the good quality ones) that make them worth that $30-50 you shell out.

If you ever sit down and play a game from any era that was a big hit like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, you might wonder what it took to develop these games. It didn't take a day or two in a dusty old basement, it took weeks, even months in development studios. It certainly didn't take thousands of children working for ten cents a week in some shop in Malaysia either. Developers worked tirelessly to design graphics, write and compose the scores, collect voice actors (if needed) and record the voice overs for sometimes dozens of languages, building the engine and make sure the physics work properly, and even test the game for glitches and fix them. This arduous process was obviously skipped in Action 52. Many of these games seem lazily thrown together over night and were largely untested. This is evident especially in some of the most radically horrendous cases like Nonhuman, a side scroller in which you play as some deformed freak. The key problem with the game is that it's pretty much unplayable. The controlling on it is so shoddy that you cannot even jump across the first pit in the game. So, we can cross TLC (the actual acronym, not the band) off the list of factors taken into consideration in Action 52.

The quality of development also shows in the games' poor coding. Every now and then, graphics will wig out, like in Dam Busters, or there will be horrible inconsistencies. A good example of this appears in French Baker, a platformer where you play as a, well... French Baker. Whenever you fall off a platform, you randomly die. Yes, randomly. Another example is Thrusters, a generic shoot 'em up, where you will sometimes fly through obstacles and sometimes not. Inconsistencies also appear in the form, as mentioned before, of controller error. In the game Billy Bob, a kind of hybrid of Pitfall and Prince of Persia (the original), the character will sometimes jump perfectly, and sometimes not at all. This makes for confusing gameplay, as you never know when your actually going to make progress or just be a victim of truly awful development.

The lack of quality or care also shows up in perceived laziness of the development. All too often, a game pops up that is almost an exact replica of another game on the cartridge. The only difference is that the graphics for the enemies, environment, and the playable character have been changed. Atomos Quake, for instance, is exactly like Star Evil; they're both very lazily done side scrolling shooters. Thrusters and Space Dreams are also done in the same fashion. The only difference is that Space Dreams has a psychadelic theme with very badly hand drawn stars thrown into the environment. Arguably the biggest sign of laziness is easily the worst game in the collection, Meong. In this game, you play as a strange symbol moving across a grid. Throughout the grid are holes that will kill you. There also traps... that you cannot see and will not be able to see until you die. So basically, you move across the plan until you randomly (yes, again, randomly) die.

Laziness also rears its ugly head in the form of rotten, basic enemy AI. While it is not expected for the enemies in the game to stage a coup against the player and ingeniously overthrow you, it shouldn't be too much to ask for the enemies in shooter games to do something more than just move across the screen in a straight line. Thanks, but no thanks. We already have Space Invaders. I would list the shooters that this stigma persists in, but it unfortunately plagues all of them like unnecessary musical performances at award shows.

Most companies take a little time and effort to create even slightly competent scores for their games. Even lackluster scores like that of Koudelka take effort and work. It is totally understandable that the music in this game would be lacking the epic feel of professionally developed music, as this was all done by one man, but does the music still have to be so repulsive and grating? Illuminator, for instance, has music that sounds something like a violin making monkey love to a synthesizer. When you die in the game, you get the most plane death music you can think of. On top of that, every game seems to be loaded with basic Atari 2600 sound effects. While the 2600 was a great system, the developer was about 5-10 years too late to be using them. Almost every platformer and side scroller seemed to use a low BING noise for a jump. After a while, you begin to hope that the game will render you deaf so that you will never have to listen to such diabolus en musica again.

Graphics also suffered a minor casualty. While some environments, like those in Chill Out, have a sense of decent home brewed development, others like Space Dreams just scream, “I didn't feel like trying.” Other games, like Nonhuman, just have some of the most off the wall things that make you feel like a raging idiot for playing the game. I mean, why exactly are there randomly placed monster heads below the floors? The graphics are not a total downer as my original version of this review would suggest, but they do need a bit of aid.

The greatest stigma of all, one that appears in every game on the cart, is the absolute lack of depth. One could retort that earlier games like those on Atari 2600 lack depth, but they make up in challenge, fun factor, and addictive quirkiness and originality what they lack in depth. None of the games are original aside from Meong, and there's a damn good reason no one thought of that one. Most every level of every game is exactly the same as the last, except that the game might move a bit faster. Since the enemy AI on almost all the games is just set on “move forward” or “most randomly” there isn't much more to do than just shoot at a bunch of targets. What about dodging a pissed off starcraft that radically changes course as it comes closer to you? What about the grouping of enemies that poses a great threat to your existence? What about using your tricky dodging ability to get around myriad bullets? It just never happens.

All this agro and yet no praise? Well, okay. The developer has a great sense of home brewing and developing. However, not refining. Some of these games have decent enough concepts to work as great get-up-n'-go games like Illuminator. The idea of the lights switching off added a decent smattering of challenge to the game. Plus, it was something you don't see in too many games. Would I pay a new game price for this game alone? Hell no! Would I download it onto my computer for free or on my cell phone for maybe a couple bucks? Sure, why not? Provided, anyway, that it was refined.

The simple fact of the matter is that the developer had a good idea, but tried to get too many eggs into one basket. This game probably would have prospered more if it were called something more like Action 12. Cut the games down to 12, refine them, fix the bugs, add some depth, and market it as a grouping of get-up-n'-go games and you've got a decent rainy day cartridge. However, marketing 52 godawful games is almost as bad as having a Uwe Boll movie marathon. Are you trying to torture your clientèle or please them. Okay, so if you're in the S&M business, they go hand-in-hand like Paris Hilton and an axe in her forehead. However, this is a division of the entertainment industry that requires tireless effort. You cannot simply churn out crap from your basement, say it's just as good as a team release, and expect everyone to feel just the same.

FINAL JUDGMENT
Graphics: Some good environments, and some laziness, but not horrible.. 4/10
Sounds: Utterly horrible 1/10
Controls: I think I'm going to be sick... 1/10
Plot/Storyline: N/A
Gameplay: Each game is just a disaster waiting to happen. 1/10
All Together: 1/10

Perks
*52 games on one cart!

Downers
*52 horrible games on one cart!
*Bad coding
*Apparent laziness
*Annoying sounds
*Terrible control response

Recommendations
There are a couple recommendations I can make here. Collectors should probably be on the lookout for this game, especially those looking to build a full NES library. This one is extremely rare and worth quite a bit of money. Also, if you actually want to find something that's at least decent quality by Active Enterprises, try out Action 52 for Sega Genesis. It is infinitely better than this entry.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 07/19/01, Updated 12/12/05