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And welcome to play comics, where once again, we are here looking at a video game based on a comic and how it represents that source material. Today I am here with Legacy Comics founder, owner, and head gopher, Patrick Hickey Jr. Patrick, how are you today?
I'm doing great, Chris. Always a pleasure to spend some time with you and talk about the stuff that you dig and the stuff that I dig and the stuff that a lot of people dig. Comics and video games. You.
I mean, who would have thought that comics and video games could go well together?
You. You did.
Yes. Just me. I'm the only person who ever thought that, which is really weird and still surprises me.
No, man, you're ahead of the curve as always.
But today we are here looking at the valiant and acclaim comics character, video game, everything. Shadow man, second coming.
Shadow man. Yeah.
Obvious jokes aside, patrick, what made you jump on wanting to come talk about Shadow man?
Just because I think it's polarizing. I think if you would have been like, oh, let's do, I don't know, like a Spider man game from the 90s, it would have been super easy to just poopoo on it. Or if it was just like if we were comparing some mediocre run of Spiderman. So it's just like, there's so much good with Shadow man, and there's so much that's kind of like, eh. And then the video games, I mean, baby, it's like, if we're talking about Shadow man second coming on PS two, that's one thing. But then it's just like, if we're talking about the original game, it has a different legacy depending on the console that it was on. And there's just luckily, second coming kind of stays true regardless of what we're talking about. But second coming is another weird title. It's one of those games that people either super appreciate, which they should, I think that they should, or they're just kind of turned off by many things that I'm sure that we will get into over the course of this podcast.
So how much do you know about Shadow man from the comic side of things? Because I'm still a relative newbie here.
I'm more than a newbie. See, the thing is too since I've been the editor in chief of Reviewfix.com for like, oh, my God, like 15 years. And for pretty much the entire 15 years, we've had an agreement with valiant comics and they send us their books to review. So over the last 15 years, I've gotten pretty acquainted with Shadow Man. I love the way the character looks. I love the face. For me, it's like comic books is all about faces and characters, masks and things like that. And it's just like, man, that character has a freaking awesome design. And then he's had some really freaking talented writers, people like, we're talking Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis. Like, there's been some really top notch writers that have not only done a great job with the character, but wanted to legitimately. If you read old press releases, like, garth Ennis was like, I can't believe I'm writing Shadow man. And you're like, all right, so if you weren't into Shadow man before, to see Garth Ennis this, like, excited. This is the same guy that wrote ghostwriter, wrote some really great ghostwriter, wrote a lot, whole bunch of great everything. And he was totally excited to write Shadow man. So the thing that you have to appreciate the most is there's some great action in the book, there's some great sleuthing. The whole voodoo thing is really cool and underutilized. The people that have just played the video game, they're going to get like a different shadow man than the one the comic book fans are used to. And that might be a bit of a turn off because the acclaimed comics Shadow man is different. There's been a whole bunch of retcons, a whole bunch of reboots in this series over the years, and that's kind of like, hurt its legacy. But overall, it's just like, what could I compare it to, if I could compare it to a video game? If you guys have ever played Gabriel Knight and the sins of the fathers, it's like a classic point and click rpg in the 80s. Like, Mark Hamill is in it. He did voiceover on it. Michael Dorn, Tim Curry. This is just like a classic. There's like five or six games in the series, but it's all about devil worshiping, voodoo death, what happens to you after you die, kind of stuff in the heart of New Orleans. Shadow man has a lot of that dna. So if you like your rice Cajun and your detective work, bloody total type of comic book for you.
So what has it been like getting in kind of at the ground floor of seeing Shadow man evolve throughout the years.
Well, see, that's the thing. It feels like every, like four or five years, they bring in another writer and it really changes the series. So, I mean, think about it. Like, Shadow man has been around for pretty much, I want to say, over 30 years at this point. And you've got a couple of different shadow men over the years, and they all bring in something different. And it's not to kind of compare it to another comic book property like venom. Perfect example. Multiple venoms over the years. Who are the venoms that we really remember? Eddie Brock, naturally. Matt Gargan a little. He was kind of cool as venom and flash Thompson, but they all had their own cool legacy. Like, Agent Venom is completely different from Eddie Brock, and Matt Gargan is completely different from Agent Venom. So the thing is, these other shadowmen aren't necessarily too different enough. Or they can't stand firmly on their own because they've never been given that breath, that space to breathe long enough. A couple of good runs here and there, but nothing that would ever make me go this run is better than the other. It's been a consistent, solid comic. It's never had that massive moment. And it's like, if you go through all of the image properties from the beginning, like Savage dragon, the first, like 1520 issues of that fantastic spawn, when Spawn started getting writers other than Tod McFarland. Oh my God, really got cooking. Like when you had Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman writing spawn. Wow. Shadow Man's never had that wow moment. It's just been like this consistent presence in indie comics for a really long time. And the thing is, for acclaim. Acclaim just wanted to make comics based on, wanted to make video games based on comics. They didn't go to the top, I think. Think about it. They did torok the dinosaur hunter first. I don't know many people that remember the Torock the dinosaur hunter comic at all, but it had been around for a consistent long period, and there were people that remembered it and enjoyed it enough that when the game came out, it had an audience. And then luckily, in a claims benefit, the Tarakium is actually pretty good. And the shadow. Listen, say whatever you want. About the two biggest qualms with this PS two game is the lengthy ass loading time. Like, you could make a sandwich and eat it by the time some of these levels load up that. And then, dude, Shadow, the name of this game should have been like Shadow man on steroids because his character model is like Brock Lesnar. And the thing is, it's like, this guy is like, he's a failed everything. He was an english lit major that was a cab driver and a terrible gambler. He doesn't have this massive frame. It's more like the power set that makes him cool. And I feel like the video game dropped the ball in that regard. The Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast game nailed that character model perfectly, but the PS two version, not so much. So, like I said, that's why the series is polarizing. The video game series is polarizing. There's just so much to grab onto.
So if you knew somebody who wanted to read Shadow man, where would you tell them to start?
I would tell them to pick, look through all of the runs, and whichever writer they like the most, whether it be Garth Ennis or Peter Milligan or whoever else. I think Fred Van Lent did a lengthy shadow man run. There's a whole bunch of really good, and that's the thing. I don't want to poo poo on Fred Van lent because his Marvel zombie stuff wasn't that good compared to Kirkman. And he's kind of like all over the place. But he's one of those good middle ground comic book writers. If he takes over a series, it's not going to suffer in quality, but it's probably not going to be the best run. He's like, in comics in the 80s, somebody like Al Milgram would take over a series art wise, and you knew it was going to be good and probably try and maintain the style that was there before, but it wasn't going to break new ground. So I would probably tell them to do the Garth Ennis stuff. That's probably the best way to go. And then that's, um, that's the shadow man that most people connect to and not Mike. Mike is the shadow man that's in the video games. So, yeah, I would probably tell them to go with the Garth Ennis stuff.
And I know recently Cullen Bunn has done a run, somebody who I see all over the place, and Becky Cludon and Michael Conrad are in a run right now. So you've got good people currently working on it if you want to jump on with new stuff.
Sure. Absolutely. And that's the thing. It's ongoing. It's like, what else do they have? They have valiant, they have Ninja, which is like one of their hardcore characters that people exo Manowar. They've got a whole bunch of series that just like, to their benefit, have been going strong for a long period of time, and they probably meet their thresholds. So that's the thing, too, in comics. I've told people at legacy before that if one of our books doesn't move, it's dead. And you and I have had conversations before, and my answer a lot of times is like, if we sell copies, anything is possible. So it's just like for all of these characters in that valiant universe to be sticking around for as long as they have, they have to be moving copies, they have to be selling advertisement so that's a good thing. It means that people are reading them. Sadly, I don't get to see a lot of those people. Like whenever I go to a big comic book store, I see them picking up now reprints of Marvel and DC stuff, and they're going to be picking up even more of them now that the DC versus Marvel and all the crossover stuff is going to get reprinted. But I'm happy that there are people out there buying valiant still. Hell yeah.
The big thing for me is I like getting books that are fun. And some of it is Marvel DC stuff, and a lot of it is not Marvel and DC stuff.
Yeah, man. Especially now, I think Marvel makes more money on funkos. And necessarily, if Marvel doesn't sell another comic ever, they'll still be a viable company because they've got the films, they've got the animated stuff, they've got t shirts, they've got Funko. You could buy Marvel pretty much anything. DC has to sell comics. Image has to sell comics. Valiant absolutely has to sell comics. And then you have all those other categories of people, like alterna. Those guys live and die on their comic sells. No one buys t shirts and stuff like that. So those guys have to make great comics. So that's why if you're looking for flavor and things like that, you usually get it in the indies and not so much Marvel and DC.
So Shadow man, would you consider him like a solid middle third NFL quarterback? Like never going to rock the world as a character in the mainstream, but pretty solid, and you're not going to complain about having him?
I think that's the thing. I think if they ever did like a shadow man movie, because think of it this way, what's like one of the best comic book inspired films of all time? Just name some underrated comic book movies. Like comic book movies that you're like.
These are special spawn, Blade, the Crow.
The Crow. That was the one I was looking for. Okay. Ninja turtles. I really think Shadow man could, if done properly, if they got the right person to play Shadow man, it could be like a crow or a not 300, but it could be somewhere in that. Obviously better than the spirit that movie did. Terrible. But the thing is, that movie was actually really stylized and really cool and really faithful to the comic book. And I think if they stayed faithful to the comic book material, a lot of people would enjoy Shadowman. And then the thing is, too, we live in a weird time where everyone is crying, woke this and woke that, and inclusion this and inclusion in that. And then you have this really solid b ish character that represents a minority. That would be a fantastic. It would make a great, um. So I would say he's more like this. Like, he's like Tom Brady's second know where it's like, if he's backing up Tom Brady or like Pat Mahomes, you know, that he has to be good. Because if anything ever happens to Pat Mahomes or Tom Brady, this guy is going to have to come in and run the offense at a similar level. But Tom Brady ain't never getting hurt. Pat Mahomes is never getting hurt. So the thing is, Shadow man is just like one of those guys that's just been around for a really long time. And I think if they ever really let that character struck their stuff in another medium, I mean, think of it too. I'm not sure how much you've played of this Playstation two game. It hasn't aged well. The cutscenes are pretty cringey, but it's like, there is definitely, like, a sense of ambiance. The music in this game is fantastic. Could totally be a really sick anime in the vein of that spawn animated series stuff. It would definitely have a place. So it sucks that somebody won't give it that type of an opportunity.
And you've got the built in part where there's different people that have been shadow man. So you're not stuck with an actor if you need to change for any reason.
Absolutely. Now you got me thinking of a Shadow man movie. That'd be cool. That would be cool. And there's a whole bunch of really good african american actors that could pull it. Like, come on. They made. What's it called? What was the movie? Wasn't. I don't know if it was Sam Elliott. It might have been Sam Elliott and Ryan Reynolds. It was like RPD. Oh, my God. That comic was a lot of fun. I enjoyed that comic, but, like, the movie. Oh, my God. And then I remember when they announced men in black, a lot of people were like, the comic's not that good. Why are they making a movie based on the comic. And look what happened to the movie. The movie blew up. And I'm sure that there were plenty of people when they announced a crow film were like, oh, that pretty sexy and cool indie comic that a lot more people should have bought. So if it happened with them, why can't it happen with Shadow man?
Well, we're going to sit here and dream about our dream casting here as I drop some promos for a few other shows.
You see looking up from the ground, blood red clouds boiling across the sky.
You did ask me to bring the thunder.
Help. I've got the jealous. Please. Well, if they're following you, then I guess that takes care of a loose end for me. All of you feel the earth beneath you shake and crack and break. I feel that I have failed both of you and I am sorry for that. This has nothing to do with you being a bad leader. Do you want a countdown? Oh, I think I want a countdown. I want three. I always had good intention. I did not deserve to die. Now, the Lucky Die podcast is a weekly five e dungeons and dragons actual play podcast. Join our adventure every Monday, wherever you download podcasts by searching for the lucky die. Hey, Tim, do you like horror movies? Why yes, I do, Matt. You want to hear two ridiculous horror fanatics discuss all the scary movies that just came out?
Wait, you must be talking about our podcast, happy horror time.
You bet your ass I am.
Oh, clean it up, Matt.
No, see, that's the best part on happy horror time. You get uncensored and unpolished reviews of all things horror. We find all the latest releases, we watch them and then discuss them in our real talk kind of style. Aka we're crazy. That too.
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Check out happy horror time, a podcast for horror lovers or anyone who just wants to have a good time. Because anyone can have a happy horror time.
Those were some great shows to check out. But first, let's finish up with this one. So, Patrick, we've kind of alluded to it here. Shadow man is a PS two game. Yes, and only released on PS two, despite having the original game beyond Dreamcast, PS one and 64. I couldn't find a reason for that. Whatever. It is what it is.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure. So this is the thing, too. It's just like, to port a game over to another console requires oftentimes more personnel. It's not like a one button thing. People don't seem to understand that. I love to explain video game development to people where it's like if the game is being made on one console, that coding, whatever it is, the programming language, has to be translated so it works on another system, and that requires a team. So acclaim, I'm not sure how much you know about acclaim. Mid to late 90s is making money, but they made money thanks to games that they did not expect to make money with. Like, I interviewed the creator and the programmer of Torock, the dinosaur hunter, which came out like three years before Shadow man, and that e three. Torock basically had, like, one tv. And the rest of their acclaimed setup was all Batman forever, the arcade game. The first day, a couple of video game magazines played to rock, and they wrote, like, raving reviews and acclaim was like, no one wants to play this Batman game. Oh, my God, it's going to kill us. So to their benefit, they changed their whole setup for e three, and they made it all. Torock and Torok ended up being this runaway hit for them. So they were not expecting to make money with Torok, and they bought the comic book company. They created acclaimed comics and stuff like that. And listen, if anyone tells you that they get into comics to make money, there's something mentally wrong with them. You do not get into comics to make money. You get in comics not to lose money, obviously, but you get into comics so you can build your libraries long enough that you can start to print trade paperbacks and omnibuses and create characters that people like. So this way you can start making merchandise, and then this way you could start getting represented at conventions and doing talks and stuff. Like, comics is just super hard to make money. So it's just like a claim, 1996 to 1999 are making money off of these valiant properties. Shadow man sold pretty well on Dreamcast and Nintendo 64, like, in the six figures, definitely put them in the black. And then they had sports games that did really well. Their baseball and football games did really well. They sold in the millions of copies. They weren't mad in their game day, but they were, like solid thirds and things like that. And then they had good licensing deals for a long time. During the 16 bit era with people like Midway, a lot of people forget that acclaim published, like, mortal Kombat games for a little while, so they made some money. But around the 2000s, around the PS two era, they started to lose money because those tarak games didn't move as much anymore. And then legends of wrestling, they spent a lot of money on legends of wrestling, and those games didn't do so well. So then they try their hand at Shadow man. And that first Shadow man on Nintendo 64 is just something special. On PlayStation, though. It's just a hot mess. And this is the thing it's all about. The team that ported it, they did not put any tender love and care in that port. And that's why it's kind of funny that the game was pretty much optimized for Nintendo 64. When Nintendo 64 had like a third of the available players that the PlayStation did, don't you think you would want the better version to be on the PlayStation? And then the Dreamcast one runs better than the PlayStation, but the Dreamcast has less players too. So it's just like acclaim just made some significantly bad decisions. But when we get to, and this is 1999, by the time we get to 2003, everyone knew another Shadow man game was going to come because the first one was just like this pleasant surprise. And I'd liken Shadow man to kind of like a game that first appeared on the Xbox and the PlayStation two. Like the suffering. I don't know if you've ever played the suffering before. Really good game. You ever play it before, Chris?
I haven't yet. I've had a few people tell me I should, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Really sexy survival horror game could have definitely been like a great comic book and stuff like that, but it ended up selling like 800, 900,000 copies. So naturally, midway, which is a company in a very similar spot to acclaim, is like, oh, shit, this game did really good. Let's make another one, and let's make another one in a year. And the developer was like, this game, we didn't really write a sequel like it was supposed to end the way that it ended. And they rushed a sequel, and the sequel didn't do nearly as good. The sequel is a good game. Ties that bind, the suffering. Ties that bind. But it didn't hit. So the thing is, the same exact thing happened with Shadow man. First game was a pleasant surprise. And a claim is like, how do we make more money? Oh, let's make another Shadow man game. And the thing is, Shadow man didn't need a sequel. But luckily, if you put Shadow Man Second coming and the suffering ties that buy next to each other, Shadow man second coming is actually like, it's a better game than the suffering. So the thing is, if we could go back to 2003, 2004, and I'm in a video game store and I see the suffering second coming for like $20, I'm buying it. Because if you don't know what you're doing, and this is going to happen a ton during this game, there's going to be times when you're like, where the hell do I go? I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing here. And there's times where some of the weapons are massively underpowered. The hand to hand combat system, like using the shoulder buttons for punches, just feels really weird. But the thing is, once you get all of that, you're talking like a 30 hours game for $25. Yo, sign me up twice on Tuesday for something like that. And like I said, great score. It was really ambitious in terms of cutscenes and had pretty good voiceover, despite the horribly written cutscenes and stuff like that. It legitimately tried and you could tell that the team read the comics.
That was one thing I really wanted to make sure we brought up, because this one is not specifically based on any of the comic runs, but it does have elements of so many runs that if you've read the comics, you're seeing things you're familiar with.
Yeah, it's like if you're a fan of the acclaim runs with Mike's character, you won't feel like it's out of know. It's not like playing like Shinobi on Genesis and seeing Batman come up and Spiderman come up out of nowhere and you're just like, wait, what the hell is going on here? It's just like they don't throw anything out of the blue. I love maximum carnage because at one point, that was like the best Spider man game that we had ever gotten. But it's just like, why would we're talking maximum carnage. Spiderman is fighting carnage. So why are the streets littered with punks on the street? It's just like, I remember as a kid, 1990, 419 95. I'm like, why am I beating up so many street level people when there's like a serial killer symbiote running around? Why don't we just go after him? The good thing is Shadow man never. You never feel like that. You are stuck in the middle of a war of heaven and hell, so to speak. And the environments are really big for a PS two game. There's lots of room to travel, but at the same time too, there's lots of places to get lost in the game. But again, too, same people that complain that they're getting lost are the same people that would complain if the levels are too small. So that's why I said this game is so polarizing. So it's like, could the game have benefited it a little bit by being a little bit more linear? Sure, but then you're cutting into some of the, you're making the game a little bit easier, and that's one of the game's key drawing points that there's literally so much to do for its time. So that's why I said it's just a super polarizing entry in the PS.
Two and being able to play as both Shadow man and Mike in the first one, Mike is just a straight down grade, strictly worse. But in this one, there's actually times where you want to be Mike and you do not want to be Shadow man.
Yeah, I definitely love, even though I was kind of crapping on some of the underpowered weapons, but the fact that the weapons feel different in each character's hands, and there's such a nice variety of weapons as well. I'm not sure if you played the first incredible Hulk game on Xbox and PlayStation two, but it's like whenever you were Bruce Banner, it was like pure stealth, and it was just like, it was not fun. Playing with Mike in this game can actually be fun at times, and it's a little bit more strategic, but it was done well.
You hit most of the highlights of what acclaim has made before. They know what they're doing with video games. That is no question at all from the acclaim comic side so far, for things that we've looked at on the show, it's basically Shadow man and Tarak from Valiant. You can add Armory's project swarm, which, yeah, acclaim did some of that, too. Iron man. And your Venn diagram, there is basically a circle man.
I love when people mention that Iron Man Exo Manowar, because this is the thing. If you're a hardcore comic book fan, you appreciate Iron Man a lot more than somebody in their 20s, because somebody in their 20s has only been exposed to really good Iron Man. I remember times when I would go into the comic book store and the dollar bin would be flooded with Iron man and not good Iron man. Not Bob Layton Iron man. You know, like, just really like what? You're just like, oh, my. Like, I remember there was a Wall Street Journal article right before the Iron man movie came out, right before they mentioned that Robert Downey Jr. Was going to play Iron man, and they were just like, marvel's days are over. The only thing that they have left are, like, sea level characters like Captain America and Iron man for their films and no one's going to care, blah, blah, blah. And it's because for a really good chunk of time, people forget in the 90s that they actually turned Captain America into a werewolf. People forget that. Mark Grunwold, one of the best comic book writers of the, I'm pretty sure they did that because they wanted to try something, anything, to try and get more sales, because they knew that Rob Liefeld was eventually going to get the heroes reborn thing and take over Captain America, and they wanted to do anything to try and improve sales before that happened. But Exo Manowar and Iron man should not exist. Iron man was like, at an all time low at that point, and Exo Manowar didn't have the strength to hold up a video game series. So I don't know why anyone at a claim was like, yeah, we could make some money with this. I think that game sold under 100,000 copies. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, you're right. For every Torock and Shadow man, there is definitely, like, armorings. And that Iron Man Xo Manowar is like expecting to drink the finest, like Arnold Palmer, like iced tea, lemonade, and then just getting like, flat Mr. Pib from like 1975. At the same time, though, everyone loves to crap on LJN, aka acclaim. Oh, they did so much bad stuff. But it's just like, man for a video game company to stick around as long as they did, they had to do something right. And as many people would be like, why did they buy valiant comics? Why did they do this? Why did they do that? In its own way, it kind of kept the company alive because again, without games like Torok and Shadow man, maybe a claim dies five or six years earlier than it would have. So I know for a fact that acclaim was in a terrible spot around 2003, 2004. Because when they, and I write about this in my mind's behind the sports game for Legends of Wrestling Showdown, the developers wanted to basically take the game back to formula and just do a brand new wrestling game. And a claim was like, adamant that they use the same exact engine from Legends of wrestling one and Legends of wrestling two. Despite the fact that the first and second games both got panned by critics and not a lot of people bought them, those games broke even. So those developers fought tooth and nail to be able to design a brand new game. And then they cut their development cycle by like nine months. So, so many people like, oh, showdown. Legends of wrestling is terrible. And it's just like, well, imagine if you're expected to have three years on a game and you only get two, the game isn't going to play as well. So then that's the thing too. That's one of the things I wonder with Shadow Man Second coming, how long was it in development? I've looked online and I haven't been able to find a post mortem or anything. The Wikipedia page is awful. The fandom websites are really lacking. I really want to know how long acclaim wanted to develop the game and how long they actually did. Because it's like whenever I see games that have incredibly long loading time, that tells me the game hasn't been optimized properly. Things haven't been compressed enough. Because whenever you have extra time on a game, you're just fine tuning. How do we make this load faster? How do we do this? How do we do that? And a lot of acclaimed games do that. Like Torock, the dinosaur hunter. The lack of draw distance and the fog really hurt that game. And that's something that the programmer told me could have been fixed if the game had a little bit more time to be developed. So Shadow man second coming is a solid entry in the PS two. I love when Wikipedia says it got average reviews and you look at the scores and it's like a seven. You know how many indie video game companies are out there? And go, if we could just get a metacritic score of a seven, we'll be great. Da da da. So like that game, to be a seven on the PS two, one of the consoles with the biggest catalogs in video game history, one of the biggest software library sizes for it to be a seven. That says something. That says something like, there's so many games we could talk about right now on the PS two that are not a seven. And this game, it is a seven. It's not one of those games that has like inflated ratings. It's got reviews by a lot of different places. And they've all said the same thing, that it's a lengthy, enjoyable, good looking, great scored game that just has kind of clunky controls and kind of wonky level design.
That's the thing with this one. Looking at other people's videos, played a little bit of it, and you can tell so easily that give them another month even, and there could be so many things that are fixed up. You've got a level that just isn't even textured. The load times. I mean, the voice acting, you can kind of give a pass, because all the video game voice acting was horrible back then.
Sure, because I wasn't doing it. But anyway, that's a story for another day. Sorry.
I would have been disappointed in you if you didn't.
I was watching a gameplay video today for the game because it's like, I mean, I played it for, like, 3 hours on. What's today? Today is Thursday. So, like, Sunday I played for, like, 3 hours, and I had felt a certain way. And then watching someone else play, and I'm just like, there are so many corridors in the game, and these lengthy hallways, if you cut those down, like, a quarter of the size, each level would feel a little bit smaller, and you would just be able to traverse a little bit easier. That would be such a small and easy fix. Like, oh, instead of this hallway taking, like, 8 seconds to walk through, let's make it just like five and a half, and the game would just feel so much better. There's so many times when you feel, like, confined, walking through these straightaways, where it's just like, do we need this many twists and turns? And I know why they did it, because they're trying to beef up the anticipation and the horror and how many times you turn the corner and there's, like, enemies and stuff, but it's just like, you could do it too many times. You could have too much of a good. So. And here, there's just not enough balance in the level. Mean.
So looking at this one, what do you think this really gets right compared to the Shadow man comics?
The darkness?
No, that's a different comic, Patrick.
I know. I love that comic too. And those games are freaking fantastic. The first one is fantastic. The second one is, okay, I'm pretty sure that is, like, it's one of the first games that I remember that as soon as you start playing, it asks you to adjust the lighting before you play. As you start the game, it has, you go like, how dark do you want to make the screen? How light do you want to make the screen? And it's just like, if you play that game, like, optimal darkness, it kind of matches the ominous nature of the comic, so it nails that. And then the thing is, if you listen to that score and you read a shadow man comic, you'll feel comfortable. That says so much. So those are the two things I think it nails the most. Like, the atmosphere and the music are huge. What it doesn't nail so much is, like, the character models. The character models feel like they're ripped out of a WWE game from 2003. Everyone's cut up. Everyone looks like they're on steroids and stuff like that. And to me, that's just people that don't have enough time. If anyone was to ever do a conjure video game and conjure was, like, the same size as Sarita, I would be like, that's know if anyone was going to do, like, a Brooklyn bleeds comic. Um, Terjon wasn't, like, this big ass fluffy chow chow and could be confused for Rottweiler or a bulldog, that would be a huge problem. And so the thing is, because you have a claim running the video game side and the comic book side, I feel like that's even more inexcusable. I feel like if they made that mistake, if they did it to a Marvel game, Marvel either trusted the developer too much and just let them do something, or they didn't care if that happens. But for a claim to have a claim was in a situation to make the exact type of game that they wanted, nothing was holding them back. And somehow they still screwed up the character models. It doesn't make any sense. If you're one of the people that's like writing Shadow man in 1999, and you look at those character models, and you're okay with that, and you don't take a stand that just says that they just wanted to make a game. To make a game. And the messed up part of this Shadow man game is that if they change the names of all of the characters and they change the story slightly, this would have been a really good game without the Shadow man license. And I think that's the thing. When you make a game with a license, you've got to use the license more, and you've got to nail down the look. And I feel like it's so crappy that the atmosphere is there and the music is there, and the feeling is there. But just the character models. The character models just drop the ball terribly. To me.
Yeah. On one hand, I would usually say it's a good thing if everything is hitting except the character models, but these character models are so bad. I saw so many complaints, and it might have been excusable if they had made Mike that big in the earlier game, but he was how he should have been in the earlier game. And in this one, he's a giant NFL linebacker.
Again, it's pretty much inexcusable. And it's just like, I'm curious right now. So I'm going on Moby games, which is like, one of my, one of my favorite video game websites of all time. If you guys have never gone on there, you totally should. But if we go to the Shadow man game, Guy Miller and Simon Phipps did the game design. They did the story for Shadow man, and they wrote the story for. Yeah, look at this. So you've got brand new. So the story for Shadow man, second coming was written by Guy Miller and Simon Phipps, but they did no design on the game at all. So that explains why the character models were so completely different. And this is the thing that people don't understand oftentimes with video games. And I thank you for having me on the show so I could explain stuff like this. And it's like, just because there's a God of war one doesn't mean all of the people that busted their ass to make God of war one an amazing game are going to be on the team for God of War two. It's just not going to happen. And that's exactly what happened in this case. You have a brand new lead designer for the second game than you do from the first game. And listen, I was in situations before where it's like the first padre game. I did the voice, I did all the, what's it called? Dialogue editing on the game. I did a ton of testing. And then when the second game came out, they were like, and I shouldn't even say this, but I'm going to say this because I love you, Chris, and I give you the good stuff, but it was just like, there was a time when they were like, oh, well, we paid you this much for the first game. We don't know if we could pay you this much for the second game. Would you be willing to take, like, a pay cut? And I'm just like, no, I'm not taking a pay cut. You guys just got signed by a bigger developer. I know you guys have more money. The voice made the character. I edited all of your dialogue. You guys are going to have me. And there was like two weeks. I remember there was like two weeks where my wife was like, you're really not going to do the game? And I'm like, I'm waiting for them to call me, and if they don't call me, then I'm not going to do it. So the thing is, just because there are three or four or five versions of a game doesn't mean all of those people are there. So I definitely think there is an adequate team in place for Shadow man second coming, but it's pretty much a different team altogether. And then if you look at the size of the team, the PS two team is much larger because again, you could develop a Nintendo 64 game with a much smaller team. So I don't know why they decided to go in a different place. And the thing is too, like, guy Miller had a really good pedigree. This guy is from rare, worked on Battletoads, worked on the original Tomb Raider game, worked for EA for quite some time, worked on some of the Harry Potter games, which were underrated on the PlayStation two, worked on black for the PS two, which was a really underrated first person game. So you take that guy and then you remove him from Shadow Man. I mean, that's a big thing. And then, I mean the thing too. Simon Phipps, you're talking need for speed. You're talking about Goldeneye reloaded, seven reloaded. You're talking about burnout paradise. Really good pedigree. That explains why that first Shadow man was such a special game. That pedigree only wrote the story for the Shadow man. And you nailed it, Chris, you said it before, story's pretty damn good. So that's what acclaim probably did. They were probably like, guys, how would you make a shadow man game? And they're like, oh, we'll just write up the design document for you. And some big wig at acclaim thought that somebody could write, two amazing people could write a game design document, but then he could pay another team to put it together. And that happens all the time. It's like if you get somebody to write a great screenplay for a film and then you decide to not spend as much money on the director, what's going to happen to that screenplay? It's going to turn into Basura. So that's kind of what happened with Shadow Man Second coming. Not to the worst extent, because it's not a terrible game, but it had the DNA in it from the first game to be something much special. Because think about it, you go from the Nintendo 64 to the PS two, the things that the PS two could do compared to Nintendo 64. So now, Chris, going to ask you an important question. Have you played Shadow man remastered the first one?
I have not played the remastered yet.
You should, because when you play that, you're like, oh my God, if this was on PS two, and that's the thing, it kind of was on PS two. There is a shadow man game on PS two. If you play shadow, the shadow man remastered game plays instead of like a Nintendo 64, it plays like a PS two, PS three game. And it still feels just as good as the Nintendo 64 one. And it's just like, again, the dna in that game is just really freaking good dna. It's like Seal and Heidi Klum DNA in there. I should have never went on Moby games because now we just unearthed the entire reason why this game, instead of being a hard seven, it could have been like a hard. Ugh.
Well, that and Simon Phipps was only there for like nine months for the project, and then he was gone, too.
There you go. Oh, man. There you, uh. A little journalistic research. See what that does?
This is why you have to pay your creative talent and make sure that they can do good things for you. This is why you have to trust the people that have built the foundation and let them do their thing and not just get rid of them because you think you know better, because you probably.
Happens. It happens so many times, too. It's a marketing thing, too. We didn't even talk about that, Chris. The marketing gas.
We didn't. Oh, God. The marketing on this one is almost an episode in itself.
You want to talk about it a little bit?
The most famous one is that they were going to advertise on actual tombstones, which is already controversial enough, but they actually said out loud that poor people would probably like it.
Yeah, because Aunt Ethel's grave would look really great with like a PS two logo on it because that's what she would have wanted.
The funny part is it is probably what we would want.
Oh, yeah. So you know what it is, too. It's just like, I've covered the video game industry for like 18 years. I have tons of stuff. Let's see. I have tons of swag over the years. And no one's going to see this, but you'll see it. This right here is a bullet. It's like a machine gun bullet that Rockstar gave me when Max Payne three came out. But it's like you can actually open it and it's a pen.
Nice.
That was pretty cool. Why couldn't a claim make earns or something and send those? Could you imagine if you were a game critic and you get a package and it's like a PS two game in an earn.
See, that would have gotten people talking the same way. And it's so much better.
And I just came up with that earn nonsense in like 5 seconds. So it's just like, again, acclaim dropped the ball on several occasions here they thought that they could just use a game design document by two industry veterans and put a younger, inexperienced team at the helm. They had marketing people that this is almost like the people that marketed all of Krusty the clowns accessories on the Simpsons. I feel like they marketed this know, and listen, I've been there. I've been on both sides of, I've, I've watched games that I've done voiceover on just get marketed like crap where you're just like, oh, we're going to contact every single big youtuber, and if one big youtuber picks us up, then we're going to get millions of views, blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, okay, how are we going to do that? How are we going to get Jack multiplier and this guy and that guy? And they're like, well, we're going to have you do the Padres voice and just insult them. And we're going to send them voicemails and stuff. I'm like, yeah, that's not going to work. And then they would have me, I literally sent out like 90 voicemails to all of these big time YouTube influencers just making fun of them and then asking them to play the game, and none of them picked it up. And the bottom line is, what they should have done is they should have went on the convention tour and showed the game because it was a really good survival horror indie game. Bottom line, the voicemails and all that stuff, all they had to do was pay me to do voiceover. So it was cheap going from city to city, going to Pax East, Pax west, all these places that cost a lot of money, but they would have made their money back. So a claim, how much money would it have cost to engrave some stuff on a couple of tombstones and take some pictures? Not a lot of money. They didn't want to invest real money in the game. And the thing is, you've got all of these print comics. They've got the vehicle to not only make the best game that they possibly could, but make the best comics that they possibly could, and then they could have advertised the game in the comics during this entire cycle. I was reading comics in 2003. I didn't see any Shadow man second coming ads in any comic books. I didn't see it in any copies of issues of wizard in the Overstreet price guide. I didn't see it anywhere. I remember the first time I saw the Shadow man game for PS Two. It was like in a blockbuster and it was like 24 99 used. And I was just like, holy crap, when did this come out? And I looked at the year and it was like, 2003. And I'm like, this came out this year. I didn't even know. They didn't go out of their way to get previews. There was like no pre hype for it. Just marketed awfully. Just not good.
Shadow man, second coming. We're not mad at it. We're just disappointed that it wasted its potential.
It's like going on a date with this beautiful woman and you're super excited and she's beautiful, and you are ready to have a great night on the town. And she opens up the door and she's just wearing a shirt that you could tell she probably would wear, go to the library. She knows that she's beautiful and she's just like, yeah, this is me. And you're just like, oh, my God, if you put on that little red dress. And that's the thing. Shadow man has the IP, the character design, the support from indie fans. All they had to do was put a red dress on it. And the thing is, the Nintendo 64 game absolutely tries to do that to the best of its ability, but not this one. How the hell did they. What I would have done if I was in charge of marketing, I would have found like 30 to 50 of the most hardcore Shadow man fans ever and I would have been like, listen, this is what we're going to do. We're going to give you $1,000 for the week, and we're going to put you up in a hotel, all expenses paid. So figure it's probably going to cost you like $5,000 a person, 30 people, $150,000, and you're going to play and beat this game. And while you're playing and beating this game, we just want you to take copious notes of what you think. And then you take all of those notes. Obviously, some of it is just going to go straight in the garbage, but there's going to be like morsels of stuff that every single person is going to go, why is Mike, why are Mike's arms so big? Or why does it sound like the voice actors are asking a question every single time they speak? Stuff like that, like small things that could have been fine tuned that would have cost them like $250,000 to have that type of a connection with their fan base. And it's like, now, you don't think the team that just did Spiderman two for Sony, you don't think that they didn't spend like a month reading as much Spider man as humanly possible? Games with big licenses like that do not come out unless the people are tremendously invested at legacy. We're doing a book now on a film that's in development right now in Canada. And I had like a three hour conversation with the director, the writer and the director of cinematography before we even started the comic. And the guy was like, oh, I want this to feel like this. And I'm like, what are some movies that you think this movie is going to feel like? And he's like, haywire with Gina Carano. I'm like, oh, my God. I started laughing. And he's like, why? I'm like, I reviewed that movie on the red carpet, like, the day that it came out. I'm super familiar with it. I wrote a review on it. I understand exactly what you're trying to do in terms of angles, color, fight scenes, the whole nine yards. We got you. I would never just go in, read a script and pump something out. You can't do that when you're handling somebody else's license. So again, that's why it's so strange. A claim had all of the keys to this castle and they somehow messed it up. Crazy. And marketing was off.
So all of that being said, and definitely ignoring the fact that Shadow man remastered exists, would you hand somebody Shadow man's second coming as a bit of a primer course for Shadow man?
No, it would be the first one on Nintendo 64 or nothing. And then what I would say is, if you enjoy that, then play remastered. And then it's just like, then if you're desperately hungry for more Shadow man, then I would say, then play this. It's kind of like I went through a phase on PS two where all I did was play like Boulders Gate Dark alliance. Then I played Boulders Gate Dark alliance two. Then I played champions of Norath. Then I played champions of north two. Then I played X Men Legends, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Marvel Ultimate alliance two. You know where I'm going here. All those Diablo type games, I adored them. Then it got to the point where I'm like just looking for something. And then Justice League heroes came out, which was. I thought it was great, but it was of the same ilk. Then they came out with a fallout Brotherhood of Steel game, which is the only fallout game that came out on PS two. And the only reason why I bought it is because everyone said it played like Boulders Gate Dark alliance. After that, there was nothing of that ilk. And then I started playing like Lord of the Rings, the two Towers. That's nothing like those games, but it's medieval and whatever. I just jumped on it. So the thing is, it's just like, if you are desperately hungry for a shadow man experience, play the first game. Don't play it on PS one. If you have to play it on Dreamcast, play it on Dreamcast. It's okay. But the Nintendo 64 version, that's the version. And then second coming, like I said, it's definitely serviceable, it's definitely fun, and it's lengthy. But nowadays, it may not be a game that you want to sit around and play 20, 30 hours. Games aren't like 20, 30 hours anymore. People don't like to play 2030 hours games anymore. So if you're like us and you're old school, yeah, there are definitely worse games out there. Some of the fights are a lot of fun in the game, but again, the control is really weird. It takes some time to master, and again, that time could be spent otherwise. There are hundreds of games on the PS two that are better. There's probably like close to 1000 games on the PS two that aren't better. But there are hundreds of games on the PS two that are better than Shadow man. Second coming.
Yeah, I wouldn't rip this one out of your hands if you were wanting to play it, but I would definitely be telling you to go play the first one instead. Or these days remastered if you can.
Get it for like $20 too, which you. I mean, I don't see. I don't see why not. And again, it's better than the blade game. It's better than the spawn game on PS two. It's better than the Evil Dead game on the PS two. It's absolutely, positively better than the Fantastic Four game on the PS two. I would even go as far as the Captain America game on the PS three is so awful that I remember interviewing one of the lead level designers at New York Comic Con, and I'm like, just looking at him and he's like, what? What's the matter? And I'm like, yeah, for real? And he's like, what? I'm like, it doesn't even look like his feet are touching the ground. Like, the physics in the game were so awful. It looks like Steve Rogers is like walking on air. Like your floor. The floor. The ground in your game doesn't even look like ground. And he's just like, shocked like that. I actually had the balls to say it, and I'm just like, how do you fuck up a Captain America game? But bottom line is, like, many Captain America games have been messed up. I mean, is there a good Captain America game? I don't think so. So the fact that there is one great and one good shadow man game, that's pretty pretty. That's pretty unique. That's pretty different.
Well, Patrick, as usual, you answered both of my questions before I had a chance to ask them.
I'm sorry.
I like having you on the show.
Thanks, man.
If people want to hear more from you, where else can they find you? Around the Internet.
All you have to do is a Google search. Patrick Hickey Jr. Everything comes up. Go to Legacy comics, legacycomics, comix.com. We have a weekly podcast, talking comics, where I jabber on, thankfully only like ten minutes or so a week, and I just talk about something that's going on in comics or I break down like, a new book that we're coming out with. So there's that. And Instagram. I'm pretty active on Instagram. Facebook. I'm pretty active on Facebook. Both of my pages are public, so I love interacting with people. I love asking engaging questions. I love to have fun, talk about my family, talk about food, talk about people that think Taylor Swift is a governmental plant. I just love having fun with people on social. Yeah. If anyone's listening and they want to talk, yeah, hit me up.
And like always, we'll have links to all that stuff down the show notes. Because clicking links. So much easier than trying to remember how to spell things.
Absolutely.
Especially when you just have to be cool and spell comics with an x because you're a 90s kid.
Yeah, we had to do that and that's kind of like too like an ode to the whole Robert Crumb stuff and just being different and having some cajones. That was the whole goal when we started legacy, just to be different, just to be unique. It's crazy. I'm looking up at my wolves and there's like 30 legacy books on these wolves and there's going to probably be like another ten to twelve more this year. And I'm trying to put the finishing touches on a conjure omnibus this year. So just lots of fun stuff coming. So it's been a lot of fun. So I hope people hit me up and join us on our journey and.
One day, will one of those books be by me? Not at the pace I'm actually writing the things. That's for sure.
I would like that. Listen, I never tell, and that's the thing, too. That's probably like the biggest difference between me and my former co owner, where I was always told, you have to tell people no. Sometimes I'm like, I never tell anyone? No, I tell people not now or not like that, because it's like the second that you tell somebody, no, you're closing a door. And I like to keep all the doors open this way. If I fart, there's some air in the room and stuff like that. No. All jokes aside, but I never want to shut the door on somebody. I've had great artists work with us where it was just like, things didn't work out for either money or marketing, not money on our end. We've contractually paid everyone everything that we were supposed to, but maybe a book doesn't sell as well. And I'm always like, listen, the door is always open if you want to take another crack at something, because, again, just because something doesn't work out now doesn't mean it's not going to work out later. And you have to play the long game. And again, to go back to Shadow man, there's a reason why people are still talking about that first game. There's a reason why that game was remastered, like, 20 years after it came out, and there's a reason why second coming will never be remastered. So it's just like, you just have to keep that in the back of your head all the time. What am I working on? Are people going to care about it? And then the thing is, the thing with you, you got to finish, and we got to get you an artist, because everyone knows that you can write. Everyone knows that you know your stuff. So it's on you, brother. I'm waiting.
This is the chance for everybody to come into the comments and say, chris, finish writing the damn thing. Come on. I'm tired.
Yeah, about go. Let's go. So it's different. I remember when we first started legacy and poor, like, he was, like the only guy we had, really. He was like the only artist that we had that I felt like we could move books with. And now we have Steve Conjay doing great stuff on the job. We have Chris boot doing amazing stuff. On conjure and doorslash, we have Joshua Adams doing great stuff. We've got Kieran still doing great stuff. So it's just like, we're in such a better place now. We have Valentin Quinones now doing amazing stuff. So it's just like, we're in a really fun place, and I didn't get into. And I know we're know this is like a knuckle bowl. I know. I'm sure people, like, we don't want to hear this. We came here for Shadow Man. I apologize. I, like, didn't start a comic book company so I could be the only writer. That's the reason why I love having afram around, and that's why we have Rhea and Myers now and we have a whole bunch of I want to publish other people. Chris Osborne. I want to publish other people. So you need to get on that.
It's true, I do.
There is no time like the presence.
Because you don't even know about some of the other ideas I have. But they have legacy written all over it.
Do it, man.
As always, if you want to hear more from me, you can head on over to playcomics.com, where there's links to all the social media things, including Twitter, where I'm most active. And at this point, I have to assume it's just Stockholm syndrome. Also, all of my people are still there, so maybe we all have Stockholm syndrome. I don't know. But let's all take a trip to Stockholm because it's cold and I like the cold. If you want to help support the show, you can be like Dan McMahon or Carl Antonovitz or Ono lit class and give the show, you know. That's always nice. But you can also head on over to podchase or Apple. Leave a review, tell your friends about the know. Show me that you left a review and I will be very happy and probably do something else. I'm just thinking of this right now as I'm saying this, so I don't know. I'll figure out something good. Probably tell your friends about it. It's great. Speaking of things that are great, don't forget that play comics is a part of the Getogeek.com network with other shows like Legends of SHiEld, which, as I'm recording this and as this episode is coming out, we just finished up looking at Moon Girl. We're going to take a week off and then X Men 97. Yeah, I'm kind of excited for X Men 97. Yeah. Also, there's other good shows too, so check them out. If you like the music that I'm really talking on top of right now, head on over to soundcloud.com bestday to check out best day's music. But most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics, and go find yourself new favorite character.
Sounded like a bullet.
I know. It's because Shadow man is here.
I know.
Congratulations to both of us for not dying with coughs.
I don't know if I've coughed yet on the show, but now. Yeah, sorry, but it's been bad and it's gotten progressively worse, like, the last two or three days where my wife is like, you got a cough? I'm like, no, but I'm trying to be strong, so trying to fight through it. And Wednesday was my last day of the semester, so it's like, I'm technically allowed to be sick now, so now I definitely can't get sick.
Yeah, you've got important things to read.
I do. Well, to be honest, I already read a graphic novel this week, and I read the fourth issue of the Deviant, so I've pretty much got my reading out of the way for the week. I try and read one graphic novel and one single issue a week, so I already got that done this week. So I'm really looking forward to just sitting on my ass the rest of the week and not having anyone annoy me. I have to put my grades in tomorrow, and then this weekend, I want to just be, like, locked in a sensory deprivation chamber. And I don't want to watch Bluey. I don't want to watch animal number blocks. I don't want to be asked to play Animal Crossing. So, yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to.
I've heard good things about Bluey, though, I guess. I love blue when it's, like 3 hours at a time.
When you've watched every episode of Bluey eight or nine times, there's going to be times where it's like 815 at night, and you just put your kids to bed, and it's still on in the background, and you just decide not to change it. And then it's like 1130. And you realize that you and your wife have actively watched nine or ten episodes of Bluey and cried during them. It's like one of the greatest shows ever. But it's just like I told my daughter yesterday, it was like, 04:00 in the afternoon. I'm like, can we please watch Marvel's? And she's like, why do you want to watch? I'm like, because I want to watch it. I don't want to watch Bluey anymore. I want to watch something different. And Marvel's was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. I feel bad that I should have seen it in theaters. I should have supported. But they don't need my money. Marvel don't need my money. Marvel doesn't need money from 35. If you're 35 to 65, Marvel already makes enough money off of you. The comic book industry's biggest problem right now is that if you hang out in a comic book, store long enough. You see kids go in there and they don't buy anything. They look at stuff and they leave. They don't want to buy anything. So it's just like, they need new readers. They don't need us. So it's just like when a new Marvel movie comes out, I'm like, it'll be on Disney plus soon enough. I'll watch it then I pay for Disney plus. That's my support for Marvel. But yeah, man, Shadow man should be marketed to 18 to 30 year olds. That's what they should do. I don't know how they would do it, though, because it's not a young book. It's not a book that's, like, sexy for young kids. And this is the thing, too, even now. Who do you think is the hot writer right now, Chris? Like, the hottest writer in comics right now.
I'm going to go Al ewing.
Okay.
It's a hard pick.
It is. I would probably say James Tinney in the fourth. Al Ewing is definitely there. A couple of years ago, I would say Donny Cates, without a doubt. But it's like, if you look at Donny Cates, there's more writing on the page with Donny Cates than there is with James Tinney in the fourth. You could read an issue of World Tree or the deviant in nine or ten minutes. Like, you could just fly right through it. Shadow man, still to this day, man, it reads like a late 80s, early 90s comic. There is a lot of writing on it. And again, I know because I've taught college for 18 years, 1819 year olds do not like to read. They hate it. It's like, I'll give them some of the greatest short stories in the history of literature. We're talking Hemingway, Chekhov, Marquez, Hawthorne, Poe. And they're just like, do we really have to read this tonight? Can we just read it in class? And I'm like, no. One of the only times I felt like my students actively enjoyed reading in class, I like Halloween. I forced them to read the first issue of Brooklyn bleeds, and they enjoyed it. But I could see some of them, like, reading three or four pages, and Chris, you're going to pee. Because they're just like. And I'm like, are you having problems breathing? Do you need, like, an asthma pump? And they're just like, professor, there's so many words on the page. I'm like, it's a goddamn comic book. It's a goddamn comic book. It's a 24 page comic book. OMG. So it's just like Shadow man. If you don't like to read, probably not going to be for you. It's not that invitation to comics. I think that's one of the things that hurts it the most.
Though, are some great that's going to stay in somehow. We're going to figure that out, but it's, go ahead.