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80s Cartoons..... Fun times.

Garfield and Friends was my first introduction to sarcasm and metahumor. It was the kind of show that appeals to children because it makes fun of all the prosocial crap forced down your throat. "We are the buddy bears, we always get along!" They had a lot of those in Nick in the 90s but they've been mostly eradicated now, drowned out by the power of love and friendship. I guess Spongebob still has it a little.
 
YooolisEEeeEEeeEEzze, soaring through all the galaxeeeze

Jeez, I loved that show as a kid and, through the broken shards of rose tinted glasses, my memory tells me I surely watched that show for most of the 80's.

Clearly I was a forgetful little blighter as they only made one season of 27 episodes. I guess endlessly looping them along side The Real Ghostbusters, He-Man and their ilk allowed my sponge-like memory to drain out all the plots.

Not the theme tune though, no sir.

Hugo - fighting evil and tyranny
 
YooolisEEeeEEeeEEzze, soaring through all the galaxeeeze

Jeez, I loved that show as a kid and, through the broken shards of rose tinted glasses, my memory tells me I surely watched that show for most of the 80's.

Clearly I was a forgetful little blighter as they only made one season of 27 episodes. I guess endlessly looping them along side The Real Ghostbusters, He-Man and their ilk allowed my sponge-like memory to drain out all the plots.

Not the theme tune though, no sir.

Hugo - fighting evil and tyranny

It took me years to figure out what the show was - I remembered the people floating near the ceiling, the weird parallel Earth/Flood/Angels story, the mechanized minataur maze, and the confusion over whether they we e actually lost in space or in another dimension. It was sometimes vague at times.

Ulysses himself is a straight up 80s action star cliche of awesome... jetpack, light saber, blaster, energy shield and a cape... to this day I want a damn video game. Which actually begs the question, why no T'Cat games?

The show had creepy art and music and some dark plots. Definitely aged well if you can ignore the somewhat cheesy dialogue at times.
 
Long curly brown hair and a beard maybe? Lol

Ah the Jesus image, I never saw that as a kid.... I wish I had watched the show more. I'd never actually given it my time.... Now it's almost impossible to find .. I've only seen it as a DVD set from Italy.
 
Which actually begs the question, why no T'Cat games?

They did.

It was dreadful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThunderCats_(video_game)

Apparently Elite Systems wanted to bring out a much bigger and more impressive game but time constraints got in the way so they just brought out a dull side-scrolling sword-'em-up instead which was actually meant to be have been a completely unrelated game called Samurai Dawn until Elite replaced the sprites with Thundercats sprites instead.

There was also a DS game released in 2011 which was about the awful reboot instead.
 
Remember when DC and Marvel would run full page ads from the networks promoting their upcoming Saturday morning cartoon season?
I really should try and go through and dig some of those out and post them.
The Looney Tunes, the Whacky Races, the Laff Olympics, Scooby Doo and many more that I no longer remember.
And while I know it's not a Saturday morning cartoon, I liked watching American Bandstand with Dick Clark.
 
They did.

It was dreadful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThunderCats_(video_game)

Apparently Elite Systems wanted to bring out a much bigger and more impressive game but time constraints got in the way so they just brought out a dull side-scrolling sword-'em-up instead which was actually meant to be have been a completely unrelated game called Samurai Dawn until Elite replaced the sprites with Thundercats sprites instead.

There was also a DS game released in 2011 which was about the awful reboot instead.

10-15 years ago I was heavily into the on line emulation scene, and a lot of groups and teams were messing with hacking the sprites and layouts on 8 bit nintendo games, some people translating japanese ROMs into English; others doing graphical hacks or updates to older games, or making new level layouts.... I remember talking to an old buddy of mine about how someone talented could make a great T'cats game out of the original 8 Bit TMNT game, with 4 characters to select from, an overworld and a set up side scrolling levels.
 
10-15 years ago I was heavily into the on line emulation scene, and a lot of groups and teams were messing with hacking the sprites and layouts on 8 bit nintendo games, some people translating japanese ROMs into English; others doing graphical hacks or updates to older games, or making new level layouts.... I remember talking to an old buddy of mine about how someone talented could make a great T'cats game out of the original 8 Bit TMNT game, with 4 characters to select from, an overworld and a set up side scrolling levels.

Great idea! Shame we didn't get anything like that really, but yeah I could see a game like that where you could pick between Lion-o, Cheetara, Panthro and Tygra. Snarf and the Thunderkittens could show up from time to time, helping out the main four characters. End of level bosses could be the likes of Monkian, S-s-slithe, Vultureman and of course Mumm-ra.

Oh damn you - I want to play this game now!!!!!
 
Unfortunately most of the biggest cartoons of the 80s were hitting their heyday between the end of the Atari era and before the NES had revolutionized everything.... the intricate action platformers and beginning of RPG elements that would best serve franchises like Thundercats, Transformers, Ulysses, etc, weren't quite ready yet - look at how terrible ET and Indy were on the Atari. Ghostbusters was pretty terrible for the NES as well (a decent action 3 player coin op game though) and its amazing the 8 Bit GI Joe and TMNT games are as solid as they are.
 
The first TMNT has so many problems and is still somehow really fun if you give it a chance.

Those god damned no-headroom jumps in the airport that if you didn't get exactly could freeze the game. If any game ever needed saves.

Bart vs the World is objectively bad but I still have nostalgia for it.
 
The first TMNT has so many problems and is still somehow really fun if you give it a chance.

Those god damned no-headroom jumps in the airport that if you didn't get exactly could freeze the game. If any game ever needed saves.

Bart vs the World is objectively bad but I still have nostalgia for it.

I never froze the game, but there were some annoying jumps; tapping a for tiny jumps, or hoping u could just walk straight across a small gap, and having to keep going in a circle with respawning enemies every time was so obnoxious. Thankfully, pizza respawned just as easily. Definitely more strategy and exploration then usual for an early NES game of that style.
 
I remember them. Lets face it the 80's was a good time for cartoons. And Theme tunes/songs in general.
Eh, most 80s cartoons were very formulaic with little to no story progression or character development. I think the 80s get too much credit because we see the cartoons from back then through nostalgia goggles and remember the fun we had as kids.

I absolutely loved Masters of the Universe, MASK, Ghostbusters, TMNT, Bionic Six, Thundercats etc. but watching them today ... I still like them for what they are but they are not nearly as good as some shows from the 90s and 2000s. Just compare those to Batman: The animated series, the art style and direction, the writing etc. were on a completely different level. Or Avatar: The last Airbender, what a phenomenal show that was.

The best 80s cartoons were all anime because they weren't afraid of actually telling a serialized story with a beginning and end.
 
No love for Jem and The Holograms here? My daily after-school viewing lineup was Transformers, GI Joe, Jem, and C.O.P.S.

I liked a lot of the other cartoons already mentioned, so I'll limit my additions to the conversations to other obscurities: Does anyone else remember Sport Billy - the cartoon about an alien kid who came to Earth to teach everyone about good sportsmanship? Really hokey, but the opening theme has stuck with me. And then there was The Roman Holidays, which was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon in the same mold as the Flintstones and the Jetsons, but set in "Roman times" - I recall watching a few episodes as part of the USA Cartoon Express, but it seems to have been mostly forgotten, especially compared to its more famous siblings.
 
No love for Jem and The Holograms here? My daily after-school viewing lineup was Transformers, GI Joe, Jem, and C.O.P.S.

I liked a lot of the other cartoons already mentioned, so I'll limit my additions to the conversations to other obscurities: Does anyone else remember Sport Billy - the cartoon about an alien kid who came to Earth to teach everyone about good sportsmanship? Really hokey, but the opening theme has stuck with me. And then there was The Roman Holidays, which was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon in the same mold as the Flintstones and the Jetsons, but set in "Roman times" - I recall watching a few episodes as part of the USA Cartoon Express, but it seems to have been mostly forgotten, especially compared to its more famous siblings.


I used to watch Jem.... It was a great show.
 
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