The really REAL reason why the Turbografx-16 failed in North America | In response to Shmup Junkie Creative Cat Productions 2021-07-18 | On April 25th of 2021, Shmup Junkie, YouTube’s rising star, uploaded the first of two videos that went into the history of the PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16. In the second of these two videos, regarding the Turbografx-16, the Shmup Junkie described the various reasons that people give for why the Turbografx-16 console failed to make it in North America. Chief among the positions discussed is Creative Cat Production’s own hypothesis from one of our most popular videos, which also happened to be about the history of the Turbografx-16. Our hypothesis is that the console failed because it surrounded itself with confusing and expensive hardware add-ons that dissuaded consumers who preferred the cheaper and more clear cut NES and Sega Genesis. Shmup Junkie did not cite us within his video, but he DID call our position “rubbish” or “trash”…..what’s the deal with that? So I contacted Shmup Junkie through Twitter and told him that he referenced our video and that I wanted to do a response, because we cordially disagree. He said he watched and liked our video, but he is still committed to his position that the Turbografx-16 was not brought down by its costly accessories, but rather, the popularity of SEGA. Let’s just see about that! We’ve gone back and reviewed the literature….this ONE Gamasutra article by a journalist named Christian Nutt, from which we BOTH acquired all of our most important information and ideas. Having reviewed our own video, his videos, and carefully studied the Gamasutra article, we realized that we were kind of right, but for a reason that we failed to pay enough attention to the first time we visited this topic. So, we present to you all, for your consideration, the really REAL reason why the Turbografx-16 failed in North America…..and it wasn’t SEGA’s fault….it was actually killed by the console’s creator, Hudsonsoft. Check out our video for the detail. As always, thanks for watching.-CCP Management __________________________________Links:Shmups Junkies PC Engine video:youtu.be/PFlMZiCZwVcShmup Junkie’s Turbografx video:youtu.be/Fh-pXInZeNcCCP’s origina Turbografx video:youtu.be/88kRqW8hQB0the Gamasutra article by Christian Nutt:gamasutra.com/view/feature/225466/stalled_engine_the_turbografx16_.php————————
Haunted Castle | Konami’s worst Castlevania game reborn Creative Cat Productions 2024-10-14 | Boo! 👻 Consider this our Halloween video🎃 Haunted Castle is a once obscure arcade game that was released by Konami to Noth America, as a conversion kit, in 1988.It wasn’t widely played or talked about but its very special because its the official Castlevania arcade game, under a different name…..or is it?The game would eventually re-appear online and in various retro collections and it quickly garnered a reputation for being awful. Super awful. In fact, some have called Haunted Castle the worst Castlevania game ever made.Now, nearly 40 years later, thanks to the Castlevania Dominus collection, its not only possible to experience the orignal Haunted Castle in all of its glory, but now you can play Haunted Castle reborn! Or rather, “revisited”. M2 has completely remade the game with new longer levels, contemporary art, improved boss fights and little touches meant to make the game more similar to a coventional Castlevania game.So did M2 succeed? Is Haunted Castle the worst Castlevania game? And is the Dominus Collection worth $25? Find out with us!We read a lot of different articles and sources to make this video. Most useful was an article by Cassidy at the Bad Games Hall of Fame from 2017. We highly recommend you check it out. Its just called “Haunted Castle” and it makes a lot of great points and reveals a lot of neat details about this games origin.Thanks for watching!- CCP Management
Yuji Naka blacked out Naoto Oshima from a photo commemorating the anniversary of Nights into Dreams Creative Cat Productions 2024-09-05 | Over the years, former friends and collaborators, Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima have suffered a major fallout. In 2022 Naka even blacked Oshima out of a photo meant to commemorate the release of Nights into Dreams. Why? Well it has a lot to do with their collaboration on Balan Wonderworld, as each party blames the other for the game being such a catastrophic failure. It’s a complicated story, so why not learn more about it in our 90 minute YouTube masterpiece: Yuji Naka is not really bad!- CCP Management
Yuji Naka denies the rumors that had anything to do with the failure of Sonic Xtreme in 1996 Creative Cat Productions 2024-09-05 | Rumors have been circulating for years that Yuji Naka harmed the development of Sonic X-treme in 1996 by withholding access to the Nights into Dreams game engine that the developers at SEGA of America thought was necessary to complete the game in time for the Christmas 1996 deadline. However, Naka denies this, and calls the story a bold faced lie. But who can we believe?This is an excerpt from our video about Yuji Naka: Yuji Naka is not really bad. Check it out here on YouTube!- CCP Management
Balan Wonderworld brought back together the dream team of Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima Creative Cat Productions 2024-09-03 | Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima make good game, butt that all changed when Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima made 💯💯💯 BALAN WONDER WORLD💯💯💯No one liked this game, and it ended the long partnership of Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima, who together made such classics as: burning rangers, sonic the hedgehog, nights into dreams, and probably more. But I am cat. Cat’s poop in a box. I not know. - CCP Management
1998 was a great year for Yuji Naka with the release of both Burning Rangers and Sonic Adventure Creative Cat Productions 2024-09-01 | 1998 was a major year for both Sonic Team and Yuji Naka because it saw the release of both Burning Rangers for the SEGA Saturn and Sonic Adventure for the Sega Dreamcast. I never much appreciated the former game, but it has its fans, and Sonic Adventure went on to be a defining game for SEGAs failed, yet outstanding final home console. This is an excerpt from our longer documentary: Yuji Naka is not reall badCheck it out here on YouTube!- CCP Management
Yuji Naka is a true Sega legend Creative Cat Productions 2024-09-01 | Today Yuji Naka is regarded as a bit of a loser. His failure with Balan Wonderworld, and subsequent arrest for insider trading, were widely discussed by the gaming press. But this by no means changes the fact that Yuji Naka is a bonafide SEGA legend: he pushed the Sega Master System to its limits, coding games like Space Harrier and Phantasy Star….and the work he did on the early Sega Genesis is second to none. Love him or hate him, you can’t deny, Sega would never have been what it was without the tall, cocky, handsome Yuji Naka. This is an excerpt from our full length documentary: Yuji Naka isn’t really bad…..check it out!- CCP Management
Mark Subotnick claims Yuji Naka ruined a Sega Dreamcast game in order to steal the game’s code Creative Cat Productions 2024-09-01 | On the retro hour podcast, Mark Subotnick claimed that Yuji Naka shut down the development of Geist Force for the Sega Dreamcast in order to steal the game engine for a new 3D sonic game. Other versions of the story, however, report that the game was woefully behind schedule and had to be shelved by SEGA due to the project’s lack of productivity. This is an excerpt from our most successful video: “Yuji Naka isn’t really bad”…..check it out here on YouTube!- CCP Management
Will X-Men 97’ re-ignite our love for the X-Men? Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-25 | X-Men 97 debuted earlier this year and…..it was pretty good! Yet not that many people seemed to notice or care. Is there a future for X-Men 97? Is there a future of X-Men beyond Wolverine and Deadpool? Maybe. This is from our full length video, Rise of the X-Men. Check it out here on YouTube!- CCP Management
Avi Arad might be, after all, the chief reason why Marvel became so big in the 1990s and beyond Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-24 | Avi Arad is behind everything that made Marvel into the brand behemoth it became in the 2000s. He was behind the popular toys, he was the executive producer of the popular animated TV shows, and he successfully brought Marvel to the movies with Blade and X-Men.This is from our video, Rise of the X-Men, which is available here on YouTube! Check it out. 😎 - CCP Management
Avi Arad, the CEO of Toy Biz, would buy out Marvel in the mid 90s and move the company toward movies Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-24 | Avi Arad came to dominate the destiny of Marvel through a circuitous path. Avi’s toy company, Toy Biz, came into contact with Marvel in search of popular IPs to exploit for marketing purposes. Eventually the X-Men toy line, created by Toy Biz, would - for a time - become the most popular of the 90s. This new found capital was sufficient for Avi Arad to buy out Marvel, after the comic book company faltered in the wake of the bursting of the 90s comic book bubble. At the helm of Marvel, Avi Arad could then steer the company toward promoting his toy business full time, and it’s Avi Arad who worked to move Marvel from comic book company to becoming the full time creators of movies and TV shows. This is an excerpt from our video, Rise of the X-Men, which you can watch here on YouTube! - CCP management
How the X-Men became one of the most popular things in the 1990s Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-24 | In the 1990s, for a few years, the X-Men became one of the most popular things in pop culture, dominating TV, stores, and even our cereal boxes. But how? It was the confluence of several major forces working in unison: the comic speculators market pushing X-Men to record breaking sale, the ambition of Margaret Loesch to make a Saturday morning TV show that appealed to a wider demographic, and a scrappy little toy company called Toy Biz looking to sell a lot of plastic to kids. These forces worked together to propel X-Men to mainstream superstardom. This is an excerpt from our latest video, Rise of the X-Men! Check it out here on YouTube- CCP Management
Basing a television series on the X-Men has always been a very challenging prospect Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-23 | Basing a TV show on the X-Men is tough to do. It’s hard to work with so many characters in a way to do justice to any one of them. It’s hard to make the brand recognizable, across so many different faces. The characters are also pretty weird, and not all of them are immediately very appealing. And some of the themes and ideas that are explored are very controversial. So putting together a Saturday morning cartoon based on the X-Men? That took courage, but more than that, it took some very very clever writing. This is an excerpt from our latest full length video, Rise of the X-Men. Check it out here on YouTube! 😎 - CCP Management
Chris Claremont helped transform the X-Men into something truly special Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-23 | After the X-Men was rebooted in 1975, Chris Claremont soon became the head writer, and boy did he do some magical things to transform the series into something special. His emphasis on interpersonal relationships and well balanced characters gave the comic much needed depth and dramatic gravity. Stock villains, like Magneto, became compelling anti-heroes. The philosophical implications of being a “mutant” were further spelled out, and explored. And there was even an oddly progressive emphasis on internationalism and lots of exposure of women….lot and lots of exposure if you know what I mean.This is an excerpt from our latest video, Rise of the X-Men! See it now, on youtube- CCP Management
X-Men first debuted in 1963, but was canceled by 1970 Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-23 | The origins X-Men were very different from the X-Men most of us know, love, and remember. It was a superhero team, in keeping with the fads of the early 1960s, and clearly an after thought for its famous Marvel creators. By 1970s the comic was canceled.This is an excerpt from our MEGA HIT video, here on YouTube: Rise of the X-Men!Check it out- CCP Management
Hugh Jackman is the Australian Wolverine, mate Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-22 | One of the things people really hated about Pryde of the X-Men, back in the 80s, was the attempt to transform Wolverine into an Australian instead of a Canadian. How ironic is it that the most iconic Wolverine in existence, Hugh Jackman, who’s spent the last 25 years practically doing nothing else except portraying Wolverine, is also a huge Aussie. And not the muted Mel Gibson kind, but a walking, veggiemite eating stereotype. Freaking Paul Hogan isn’t as Australian as Hugh Jackman, who was, in fact, an honest to goodness Outback wilderness ranger. Crikey!This is an excerpt from our masterpiece, Rise of the X-Men…..check it out!- CCP Management
X-Men the animated series in 1992 definitively made X-Men a household name Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-22 | Before X-Men the animated series, X-men’s biggest draw had been the record breaking comic book: X-Men #1 from 1991. It sold an amazing 8 million copies. But that was chump change compared to what X-Men the animated series was about to do! X-Men the animated series, routinely, pulled in ratings close to 8 million viewers…..every week….for years! Thus rapidly and exponentially exposing the world to X-Men on a scale that had previously been unthinkable. My the mid 90s, there was hardly a person alive who hadn’t at least HEARD of the X-Men and, for kids, they were literally the coolest most popular thing around! Until they weren’t 😂 This is an excerpt from our HIT video, Rise of the X-Men, which you can watch here on the YouTube- CCP Management
X-Men the animated series in the 1990s was popular amongst both kids and young adults Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-22 | When X-Men the animated series debuted on Fox Kids in the fall of 1992, I was stoked. As a ten year old boy, at the time, I was an avid reader of X-Men and fan of the toy line. However, even my 22 year old sister and her husband loved the X-Men show. It was action packed, featured romance, and developing storylines…..it was like a soap opera! I’d go over to their apartment on Saturdays and we’d watch it together. Indeed, watching the debut together is one of my my core childhood memories. This is an excerpt from our BIG video, Rise of the X-Men. Check it out here on YouTube!- CCP Management
X-Men the animated series in 1992 became the most watched Saturday morning cartoon ever Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-22 | After years of doubts and false starts, X-Men finally debuted as a Saturday morning cartoon on Halloween day in 1992. It immediately pulled in a Nielsen rating roughly three times what was expected for any other show in a similar time slot, making X-Men an instant hit. Millions of kids and young adults, male and female, across the entirety of North American tuned in to watch the melodrama….. and they loved it. Soon X-Men was a true household name and every bit as popular as Spider-Man or the Hulk that came before them. This is an excerpt from our full length video, Rise of the X-Men! Check it out 😎 - CCP Management
Bobby’s World in 1990 was Fox Kids’s first hit show Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-21 | Created by stage comedian, Howie Mandel, Bobby’s World was a surprising hit for Fox Kid’s in 1990. It was a creative and introspective examination of the mind of a four year old boy who can’t help but take the idiomatic rich world of adults literally. To me, it seems plausible that Bobby’s World may have directly inspired Rugrats, which plays similar games with the imaginative and yet incorrect way small children struggle to interpret the world of big people. Bobby’s World is a classic!And this is an excerpt from our video, Rise of the X-Men, which is here on YouTube- CCP management
X-Men #1’s success in 1991 quickly led to X-Men becoming one of the most popular IPs of the 1990s Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-21 | I’ve always wondered why X-Men took off when it did? And it seems to be rooted in the popularity of X-Men #1 in 1991, which broke all the comics sales records. This was sufficient to get everyone’s attention. Videogame companies, toy makers, and finally animation and television executives were willing to consider an X-Men animated series. X-Men was about to blow up, big time!This is from our magnum opus, Rise of the X-Men, which you can watch here on YouTube. Check it out dudes! 😎
X-Men #1 in 1991 is the highest selling comic book of all time Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-21 | X-Men #1 in 1991 sold over 8 million copies thanks to hype amongst collectors, the collaboration of Jim Lee and Christ Claremont, and the fact that it was released in the form of 5 different covers that could be combined to form a beautiful panoramic image. Did people seriously buy 5 copies of X-Men #1? You bet your biscuits they did!This is from our newest BIG video, Rise of the X-Men, which you can watch here on YouTube. Check it out!- CCP Management
Todd McFarlane is the Michael Bay of comic books Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-21 | Todd McFarlane is a lot of great things: an athlete, an artist, a trading card and action figure mogul. But one thing he is not, is a writer. In 1990, when Spider-Man #1 was released, it sold 2.5 million copies on the basis of McFarlane’s fame and reputation alone….but critics and Spider-Man fans were ultimately disappointed, because Spider-Man #1 was trash. I mean, it is a really awful comic book with comically bad writing. McFarlane was famously confronted about this from a lot different sources who thought he was hurting the industry. Famously, McFarlane doubled down on his bad writing by going so far as to brag that the only thing he, himself, ever read was the sports page. Why care about fancy pants literary skills, like telling a good story, when kids are just going to buy your comic books for the elaborate, overly crosshatched pictures?!In a way, he had a point, but he was also sewing the seeds of the comic book industries eventually implosion This clip is an excerpt from our latest BIG video, Rise of the X-Men! Check it out here on YouTube- CCP Management
Spiderman #1 in 1990 was Todd McFarlane’s chance to write and draw for Spider-man Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-21 | One of the most successful comics of all time was Spider-Man #1, written by Todd McFarlane, spider-man’s star penciler from the 1980s. It was McFarlane’s debut as a writer and it got the comic book world excited to see the written word meet the artist’s every whim. Unfortunately, it turns out that writing and drawing are two different skill sets and Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man is, well, kind of horrible…….This is an excerpt from our newest video, Rise of the X-Men! Check it out here on YouTube- CCP Management
Todd McFarlane and the hype surrounding Spider-Man #1 and Spawn hurt comic book shops in the mid 90s Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-20 | Todd McFarlane is the poster boy for the comic books speculators market in the mid 1990s. He stood over the creation of comics that were most famous for their garish artwork, hyped up covers, and more than one brand new franchise that was supposed to be the future of the industry. Yet, McFarlane, was also a terrible writer and its a sad fact that all of his comics - where in he transcended the role of penciler - were basically trash.McFarlane led the way, producing millions upon millions of comic books, that promised big value for both shop owners and collectors, without much regard for the honest to goodness comic book readers….and eventually, it all came tumbling down.Have you actually ever read Spawn?! It’s awful! 😂This is an excerpt from Rise of the X-Men, our newest BIG video here on YouTube- CCP Management
Over production of collectable issues brought the comic book industry down to its knees in the 1990s Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-20 | Comic book companies churned out collectable comics by the millions. Comic books shops got strong armed into make very large orders, out of fear of missing out on the next big thing. So when comic book readers stopped buying around 1995, shops were left out to dry with boxes and boxes of unsold crappy comic books that no one wanted to actually buy. The shops couldn’t make a return on their investment. And so many simply went out of business. Thus ended the comic book bubble of the early 1990s.Thanks Todd McFarlane! 😂 This is an excerpt from Rise of the X-Men, our latest BIG youtube video. Check it out dudes! 😎
The comic book speculators market in the early 1990s was out of control Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-20 | In the early 90s the sales of comic books went through the roof, breaking all kinds of records. Sadly, this wasn’t as much a function of a quality product as much as it was marketing gimmicks that promised to make every other issue some kind of collectible extravaganza: issue number ones - millions of them - printed with numerous collectible covers, featuring reboots, or new characters. Shoot, they even killed off Superman, for a brief period. The result of this extravagance was an implosion that would send shock waves throughout the comic book industry, collapsing sales, putting companies out of business, and closing shops all throughout the land…..shops that invested in millions upon millions of unsold inventory, all promising the same thing……”being valuable someday”This is an excerpt from our video: Rise of the X-MenCheck it out!- CCP Management
X-Women was supposed to be released for the Sega Genesis at the end of 1996 Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-20 | Clockwork Tortoise, a company with only one game credit, was slated to release X-Women by the Christmas of 1996. It was an action game where you could play as the three main heroines from the X-Men: Jean Grey, Storm, and Rogue…..with a heavy emphasis on flying mechanics. The game was officially called X-Women the Sinister Virus and featured a story wherein the male X-Men are all incapacitated by some sort of malicious virus. But thankfully, women are unaffected and so the girls have to save the day!The game was featured in video game magazines at the time, with a few marginal references here and there, but the big debut would be at E3 1996 where the game had a kiosk at the SEGA pavilion which showed off some gameplay footage…..which, in fact, looked very nice. Sadly, 1996 was a bit late in the game, and attention was squarely on the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation at this point of time so coverage was never that copious. Further, Clockwork Tortoise went out of business during development after missing a number of deadlines…..SEGA quietly defunded the project and Clockwork Tortoise was no more. No surviving proto-type of the game is known to exist, but it’s fun to think of what could have been.This is an excerpt from our video: Rise of the X-Men. Check it out here on YouTube!- CCP Management
Pryde of the X-Men failed because it tried too hard to cram too many characters into its narrative Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-19 | Pryde of the X-Men is kind of poplar online these days, but the truth is it’s not really a very good show, despite having great Japanese animation. The fundamental problem is that it tries too hard to cram too many characters and core X-Men concepts into a paper thin, 24-min narrative structure. The result is as confusing as it is boring. If I were a TV executive in 1989 and I saw this? I wouldn’t green light it either! It sucks 😆 This is an excerpt from our video: Rise of the X-Men! Check it out, here on YouTube - CCP Management
RoboCop the animated series from 1988 is surprisingly good Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-19 | You’d think RoboCop the animated TV series would have been just a cynical cash grab the way so many movie-toy-tie-in shows were in the 1980s. But in this case, you’d be totally wrong! RoboCop the animated series had good writing, voice acting, and fun action sequences. It introduces many advanced themes as well, including: cybernetics, artificial intelligence, hacking, and the internet. It was great!This is an excerpt from our latest video, Rise of the X-Men!Check it out here on YouTube dudes 😎 - CCP Management
RoboCop was one of the most violent films of 1987, and then one of the best kids shows of 1988 Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-19 | RoboCop was one of the best and most violent movies of 1987. A dystopian, cynical, dark comedy - of sorts - directed by the brilliant Dutchman known as Paul Verhoeven. It featured action scenes so gratuitous that it had to be edited down in order to be allowed an R-Rating. Essentially, Verhoeven loves squibs. Lots and lots of squibs. So of course this means that RoboCop would make a great kids show right? Well, that’s exactly what happened in 1988! RoboCop the animated series debuted with 12 episodes and a toy line that made use of cap gun technology. And you know what? It was actually pretty awesome. RoboCop was a great show. This is an excerpt from our magnum opus, Rise of the X-Men, viewable on YouTube right now!- CCP Management
Margaret Loesch was the successful television executive behind the Pryde of the X-Men in 1989 Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-19 | Margaret Loesch should probably be regarded as a TV legend at this point. She was, as the head of Marvel Entertainment, during its animation days, the executive producer of such important shows as GI Joe, Gem and Holograms, Transformers, Fraggle Rock, and even Muppet Babies. She was also behind the original Pryde of the X-Men animated TV pilot and she would eventually be behind, as the CEO of Fox Kids, the X-Men animated TV series. What a track record!This is an excerpt from our full length video: Rise of the X-Men, which can be seen - here - on YouTube- CCP Management
X-Women were key to the success of the X-Men comic book….and not really for the right reasons Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-19 | Let’s be honest, one of the main reasons the X-Men comic book was so successful in the 1980s was the fact that it had so many female characters. Yes, these were very well written, appealing characters with cool powers and great personalities…..but they were also all drawn in scantly clad costumes that would have made the models in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue blush. It’s likely true that many boys simply read these comics for no other reason than they just liked the pictures.This is an excerpt from our latest video: Rise of the X-Men! Check it out, here, on YouTube-CCP Management
X-Men would have been really market and repackage as a Saturday morning cartoon in the 1980s Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-19 | In the 1980s the X-Men, despite being a popular comic, had lot going against it. It had a weird name, featured a large and confusing array of characters, and was bit too edgy for children. Marketers and TV executives would have been hard pressed to either understand or use an intellectual property like X-Men…..which, of course, partly explains why X-Men always stood in the shadow of other big Marvel IPs such as Spider-Man or the Hulk. This is an excerpt from our latest video: Rise of the X-Men, which you can watch here on YouTube!- CCP Management
X-Men pitch meetings in the 80s must have been wild Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-19 | Can you imagine trying to pitch Wolverine as a major protagonist for your Saturday morning cartoon in the 1980s? People would have flipped out 😂 This is an excerpt from our video: Rise of the X-Men….available, here, on YouTubeThanks for watching 😎 - CCP Management
It would have been really hard to explain the X-Men to children’s television executives in the 1980s Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-18 | How would you have gone about trying to explain the X-Men to children’s TV executives in the 1980s? A time when TV was still largely run by the World War 2 generation? That would have been an interesting challenge!This is an excerpt from our full length video, Rise of the X-Men, here on YouTube - CCP Management
Pryde of the X-Men was a 1989 TV pilot intended to convince executives to make X-Men into a series Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-18 | In the late 80s, making X-Men into a TV show would have been a hard sell. The comic had too many characters, was too violent, dealt with too much controversy, and had too many ladies running around in bathing suits…..but that didn’t stop them from trying! Margaret Loesch had a pilot made and thus Pryde of the X-Men was born! It’s a nice effort, it has great animation, but it doesn’t have great writing. Still, the show remains a popular part of the X-Men legacy and leaves a lot of people wondering how things might have been different if TV executives had agreed to turn that 80s X-Men show into a bigger thing?This is an excerpt from our 90 min magnum opus, Rise of the X-Men! Check it out, here, on YouTube- CCP Management
Chris Claremont transformed a stock villain called Magneto into one of greatest comic characters Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-18 | Chris Claremont made a lot of sizable contributions to the X-Men franchise but probably his most noteworthy was turning lame, stock 60s villain - Magneto - into a sympathetic character with a tragic backstory. By making Magneto the victim of the holocaust he introduced real motives the audience could understand and gave the character a degree of tangible psychology and inner conflict. Was Magneto right? Was he a hypocrite? Both interesting questions that made reading X-Men far more interesting than it had been in the past. This is an excerpt from our latest full length video: Rise of the X-Men! Check it out, here, on YouTube!- CCP Management
Chris Claremont helped transform the X-Men into one of the all time great comic franchises Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-18 | the Uncanny X-Men was rebooted in 1975 after a five year hiatus and its, here, after the arrival of new head writer Christ Claremont, that the X-Men finally transformed into a comic book sensation. Claremont was a dramatist and had a keen sense for the importance of the relationships between people and characters and as a consequence Claremont gave his stories a lot of emotional gravity which had formerly been missing from the series: love stories, tragic back stories, humor, friendship, and more importantly, continuity over decades that pulled readers in for more. Really, in hindsight, his stuff was a bit like a soap opera…..and it worked. This is an excerpt from our 90 min video, Rise of the X-Men…..check it out, here, on YouTube!- CCP Management
Come on down to Tent City, located right under your nose, everywhere in the United States of America Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-17 | Our fake ad for Tent City, an excerpt from our latest and greatest full length video: Rise of the X-Men, here on YouTube!Tent City….coming soon to a city, anywhere in America, near you! Probably right under your nose. - CCP Management
Ice Man was the best member of the original X-Men in 1963 Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-17 | Ice-Man was the one mutant with cool powers and a chill attitude. Too bad he originally looked like a pile of snow, but by issue 8 that was improved and we got the look we all know and love today.This is an excerpt from our latesy full length video: Rise of the X-MenCheck it out! 😎 - CCP Management
X-Men failed where Fantastic Four succeeded because it lacked intimacy between its characters Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-17 | What made the Fantastic Four so successful was the fact that it was about a family who cared about each other. With the X-Men, however, while these characters all knew each other, you never got the sense that any one of them really cared much about the other. Thus, there were no emotional stakes for the reader to hang onto. Later versions of the X-Men would gravely improve this deficiency, adding romantic love triangles and angst on par with American soap operas. This would prove to be a recipe for monumental success. This is an excerpt from our full length video Rise of the X-Men! Check it out, here, on YouTube!- CCP Management
Betty and Veronica Decades is a compilation of a spinoff of Archie, a comic book from the late 1930s Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-17 | Who in the heck reads Archie comics anyway? It’s the only comic you can still readily buy at any grocery store chain (the last I checked) and yet, my entire life, I have never heard of anyone actually buying and reading these? I get how this was popular in the 1940s, before the dawn of modern television, but STILL? Well this is Betty and Veronica….a spin-off featuring all of the same characters, only now its from the perspective of two female best friends who are in love with the same boy from high school…..so they also hate each other. Wild. - CCP ManagementThis is an excerpt from our 90 minute long magnum opus, Rise of the X-Men….check it out dudes 😎
Adolsecent angst and the universal need to belong made X-Men a major success Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-16 | Teenagers all want to feel like they belong to a stable and welcoming society, at just about the same time they all struggle to fit in due to either real, or merely perceived, idiosyncrasies. Thus, to such a demographic, a comic book like the X-Men would have been eminently relatable. Here’s a group of exciting heroes, rejected for being too different from normies, and yet at the same time, they’re also intrinsically superior to the same normies that rejected them. How convenient!This same dynamic helps explain the popularity of all sorts of media: from Harry Potter to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Humans, especially young adults, want to root and identify with a groups that’s simultaneously the “best” just as much as its the most persecuted or victimized. It’s how subcultures are born! Well….its how subcultures are sustained, at the very least. This is an excerpt from our latest video: Rise of the X-Men! Check it out, here, on YouTube!- CCP Management
Issue number 8 in 1964 was the birth of the X-Men as captivating storytelling about social issue Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-16 | The first 7 issues of the X-Men were pretty vanilla superhero adventure stories wherein Charles Xavier’s students battled a different “villain of the month” in each new issue. However, things would take a turn for the interesting in issue 8, in the fall of 1964, when Stan Lee took a stab at exploring some of the social and philosophical implications of having a superhero team that were also “mutants”…..super-powered people born differently from mainstream society. To this day people continue to draw parallels between X-Men and the Civil Rights movement, and this was where it all began!This in an excerpt from our magnum opus: Rise of the X-Men, available on our channel - here - on YouTube!Thanks for watching - CCP Management
X-Men were mutants because Stan Lee was running out of explanations for having superpowers Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-16 | By 1963 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had already worked on a lot of different comics together…..and they were running out of ways for giving normal people super human abilities. Usually, they just found a way of exposing people to radiation: Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, even Captain America, were all the creations of radioactive exposure…..and it was getting old. So when it came to doing X-Men they were in real trouble…..what are five new ways to get superpowers? Well, what if they were just born with them? What an idea! Of course, Stan Lee couldn’t avoid radiation altogether because, after all, the X-Men were only mutants because….you guessed it….their parents had been exposed to radiation!This is an excerpt from out new, full length video: Rise of the X-Men! Check it out. - CCP Management
X-Men in 1963 were not very likable or relatable characters, especially Professor X Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-16 | In 1963 the X-Men were made to compliment the Fantastic Four, made to be weird, and made to fit into fads of the time period…..but they weren’t necessarily made to be likable or relatable as characters. They were wealthy, elite, mean spirited, and proud. Oddest of all, however, was Professor X who maintained secret amorous feelings for the underage Jean Grey, taking the creepy old bald guy vibe to the maximum level. Thankfully, this subplot was soon dropped, but boy, there’s no wonder the first run of X-Men ended up being regarded as a kind of failure. This is an excerpt from our full length documentary: Rise of the X-Men! Check it out!- CCP Management
Who is Cyclops? The X-Men’s team captain who struggles to hold in his optic blasts? Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-15 | Scott Summers, originally known as Slim Summers, is the team captain of the X-Men and one of the original five mutant characters. Some people love his classic all American look and leadership qualities, others view him as annoying brown noser with really lame superpowers. Either way, his importance to Marvel Comics history cannot be denied. Who would Wolverine have to punch in the stomach if not for Cyclops? Yes, we’re talking about Cyclops.See the rest of our 90 minute masterpiece, Rise of the X-Men, right here on YouTube not-shorts!- CCP Managment
The original run of X-Men was created to compliment the Fantastic Four Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-15 | The Fantastic Four essentially saved Marvel Comics in 1961 and started a veritable revolution in comics. Thus, it ought to come as no surprise, to find out that the original X-Men were deliberately created to compliment the Fantastic Four in pretty much every way. The Fantastic Four had a fire guy? X-Men had an Ice Man. The Fantastic Four had a dumb working class rock monster? The X-Men have a super smart nerd…..with muscles. The Fantastic Four is led by a super brain that can physically bend and stretch in any way? The X-Men have a super brain confined to a wheelchair. Oh, and they both have women too…..a traditional stay at home mom type in Sue Storm, verses the sorority co-ed that was Marvel Girl (Jean Grey). So if you didn’t already love the Fantastic Four, you were definitely going to love the X-Men, right? Right?!This is an excerpt from our 90 minute magnum opus: Rise of the X-Men. Check it out on Youtube or the following linkyoutu.be/TbBQwOHGch8?si=m27uaRomAY_X35er
George Lucas once co-owned a comic book shop in New York City called Super Snipe Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-15 | Did you know that George Lucas once co-owned a comic book shop in New York City called Super Snipe? Well it’s true! Yes, George Lucas was, in fact, a huge comic book nerd back in the day and you better believe that Dr Doom had something to do with Darth Vader. Check out our full length video Rise of the X-Men, here, on YouTube!- CCP Management
Who are the Fantastic Four? Creative Cat Productions 2024-08-15 | The Fantastic Four is a super hero team from 1961. Indeed, they are one of the first and most popular of all time…..well, they were popular in the past. Today they’re kind of a joke. But there’s a lot to love if you give them the chance: the Human torch is a fire-man, the Thing is a powerful rock monster, Mr Fantastic is a male Mrs Incredible with a PhD, and Sue Storm….aka the Invisible Girl….is your mom. She’s your mom bro. - CCP Management This an excerpt from our 90 min magnum opus, Rise of the X-Men! Check it out, here, on YouTube: youtu.be/TbBQwOHGch8?si=552e8P53z_kVDNk9
