Post by biscuit3 on Dec 9, 2023 18:31:34 GMT -6
Hi all. I'm not sure if this forum is even being used anymore but I got an activation code to join so there is hope!
I recently ordered a black board Action 52 cart from Finland and after four days, it arrived to my home in Australia. But let me get started first on my experience with Action 52.
Of course, we've all seen the AVGN episodes for Action 52 and Cheetahmen II. Usually I've found games he reviews aren't actually that bad and sometimes not so hard. Action 52 looked like hours of fun for me and I really wanted to get one.
In 2013, I moved back to an area in Sydney Australia that I really like and suddenly in the local shopping mall, there was a retro game store. It wasn't huge but it had some good stuff and the owner was super nice. Sure enough, looking through the rows and rows of NES games on the wall, I look up and just above my head was an Action 52 cart! I couldn't believe my luck! I'd wanted the game for a long time and it was right there for $195.
I paid my bill and raced home with my friend who was with me. I prepared my PAL NES Top Loader and almost passed out when I turned on the game. I honestly was in a weird situation where I couldn't decide if I should be so excited and happy or utterly disappointed.
The game I had bought was Cheetahmen II. And it worked.
Yep, great. It was a fun game to pop on for people who had never heard of it and the disbelief that something was so bad was astounding. But, it wasn't what I wanted. However, a couple of months later, I got my infamous Action 52 from eBay and THOUGHT I had a complete my Active Enterprises set. Until...
My boyfriend at the time who is a good friend of mine now, also ordered an Action 52 cart from eBay not long after I got mine. His was weird though! Unlike a normal Rev A Action 52 cartridge, his had orange capacitors. Cheetahmen II also had orange capacitors. Put two and two together and you could only imagine we thought we had another Cheetahmen II on its way. Little did we know, we had something we'd never heard of. It was actually a Rev B Action 52 where all games work! Alfredo and Jigsaw play! How did the Angry Video Game Nerd not mention this?
That was it, we wanted more. Greg Pabich was still selling his Cheetahmen II Lost Levels and Creation games, tshirts, stickers, and dust covers. I bought the two games, some dust covers for my Rev A and B Action 52 carts, a tshirt and a "Cheetamen II" sticker for my actual Cheetamen II game. When my stuff came, I had a nice email from Greg thanking me for my support and hoping I enjoy my stuff.
I had chatted back and forth with Greg on Facebook when I still had it and he was the absolute coolest guy absolutely obsessed with Cheetahmen. He told me he had seen a lot of people trying to sell Cheetahmen II cartridges for cheap thinking they were Action 52 and verified I knew how to tell the difference with the Rev B Action 52 and Cheetahmen II or Rev O and Cheetahmen II being written the EPROM. Oh boy, I told him I check every time!
So now, I bring you to the present. I sent Greg a message through his cheeahmengames.com site last weekend and it bounced back and the enquiry form hasn't been answered either. I see he's still on Facebook but that's his private domain so I don't want to message him through there.
Anyway, to my black board Action 52. When I received it, I popped it into my NTSC toaster NES and it wouldn't play. I have two portable NES consoles and the title screen would load along with the It Takes Two intro, but when I tried to load a game, black screen. Same with my Retron HD. So far, the only consoles that seem to want to play it are the AVS and an NTSC Top Loader.
The only noticable difference with the black board Action 52 and the Rev A and B versions is Ooze. In Ooze you start with 8 lives and you can play all 6 levels. I need more practice and so far can't get past level 4. Also, if you've ever compared NTSC Super Mario Bros. to PAL Super Mario Bros., you would have noticed in the PAL version, Mario feel slower and "heavier". Same with the cart variants. Black Board, on Haunted Halls and Ooze, you feel lighter and can move slightly quicker. Everything else, to my knowledge at this point in time, plays as usual.
While doing research when I was waiting for the black board game to arrive, I came across this forum and thoroughly read Greg Pabich's entry. Some of the links shared do not work anymore unfortunately but it gave me some insight. There are possibly two variants of the black board Action 52 and apparently one of them will play on every NES. Correct me if I'm wrong but if this is true, the version I received may be the first as I can only get it to play on region free actual hardware, not emulated and my non modified NTSC NES doesn't want to have anything to do with it.
I am seriously hoping one day someone will write a history book on Active Enterprises and their mark they've left on this world. That is most certainly a Kickstarter I would back!
Any response or feedback on anything I have written is greatly appreciated, if anybody reads this at all. I would love to post photos but that doesn't seem possible here. My all up Action 52 collection includes:
- Rev A Action 52
- two Rev B Action 52 (one has the clear label missing and capacitors have been swapped over, the other is complete in box)
- Cheetahmen II
- Black Board Action 52
I recently ordered a black board Action 52 cart from Finland and after four days, it arrived to my home in Australia. But let me get started first on my experience with Action 52.
Of course, we've all seen the AVGN episodes for Action 52 and Cheetahmen II. Usually I've found games he reviews aren't actually that bad and sometimes not so hard. Action 52 looked like hours of fun for me and I really wanted to get one.
In 2013, I moved back to an area in Sydney Australia that I really like and suddenly in the local shopping mall, there was a retro game store. It wasn't huge but it had some good stuff and the owner was super nice. Sure enough, looking through the rows and rows of NES games on the wall, I look up and just above my head was an Action 52 cart! I couldn't believe my luck! I'd wanted the game for a long time and it was right there for $195.
I paid my bill and raced home with my friend who was with me. I prepared my PAL NES Top Loader and almost passed out when I turned on the game. I honestly was in a weird situation where I couldn't decide if I should be so excited and happy or utterly disappointed.
The game I had bought was Cheetahmen II. And it worked.
Yep, great. It was a fun game to pop on for people who had never heard of it and the disbelief that something was so bad was astounding. But, it wasn't what I wanted. However, a couple of months later, I got my infamous Action 52 from eBay and THOUGHT I had a complete my Active Enterprises set. Until...
My boyfriend at the time who is a good friend of mine now, also ordered an Action 52 cart from eBay not long after I got mine. His was weird though! Unlike a normal Rev A Action 52 cartridge, his had orange capacitors. Cheetahmen II also had orange capacitors. Put two and two together and you could only imagine we thought we had another Cheetahmen II on its way. Little did we know, we had something we'd never heard of. It was actually a Rev B Action 52 where all games work! Alfredo and Jigsaw play! How did the Angry Video Game Nerd not mention this?
That was it, we wanted more. Greg Pabich was still selling his Cheetahmen II Lost Levels and Creation games, tshirts, stickers, and dust covers. I bought the two games, some dust covers for my Rev A and B Action 52 carts, a tshirt and a "Cheetamen II" sticker for my actual Cheetamen II game. When my stuff came, I had a nice email from Greg thanking me for my support and hoping I enjoy my stuff.
I had chatted back and forth with Greg on Facebook when I still had it and he was the absolute coolest guy absolutely obsessed with Cheetahmen. He told me he had seen a lot of people trying to sell Cheetahmen II cartridges for cheap thinking they were Action 52 and verified I knew how to tell the difference with the Rev B Action 52 and Cheetahmen II or Rev O and Cheetahmen II being written the EPROM. Oh boy, I told him I check every time!
So now, I bring you to the present. I sent Greg a message through his cheeahmengames.com site last weekend and it bounced back and the enquiry form hasn't been answered either. I see he's still on Facebook but that's his private domain so I don't want to message him through there.
Anyway, to my black board Action 52. When I received it, I popped it into my NTSC toaster NES and it wouldn't play. I have two portable NES consoles and the title screen would load along with the It Takes Two intro, but when I tried to load a game, black screen. Same with my Retron HD. So far, the only consoles that seem to want to play it are the AVS and an NTSC Top Loader.
The only noticable difference with the black board Action 52 and the Rev A and B versions is Ooze. In Ooze you start with 8 lives and you can play all 6 levels. I need more practice and so far can't get past level 4. Also, if you've ever compared NTSC Super Mario Bros. to PAL Super Mario Bros., you would have noticed in the PAL version, Mario feel slower and "heavier". Same with the cart variants. Black Board, on Haunted Halls and Ooze, you feel lighter and can move slightly quicker. Everything else, to my knowledge at this point in time, plays as usual.
While doing research when I was waiting for the black board game to arrive, I came across this forum and thoroughly read Greg Pabich's entry. Some of the links shared do not work anymore unfortunately but it gave me some insight. There are possibly two variants of the black board Action 52 and apparently one of them will play on every NES. Correct me if I'm wrong but if this is true, the version I received may be the first as I can only get it to play on region free actual hardware, not emulated and my non modified NTSC NES doesn't want to have anything to do with it.
I am seriously hoping one day someone will write a history book on Active Enterprises and their mark they've left on this world. That is most certainly a Kickstarter I would back!
Any response or feedback on anything I have written is greatly appreciated, if anybody reads this at all. I would love to post photos but that doesn't seem possible here. My all up Action 52 collection includes:
- Rev A Action 52
- two Rev B Action 52 (one has the clear label missing and capacitors have been swapped over, the other is complete in box)
- Cheetahmen II
- Black Board Action 52