Cheetahmen
|
|
The Cheetahmen were intended to be the flagship characters for Active Enterprises, a small manufacturer of unlicensed Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges. Obviously based on the then-popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Cheetahmen were three humanoid cheetahs, each wielding a different weapon and/or skill.
The backstory of the Cheetahmen was given in a 12-page comic book included with Action 52, Active's only released NES game. Mad scientist Dr. Morbis kills a mother cheetah while on safari in Africa, then takes her three cubs for his genetic research. Subjected to his experiments, the cubs grow into half-cheetah, half-human creatures. Once they learn of Morbis's evil plans, they turn on him, and he in turn creates an army of half-animal humans (known as "Sub-Species") to stop the Cheetahmen once and for all.
The three Cheetahmen were as follows:
- Hercules, named for the Hercules the Greek god, son of Zeus and a mortal woman. He is by nature a pacifist, but will fight with deadly force when the situation demands it. He doesn't use a weapon.
- Aries, named for the astrological sign Aries that is believed to dictate impulsive behavior. He wields two wooden clubs.
- Apollo, named for the Apollo the Greek god. He is the leader of the Cheetahmen, and was the first to question Dr. Morbis's intentions. He uses a crossbow.
The Cheetahmen was the "featured" game on the Action 52 multicart, and there were grandiose plans for a line of action figures and even a television cartoon based on the characters. (An advertisement for Cheetahmen action figures, displaying prototype sketches, was included in the aforementioned comic book.) These plans quickly fell through, however, when bad word-of-mouth and scathing reviews of the game began mounting up in earnest. A sequel, Cheetahmen 2, was finished but never released.
Among NES afficionadoes, the two Cheetahmen games are renowned for being among the all-time worst games ever made for that system. Cheetahmen 2 in particular is buggy, incomplete, and widely regarded as virtually unplayable.