Tag Archives: videogames

Sep 23 2024

Metal Slug 3: Fiolina Germi by Tunshi Studio

Holy crap, it was a little more than a year ago when I checked out Marco Rossi from Tunshi Studio’s line of Metal Slug 3 figure series. I’ve been meaning to dip back in and check out the Rebel Soldier, but it’s easy to get sidetracked when toy blogging. In the meantime, a couple new Slug figures arrived a short while back and my, my… what have we here? It’s a couple of ladies! And we all know it’s ladies first, so I’ll stick the Rebel Soldier on the back burner and check out Fio! I gassed on for a while last time about what the Metal Slug series meant to me over the years. Once an unattainable luxury, the first one of these games I ever owned at home was Metal Slug X on the PlayStation and it was good enough for me. Of course, now I can play the series on various consoles and formats, some legit and others not so much. But I never let that rob me of my appreciation, as rarely a week goes by where I don’t fire up one of the Slugs hear MISSION START! and put a huge smile on my face, thinking about what wonderful times we live in. Plus… Metal Slug ACTION FIGURES!!! Who could have ever imagined that!

As we saw last time, the packaging and presentation for these figures is absolutely off the charts. The roughly 6-inch scale figure comes in a heavy-duty cardboard box that resembles the character compartments on the Soldier Select screen of the game. Fio peers through the window and there’s a folded front flap, secured with magnets, that opens to show the figure and gear through a full sized window. Inside, Fio comes in clear plastic tray with a little compartment up top for an instruction booklet that includes a walkthrough of the articulation. And there’s a second nested tray to hold the insane amount of stuff this little lady comes with.

The line makes use of a super articulated body with actual softgoods clothing, which is so unusual for this scale. And yet Tunshi pulled it off quite admirably. The tailored outfit consists of an abbreviated white tank top, a yellow tactical vest, orange shorts with khaki trim, khaki sleeves under her knee guards, and brown socks feeding into her sculpted boots. For the most part the stitching is immaculate, although there is a stray thread here and there, mostly on the shorts. She’s got a brown pleather belt with a fanny pouch, pleather wrist bracers, and the plastic kneepads are held on with elastic straps. I think the costume looks great, although it feels like Tunshi took a few liberties with the coloring. Perhaps, they sourced some art I’m unfamiliar with, but I recall her outfit being mostly khaki. Still, the colors make for some nice variety and I don’t mind.

You get two head sculpts to choose from, although the second one is pretty specific and we’ll check it out later. The stock head is adorable with some really impressive paint work on the eyes, especially for this scale. The glasses come packaged off the figure and you get a pair for each head. Getting them on was a bit scary, but once they’re on they remain in place with no worries. The hair is sculpted separately from the head, giving it a nice depth as it frames her face, and the ball cap is plastic, but has such impressive texturing it actually looks like it could be cloth. Her sculpted hair spills out the back of the cap in a short ponytail.

Tunshi’s system of articulation is excellent, with double-hinges giving tight bends in the elbows and knees, swivels in the biceps and upper thighs, and a ball joint under the chest. The joints are smooth and easy to work with, but the shorts do inhibit the range quite a bit in the hips. The costume does strategically cover a lot of the figure’s jointing, with only the elbows and upper arm joints exposed. On a side note, I believe Tunshi is selling the bodies alone now, which is pretty cool if you’re into customizing. As for Fio, you get four pairs of hands, but these are mostly intended to interact with different accessories, rather than being gestural. I would have liked some relaxed hands and fists, but you’re already getting a lot in this box so I’m not going to complain.

I mean, just look at it all! It’s a mix of useful accessories and window dressing, but there are just so many great little plastic references to the game in here! And as near as I can tell, only the grenades are recycled from Marco’s stuff, and there you only got one, here you get four! Let’s run through the other goodies and we’ll start with the weapons!

First up, Fio has a revolver and this is such an amazing little sculpt, giving off a bit a Wembley Service Revolver vibe to me. It has a black finish with brown checkered grips and there’s even a loop in the handle for a lanyard to be tied to. Fio’s gun hands have a straight, but bendable trigger finger, so she can practice proper trigger discipline! I love that, because these hands can also double as pointing hands.

But, there are truck loads of Rebel Soldiers in Fio’s path, so she needs more firepower than a wheelgun. Thankfully, she comes with a submachine gun! This is cast in black plastic, feature some very nice detail right down to the cocking handle on the receiver. The magazine is removable and if you look close you can see the tiny exposed rounds at that top of the magazine are even painted gold.

As for melee weapons, Fio has a PR-24 style police baton, which can be converted into a combat axe and that is freaking badass! The axe head simply slots and tabs in for quick and easy conversion.

Fio also comes with the special weapon, Iron Lizard and the Power Up that can be collected in the game to grant you the weapon. The Power Up Box is a recolor of the one we saw with Marco with to letter I’s that stick to the box with magnets. The Iron Lizard itself is a fantastic representation of the goofy remote control bomb seen in the game and includes a blue thrust effect part that can plug into its tail pipe.

The rest of the weapons are window dressing for your display. You get a couple of large howitzer rounds, a cannon ball, and a crate with a top to store all those grenades in. But, how about a picnic?

…Fio’s got you covered. She comes with a yellow picnic blanket and a little ziploc baggie containing her lunch: a sandwich and a bunch of bananas. There’s also a red ruby in there! And here’s where that second head comes into play, as it’s intended to depict her eating her lunch. Yes, we got a sandwich-eating head! This one is mostly the same in terms of the hat and hair, bur her eyes are closed and her mouth is open and about to take a bite. Yup, it’s very specific, but I’m sure people will think up other uses for it. Like yawning because she’s tired from the fight… what were you thinking?

And our last stop is the stand. This is identical to the one we saw with Marco and includes a flexible support with a spring-loaded waist-grabber that supports the figure really well for action poses. The base has a sculpted wood paneled surface, which can actually slide out, maybe in case Tunshi decides to offer options on future releases.

You also get a clip so you can secure two display stands together and they look really good connected. There’s plenty of room between each figure and when I find the proper space, I’ll likely be connecting all the displays like this. I think it would have been cool to get an optional Metal Slug name plate, but you do get licensed branding on the bottom of the base.

What could possibly be the downside to such an awesome figure? Well, the price is steep! At $140, it’s probably not unfair to say that these are priced at more than double the high range for this scale. Indeed, these are without a doubt the most expensive figures I ever purchased in the 6-inch range. Granted, you’re getting a really nicely designed body, fully tailored clothing, and a crazy amount of accessories, so I can definitely see where the money is going. Toss in the fact that these are imports based on a videogame property that is still somewhat niche here in the States and I can’t complain. I couldn’t have even hoped to ever own premium figures like this based on Metal Slug back in the day, so I’m more than happy to invest in the line. I promise not to go so long before revisiting with this line, and next time I’ll jump back to look at the Rebel Soldier and after that it’ll be Eri’s turn!

Aug 28 2024

Golden Axe: Heninger and Long Moan by Storm Collectibles

In case you missed it, Storm Collectibles has been delivering on a rather robust line of action figures based on SEGA’s fantasy arcade coin-op Golden Axe. Or based on the excellent SEGA Genesis port, if you happen to be a home body or just grew up after arcades have become nearly extinct. Since the line’s debut in 2020, they’ve given us all three playable heroes: Ax Battler, Tyris Flare, and Gilius Thunderhead, along with a bunch skeletons and bosses in the game. And now, here we are, finally getting a two-pack of the Death Adder’s evil grunts that plague you most often: Heninger and Long Moan!

The figures come in a wide window box that shows off the goods. There’s some rather large renders of the figures on the front as well, which is kind of redundant. As always, the tray is placed against a recreation of the Player Select screen, which is both clever and looks great. I’ve been playing the Golden Axe series on my Genesis for decades and I never actually new that these guys had names. Word is that they were both named after booze manufacturers: The Henninger Brewery and Longmoan Distillery. I’m going to start with Heninger, but first, let’s just take a look at this…

What is even going on here? Look at all these hands!!! Six pairs for each figure, that’s twenty-four hands in this package! I’m never going to complain about extra accessories, but I think this was a bit excessive. These aren’t even main characters, they’re just goons you beat up over and over again. They even made slight changes in the skin tone for each figure. Anyway, I’ll try to work each pair into at least one picture, but no promises. And I’m not going to run through all of them, because I don’t even know what to call some of these. Just take a look and see for yourself. Hands!

So, Heninger is probably the least interesting of the two as he’s just a muscular man in some tight grey undies. I was honestly expecting this figure to borrow heavily from Ax Battler, especially when I saw how similar the arm bracers are, but that’s far from the case. The bodies are completely different and Ax Battler is a lot bigger than this lowly henchmen. Heninger has a bit of armor, including silver bracers and shin plates, as well as some silver shoulder armor that is worn by the figure via some soft plastic straps. He’s perfect for a generic thug and would probably even work pretty well for a number of different genres. The silver paint on the armor is nice and shiny, the skin tone is warm and even, and the musculature is extremely detailed.

The head sculpt is very good, but definitely contributes to the generic goon thing this figure has got going on. He’s wearing a white headband, has a thin beard and mustache, and is gritting his teeth in anger. Nothing about the portrait really shouts medieval fantasy to me, so you can easily have this guy going up against any of your Storm figures.

If you’ve played around with any of Storm’s male figures, you should know what to expect from the excellent articulation here. Some of the highlights include double hinges in both the knees and elbows, ball joint in both the waist and abs, crunches in the shoulders, and even toe hinges. Storm’s joints have buttery smooth motion and these figures are very tough to put down once you start messing around with them. The balance is also superb!

Heninger comes with a spiked mace with a rather large head and a stout handle. The whole thing is sculpted and painted to look like it’s forged in iron. Among the crazy array of hands are a pair of gripping hands, so he can wield the mace in either hand.

And here’s a quick comparison of Heninger with Ax Battler to show their differences in build and muscle sculpting. Now, let’s move on to Long Moan!

Long Moan sports a much more medieval look with his crude tunic and spiked helmet. The tunic is cast in soft plastic and worn by the figure. It has a really nice rough crosshatch texture that resembles burlap and rough cut edges at the shoulders and bottom edges. It’s cinched at the waist with a black belt that includes a silver buckle and painted belt loops. Yeah, belt loops were probably not a thing back in medieval times, but I appreciate the effort at detail. His light khaki boots lack the armor plates we saw with Heninger and he has white sculpted wrappings on his forearms instead of the silver bracers. The bright turquoise tunic has a little wash to show some soiled spots. As with Heninger, I expected a lot of borrowed parts with this figure, as the tunic looked an awful lot like Gilius’, but once again it wasn’t the case and it’s an all new sculpt.

The spiked helmet is removable and the underlying head is rather generic, but still a solid sculpt. While his buddy looks perpetually angry, Long Moan just looks like he’s board and waiting for the weekend to arrive so he can hit the local tavern for ale and wenches. The helmet is painted to match the tunic and adds some excellent silver trim to the horns and borders. It does sit a little loose on his head, and I find that I’m frequently having to push it back a bit so it’s not covering his eyes. This may have been done on purpose, as I’ve seen some character art showing it down over his eyes and even the render on the box looks like it’s worn low like that.

The articulation is identical to Heninger, but the lower part of the tunic can inhibit his hip articulation a bit. There are slits on the sides to help, but it still makes those exta wide stances a harder to pull off.

Long Moan’s weapon of choice is a spiked club, which is not as refined as Heninger’s mace, but still a perfect weapon for a generic goon. Death Adder probably budgets a fixed amount for each of his minions, so Heninger spent the extra coin for his weapon, while Long Moan spent it at the Ye Olde Clothing and Helmet Shoppe. It’s cast in a very light tan, practically matching his boots, and it has some nasty black spikes jutting out around the top.

And here’s a tunic comparison shot between Long Moan and Gilius. It’s the same style and texture, but still a new sculpt.

It sure took a while to get these common enemies into the line, especially with how many skeletons Storm has been pumping out. I guess, they figured there would be more of a cross-sell market on the skeletons. Either way, I’m glad to finally see these fellas turn up and only buying one set really put my willpower to the test. But, I have no doubt we’ll see recolors of this set, to match the recolored sprites that turn up in different levels, and I will most definitely pick up at least one variant. Indeed, I’m surprised the recolors haven’t turned up for preorder yet. Either way, these guys turned out great, and it’s awesome to finally have them represented on my ever expanding Golden Axe shelf! And I’m just about caught up on this line, although I’ll probably roll out some of the new stand alone dragons in the near future, as I picked up two of the four that Storm released.

Jul 19 2024

Ultra Street Fighter II: M. Bison by Jada Toys

Last year, Jada Toys, one of the kings of diecast cars, came out of nowhere and started shipping some absolutely incredible action figures based on Capcom’s timeless Street Fighter videogame franchise. So far, I’ve checked out Ryu and Chun-Li, and now that some new challengers hit my doorstep, I’m ready for more! Apologies to Ken and Fei Long, who have been waiting for their turn in the spotlight, but M. Bison and Dhalsim arrived and I’m bumping them to the head of the line. Today let’s go with the villainous M. Bison!

I absolutely adore the package design Jada came up with for this line! You get a cardboard arcade cabinet motif with a large window displaying the figure from the knees up, so unfortunately if you buy your figures based on feet, you’ll be going in blind! And are also a very peculiar person! There’s some character art on the bottom and a life bar recreated up top. The packaging here is collector friendly, but you do need to show a modicum of care when opening it from the bottom flaps and sliding out the tray. I rarely keep action figure boxes these days, but I have been hanging onto all of these.

Out of the box, Bison is showing off all the great stuff that made me fall in love with this line at the start. A lot of the coloring is in the plastic, which I think tends to look more vibrant and minimizes paint issues. The red suit is covered in a very fine woven texture with some scrapes and cuts add here and there. There’s a sculpted blue collar, which continues to run down the center of the tunic where it tucks under a thin black belt and gold buckle. His forearms and lower legs are armored and these have a very nice silver finish with some spray to show a rust-like weathering. I’m hard pressed to remember the last time I saw a faux metal finish this nice on a retail action figure in this price range. Of course, Bison is a chonky boi, and the musculature and proportions here look great.

Bison’s black cape is cloth with a wire running around the edges to make it posable. The cape itself actually feels a bit leather-like. And I’ve gotta ask, how often do you see this kind of stuff in mass market figures these days? The cape is attached to his shoulder armor by gold fixtures. It’s also removable by snapping off the shoulder plates and replacing them with a second pair. It would have been easier for Jada to just do snaps, but this way you can nix the cape and still have clean looking shoulder pieces. Swapping them out is easy enough and they seem to stay on pretty well. The armor pieces are attached around the shoulder articulation with rings and can shift back and forward to keep from hindering the range of motion there. With the cape gone, comes the only gripe I have with this figure and that’s the unpainted hinges in the back of his knees where the red stands out against the black of the boots. Now, I’ll likely be displaying him with the cape a lot of the time, which will cover this, but it’s worth pointing out all the same.

You get two heads to choose from: One neutral and one showing his fighty face! Both feature his military-style officer’s cap and it has the same texture as the suit. The sculpted crests are painted gold and when you punch in close, there’s a little unevenness to the paint, mostly on the first head. The facial features are very well sculpted right down to the cleft chin. The angry face is definitely the one I’ll be going with most of the time, as it just oozes character.

As with the previous figures in the line, the articulation here is simply fantastic. I won’t run through all the points here, as I’ve done it for the previous figures. Suffice it to say the articulation is extremely fun to work with and the joints are all smooth as butter. He has a pretty good balance, thanks in part to his big boots and like the previous figures he can hold a high kick pose without any support. Bison comes with a pair of fists and a pair of grapple hands.

Finally, you get an effect part to represent his Psycho Power attack. This piece is cast in translucent purple plastic and fits right over either of his fists. The shading in the purple looks really nice.

I may have said this in my other reviews of this line: These figures feel more like imports to me than figures designed for the US market. The design is so polished, the quality so good, and they are just so ridiculously fun to have in hand. And when you factor in the $25 price point and the fact that Jada is still pretty new at this sort of thing, the line becomes all the more impressive to me. And with all of the preview pictures that have been showing up at conventions, it looks like Jada is in this one for the long haul. Jada is absolutely killing it here, and I’m excited to get back and check out Dhalism in the near future!