Phantosanucca's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hunter Zero Ep.3]

Took you long enough. =P

I like how you give time for some dialogue between characters, even unimportant ones like the soldiers and operators. Unlike every other episode in these series', this one doesn't dwell on violence or action, giving us a much-needed chance to get adjusted to the characters involved. Although there are a couple of questions that feel unanswered.

There is no explanation as to how Bass was revived, or how he was put under Sigma's control. Also, why is no one questioning Sigma's supposedly good intentions? In fact, how did Sigma come back from the dead? Blues almost gives the impression that he's suspicious, but the flash never really explores it, or any of these questions. Of course, it does validate his suspicions through flashbacks, and in small snippets of dialogue.

Speaking of which, there has been a tremendous jump in quality in the voice acting. It's still pretty cheesy, but at least now all of the characters sound the way they -should-. Megaman actually sounds younger than his brother, Elecman and Quickman are given more interesting personalities through their voices, and this helps contrast with the rest of the cool-as-nails characters. It sounds like the actors are actually TRYING, although not always successfully hitting the mark.

Again, because this episode focuses more on dialogue and anticipation, it creates a better stage for the inevitable anime-esque battle sequences that occur. It could've used some more sound effects, and the scrolling background layers scenes felt a little choppier now than in past episodes. But it's clear you're trying to accomplish something here, and you have a certain nack for dramatic presentation and proper pacing, even if the characters aren't of your own property. It makes for a commendable fan-fiction.

~Phantos

CheveLoco responds:

This 3rd episode was aimed to answer most of the plot questions most viewers would have BUT not all of them. Just because everything wasn't covered in this episode doesn't mean they won't be covered in the next 2(many seem to think the 4th will be the last episode but this is a 5 part series)

Sigma didn't come back from the death, maybe you don't know but this is the final part of a trilogy of series i created(starting with Megaman and X:Final battle) as a matter of fact i would reccomend to watch them all to fully understand the story i'm trying to tell, otherwise you won't understand some simple details in this story, like why Blues is the only one suspicious about Sigma, or why Sigma is not back from the death as you seem to think.

[Fallen Angel: Teaser]

Holy S***!

I like to think that there's a certain line in the quality sand that determines whether or not works provided to the internet in flash form can be ranged as Really Good Flash, or beyond the limitations of the flash community; The talent and ability to go beyond this form of media and actually pass off as something else more "official" in today's media. Television shows, music videos, and movies are prime examples. Flash is less of an officially renowned art form, and more of a starting point for would-be animators, writers, programmers and what have you. Like, training for possible future positions in the 3 mediums listed above.

Some flash movies are simply very good movies made in Flash. Entertaining in it's own medium, but perhaps not unique or creative or professional enough to stand as it's own original project in the "real world". Others, show great signs of becoming commonplace in the media, should the author(s) ever decide to bring such an idea out into the world. But they remain as simply flash movies. Nothing more than a flashy little presentation for your portfolio. Never going beyond what convention seems to think is the limit. And I can say without a doubt that this film shatters all of those expectations.

This movie, by far, has the most potential to become something beyond a simple flash movie. It's this kind of style, devotion and talent that was not made for music videos, and is a scale too rich for television. If this flash is any indication, you may very well end up making actual feature films one day.

This movie looks fantastic, sounds fantastic, and so professionally done in all aspects, I myself wonder if it even is a Flash movie, and not just a promotional preview for a greater project done in flash. It really is amazing in every category. This project has taken the next big step in the flash community, and has raised the bar for all of us budding artists, writers and programmers.

Or, if you'd like the short review:

This, quite simply, pwns.

-Phantos

RobsH66 responds:

Thank you very much. :D

[Sprite Survivor - 3]

A bit flawed, but Good nonetheless.

I noticed this episode, though it had it's share of humourous aspects, there seemed to be more of a serious aspect to it, in spite of "Sailor Moon is a whore" jokes.

One scene I wasn't too fond of was the fight between Bartz & Cecil. It seemed far too literal, and actually very pointless for Cecil to be saying the lyrics to the entire song throughout the fight. We can figure out the similarities between the song, and the plot. There's a certain thing called subtlety. ;)

Also, you might want to try and work on choreography for upcoming fight scenes. For a good 5 minutes, it seemed like I was watching 2 sprites floating around as their weapons motion tweened against eachother...

Another point I'd like to stress is in the character's personalities. Obviously Shadow only recieved 2% of the eviction votes because he's cool. That's a given. But consider his personality in THIS episode. He's supportive, he does favours for them, defends Cecil in a argument with Rosa, and then Terra later on at his tribe camp. I really like what you've done with him. He knows he's cool and popular, but instead of making him cocky about it, you gave him a very good-hearted nature to him. He's still secretive and shadowy, but there's a valor to him that really makes the character something memorable & unique.

I think you should really consider taking this kind of action with all of the remaining characters. Sure, there are too many right now for each and everyone of them to have individual personalities, but after this eppisode, you can really begin to individualize your cast. Build a foundation of character for your characters. And try to give each character a different personality, or at least show different emotions for the characters in certain scenes so as to differentiate them.

EXAMPLE:

Let's say Terra and Rosa are 2 nice, sweet, kind people, and then hear news that, one of their friends was killed by a bear. Now, they could both be upset, but you could better emphasize that maybe one has a tougher outer shell than the other, by interpreting it through how they respond:

IE:

Rosa: "Oh no! That's horrible! How could this have happened??"

Terra: "That's awful... He was a good person too..."

See? One is very upset, while the other handles the situation better. It makes it easier for the audience to differenciate the two, and thus, make it easier to remember them. ;)

For a more particular, suggestion, you show Bartz laughing maniacally a lot, punching Fighter, "tricking" Rosa into doin' the nasty with him, and brawling a bloody brawl with Cecil. You're establishing very evil characteristics for him, and if he makes it to the next round, I suggest you run with it. REALLY make use of it. After all, what is light, without darkness? And what kind of story would this be without a villain?

I also like how Flik isn't really angry or upset that he lost the challenge. In fact, he even says "Good game" to the victor. Another oppuritunity to flesh out a character here. He doesn't have to be an overly happy kind of guy, but it's nice to see that this character isn't veangeful against the winning team. It seems he's got a fair mind, or at least something like it.

Mario's scene at Newgrounds was REALLY funny. I can see it must have taken a long time to edit those screens properly, because it looks very convincable... All I can suggest is to try and work on better dance sprites for him.

I'd go into further detail, but I'm already running out of room to type. Just keep trying harder and harder to make this a great series, and you'll have a great series in no time. :)

I vote for FIGHTER, to avoid stupid 8-Bit Theatre rip-off jokes(as they are nigh unavoidable in this day and age), and CHRONO. Don't get me wrong, Chrono Trigger was an awesome game, but without speech, there isn't much growth the character can get dramatically. Plus, I don't have the heart to vote for Faris or Megaman...

Well, here's to future episodes.

-Phantos

Hell-Fire responds:

FIGHTER - CRONO

Wow that was a great review. Thanks a lot for that. And i will try harder to bring out indavidual personalities with each character. Im starting to but its jsut hard to do it with do many characters. As for the disturbed song.... I love the song and thought the words were appropriate for the movie.

Anyway thanks for votes and review

[Hunter Zero Ep.1]

A great vision of things to come...

Well, what can I say? You're really pulling out every trick up your sleeve for this series. The cinematic feel to it is surprisingly professionally done, for a sprite movie. With the orchestrated music, the intro credits, and the style all it's own, it nicely creates the feel of an epic movie.

Certain flash techniques used to give it an even greater cinematic feel (such as the camera angles) have not gone unnoticed. The sprite work is smoother than ever, the use of layers is well portrayed, and it all works like a charm. It's just handled really really well.

Your flash movies have always been known for having innovative and creative selections of music, and this case is no different. Heck, with more theatrical soundtrack pieces, and more Devil May Cry songs, it just gets better and better from your past flash movies.

The story however had some strange things that I had noticed. They aren't very big. Just small points that I happened to notice throughout all of my nitpicking. For starters, Zero seems very cool and subdued, when Capcom portrayed Zero as a raging maniac out to kill anything that moves before the Megaman X series. Also, Protoman's lines sound as if they were written for Megaman. I don't know, it just doesn't sound like he would normally say them. However, with the slight innocence and, maybe helpless feel to his words, it gives the feel that Protoman has softened up since the last time he was in the spotlight. I guess it adds a bit of growth and dimension to his character, so maybe his script isn't that bad after all. And the writing itself HAS gotten better since your previous series, so I guess it's all the more better, huh? ^_^

Also, I wonder if King will be making an appearance later on in the series. Since he didn't actually die in Megaman and Bass, maybe he could pop in and help Proto and Mega later on? I dunno, I guess it just seems kinda lonely with only Protoman and Megaman as the good guys...

Well, I looks forward to the next episode, which I'm sure you're already hard at work on... But I have one question:

You say this is your last sprite movie series... Will you be finishing up the 2nd episode of Not Another Sprite Movie? Or has that been scrapped altogether?

Good luck with your future projects.

-Phantos. :)

CheveLoco responds:

I wanted to give this series a more "theatrical" feeling, the soundtrack it's what i spent the most time on. Thinking of good songs that could fit the action wasn't easy let me tell u but i think in the end it was good.

About the character development well i know zero looks a lil too cool but it's just the beginning so his character will develop more as the episodes goes on, he still is killing anything that moves though :P. And protoman, well in this episode and part of the second, he will be the only one showing up so having the usual laid back-and-man-of-few-words protoman would make the movie pretty bland, he might have softened up too like u said.

Don't worry megaman and protoman won't be the only ones fighting, expect a surprise for the next episode that i believe will make everything even more interesting(and balanced :P)

About Not Another Sprite Movie 2, yeah it will be finished, it'll most likely be released in between hunter zero, i am halfway done with the movie so it won't be scrapped. I wasnt going to include a clip from the movie but the file size didnt allow it.

Thanx for the review!

[Grey Mushrooms: Part 2]

Not bad!

At first it seemed almost like any normal Mario movie. Mario fighting koopas making Luigi look weak, italiant stereotypes, etc. But I LOVE the direction you took with the second half. The writing alone makes this worth checking out. Funny stuff man.

Also, I can see why you asked us to watch it in low quality. Otherwise, some of the sprites have that crappy blur to them that you sometimes get with Flash.

Good job. :)

-Phantos

Lambtaco responds:

Thanks. I was actually able to eliminate most of the blurring by using the snap to pixels option, but that didn't help during the motion tweens.

[Sprite Survivor - 2]

Damn

I was about to begin episodes of a series almost exactly like this idea next month.... Damnit...

Well, let me begin by saying that you should really just go search for better sprites, rip them yourself, or go to some place like the Shyguy Kingdom to get better sprites. It seems that you don't really have a lot for each character, and there are more out there that can make the battle scenes look a LOT better. It just seems kind of clunky and awkward when their attacks are just tweening the standing sprites...

As for the hand-drawn stuff, I admire that you made hand-drawn backgrounds. Personally, I would have used pre-existing video game backgrounds to create the feel of a Video Game Survivor concept, but the bg's here actually look nice. They're varied, simple, and you make a lot of use out of them. Especially in the scene with Cecil and Shadow with the collapsing rock.

As for the concept, neither the thought of Survivor, nor the thought of video game characters in a Survivor game are relatively new, but you managed to make it entertaining without having to resort to insane amounts of budget or flash techniques(though I'm sure there were plenty in this).

The writing is very humourful as well. Especially the Sailor Moon incidents.

And finally, why did I give a 10 for Interactivity? Because you're letting the audience decide who goes. That's not a common thing to be found in most flash movies, so I commend you for it.

I'd like to see Randi and Sailor Moon leave, even though she'd make a great running gag.

Well, best of luck to ye in the future.

-Phantos

PS: I'm still gonna make that series. It probably won't be as good as this, but let it be known that I did not go out to rip off this series in any way. In fact, mine is based off of the happenings of an actual online game I set up, whereby players took to the game in their own way, but will simply have a video game character representing them in the movies. So... yeah. Just so you don't think I'm just copycatting your work or anything...

Hell-Fire responds:

Now that is a long review. Just the way i like em. Survivor isnt my idea wouldnt ever think that anyones copying me. Unless if you let the audience vote out people, i think thats sorta my idea because no other series has it. But anyway thanks for teh long review and votes

[zelda, behind the legend]

Really nothing special

I guess we should start off with the title, which seems a tad misleading. It makes one believe that the movie is going to be some sort of behind the scenes parody, when in actuality, it's just a poorly cultivated parody in general.

Whatever attempt there is at plot is not only portrayed with little effort, but it is evident that such a plot was haphazardly thrown together beforehand as a stupid joke that dragged on and overstayed it's welcome. Not that you can actually understand what the hell is going on, what with the gaudy sound and the half-assed animation quality. Now, I'm a man who can admit his flaws. And as such there are few great movies here at Newgrounds that I myself consider of lower artistic quality than my own. This is one of those few. I don't know why this wasn't blammed. This has all of the traits of a movie scoring less 1.50, and yet it has a score around the 3.80 area.

I'm sorry if this review seems harsh, but in all honesty(which is the style I lend to all of my reviews), this is not a nice-looking movie, this is not a nice-sounding movie, and it's not an enjoyable movie. I could forgive the first two points if there were quality in the writing, or with anything else besides art and sound, but there really is nothing special about this flash. Keep note that the only reason this was saved was due to the unrelenting stupidity of the average Newgrounds voter.

-Phantos

RogerregoRRoger responds:

yeah well okay here goes:
1)yeah the title is bad, i suck at thinking of titles, orginally it was the behind the legend of zelda, even worse..
2) Whats so bad about the plot?You expect a finalfantasy movie mate? Most movies on newgrounds have only the plot of random guys killing each other, this one actually HAD a plot..And don't say there was NO effort.
3)half assed animation?Can you poin me an other FRAME BYU FRAME animation made by a amateur thats better, huh?
4)What are you talking about, lower atristic then yourself?YOu dont even HAVE a flahmovie on newgrounds, you dipshit! jeesh, loser!
5)1.50? yeah whatever..i guess sprite movies about a pixelated mario who kills link for no reason is much better, eh Van Gogh?

[Megaman X OLB ep.3]

Oh dear...

The score I give this movie is not based on the fact alone that this is a sprite movie. But this is almost exactly the same as the last movie. You used the same backgrounds, the same music, the same damn Megaman Zero soldier getting killed sprites that have only been in like 3 flash movies to date and they're already overused.

And what's worse, the way the sprites are positioned just looks clunky and offensive to the eyes in almost every scene. There's a lot of blurring(which I know can be hard to get rid of), they all move in unison which really detracts from the credibility of the film in general, and the whole movie just seems choppy. The framerate should be increased, and a couple of more frames of animation put in for each character.

And please, please, PLEASE, if you're using a group of the same sprites, and you want them to go in one direction to another, make them move at individual times. It just makes the whole thing look more REAL. The way it is now, it's like some sort of ugly puppet show.

This was basically 5-10 minutes of 32-Bit Vile sprites kill those damn soldier sprites. Save for when they decide to kill a bunch of Searchman.exe's, and when X in Bass.exe's robe comes onto the scene.

Frankly I had higher hopes of this series when I first started watching, but this is clearly a hack job. I notice the time difference between when this came out, and when Episode (3?) came out. And each time you keep saying that "this is the end!", and then we see a To Be Continued sign at the end...

Take the time to make new backgrounds, work out the bugs, and really make the finale, whenever it comes out, to be something special. The longer we wait, the better it will probably turn out, right? Don't feel obligated to churn one out every week or something. If anything, working on it longer just builds up suspense. And isn't that a vital part to a good story? ;)

Please, take the time to make the next one really something special. You can do much better than this. We've seen what you're capable of. And maybe a little more of that nice hand-drawn animation would be good too. I liked what you did with the mangled X in one of your movies.

I hope to see a thrilling conclusion... one of these days. ;)

-Phantos

Kaosboy85 responds:

Wow, all I can do is clap, your review is by far the best i've gotten as far as beign helpfull. And the basic solution to everythign you said is that I've decided that i WILL NOT try to put them out every week because a rushed flahs = a crappy job. I have to give you credit for picking up on almost every aspect which was lackign because of a wanting to meet a deadline, and also being I think the only one to figure out the deal with the "unknown" person. Ep4 wont be out for a looooong time, but you and I know this is a good thing. Thank you very much for the review!

[Hunter Zero Trailer]

Bobandgeorge.com would love this.

Oh HELL yeah! I didn't even know you were going to go past the Revenge series. I figured you had just stopped it at that. So this really came out of left field for me. Now I finally have something to look forward to over the coming months. :D

I love the cinematic scope you've put into this. It really really feels like a movie trailer now. Especially in the opening sequence with the nicely animated rain, Shadow Man's scene, the fittingly awesome music(what music DID you use, by the way?), and in the little teaser at the end. It all screams with cinematic style. Even the writing has improved greatly since your most recent movies!

With the last series, they had all sorts of friends to help out against the threat. Duo, Dr. Light, The Robot Masters. Now they're dead, and the only remaining Robot Masters for some reason, are once again on the side of evil, serving out their master's final purpose. I don't know why you chose the particular Robot Masters you did, but I think it lends an interesting taste to the overall concept.

If you ask me, I think Megaman and Protoman are toast. But, I could be wrong. It is, after all, only a trailer.... A ass-kickingly-cool trailer at that.

Can't wait to see how "The Cataclysm" unfolds. :)

-Phantos

CheveLoco responds:

Well i was going to stop after Bass' Revenge but i guess then ending was a huge cliffhanger for some and couldn't be left like that.
The song i used is from DevilMaycry and i think it was perfect for this.
I just picked the old robot masters cuz i think they're better than the new ones.
thanx for the review!

[Bass' Revenge 5]

A thrilling conclusion

You did a good job wrapping up this series. Some awesome choreography with the sprites, a good dose of storyline, and a very cinematic feel to it all. The music, I'd say was hit or miss. Some of the selections for music were good choices(especially that operatic selection when Bass destroys his... base... Which sounds kind of wierd, but hear me out). Although, the intro song kind of irked me, and Spark Mandrill's theme doesn't really fit in with the kind of mood this episode tries to portray. ESPECIALLY in an emotional scene like that.

And if I may continue to nitpick, I would have liked to have seen more personality in the Robot Masters, but making a Flash movie is long, exhausting work, so I won't hold it against you for not spending another 2 weeks just so Freeze Man could be a little quirkier.

And as for the ending, I believe BobandGeorge.com has discussed this sort of thing to death. It's called the Cataclysm theory. Everyone has a different theory as to what happened between the Megaman games and the Megaman X games, and it was nice to see your vision on it. Frankly I agree with much of your ideas, as I too believe Bass had a big part in the destruction of many of our most memorable Capcom characters.

The only thing that didn't happen that I was expecting was an appearance by Sigma. I figured the Sigma virus would have been controlling Bass the whole time, since Bass found a piece of Baldy and combined himself with it. I was expecting a showdown with Megaman and Sigma, but I think it ended just fine the way it did.

Your movies never cease to amaze me.

Bravo!

-Phantos

CheveLoco responds:

i know i know...the spark mandrill song didnt fit that part at all!!!...i just couldnt find anything better...but lemme tell u..i wasnt happy with that..the intro song...well it was the intro song from megaman x6 so i just picked it cuz of that...

I wish i could've done the clone battle longer but the thing that stopped me was the frame limit..the movie as it is its 15995 frames which is just 5 frames from the limit...

i put a lot of work into the choreography...specially the last battle cuz i wanted it to be fast and furious...as you mention that's my take on the ending of the megaman universe..now i dont know if i should conclude the trilogy with the true ending...you know the one where zero would be involved..i dont think it'll be done in some time though...thanx for the review and hopefully you'll review my future projects