I haven’t written much about Community on here, but it’s one of my all-time favorite TV shows, right up there with The Simpsons, Arrested Development, and a few seasons of The Office. A few weeks ago, the third season was wrapped up with an amazing tribute to retro games in the episode Digital Estate Planning. In the episode, Pierce (Chevy Chase) gets a note about his deceased (and super racist) Dad leaving him a video game to beat in order to claim his inheritance.

The game is called Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne, and one intrepid fan of the show has created a playable and downloadable version of his own, which you can grab here.

It’s incomplete, but it’s a great start. The graphics and sound are all dead-on from what was on screen in the show, and I can’t wait to see the end boss battle against Pierce’s Dad, complete with Troy and Abed riding dinosaurs and shooting lava.

Even if you haven’t followed all three seasons of Community, you should check out the episode if you’re a gamer. There are some jokes that are made just for us. I had to pause the show I was laughing so hard when everyone first gets in the game and Pierce is running back and forth saying “Which one am I?”

Via The Verge

If you’re a late 80s, early 90s kid like me, you probably watched the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers show on TV. In my case, Power Rangers was decidedly uncool in my grade, so I had to hide my love for the show from my friends and pretend not to like it during school. I was into the first three seasons of the show and was very excited when the movie came out.

I’ve went back and watched some of the early episodes in the past few years out of curiosity, and they are surprisingly rewatchable as long as you’re in an ironic state of mind. The horrible English dubs from Rita Repulsa and all the other characters from the foreign clips are hilarious, and the monsters keep getting more far fetched. Basically, it’s evidence from my childhood as to why I’m so weird now.

It’s been available to stream on Netflix for a long time, but this August it’s coming to DVD (kind of) for the first time. Shout Factory is releasing ‘Season One, Volume One’ on August 21st. Normally, a company breaking up seasons into volumes is bad news, but I was shocked to find out there are 60 episodes in this season and 30 in this set.

Needless to say, I’ll be picking up this DVD so that someday I can force my kids to relive the Green Ranger/White Ranger saga with me again.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had some crazy merchandise over the years, but one that has a particularly interesting following is a snack from the early 90s. Yes, I’m talking about Pizza Crunchabungas, the pizza-flavored corn snacks. The reason this random TMNT tie-in has a following with fans is because it was marketed with a very cool commercial. The commercial was the only time the Turtles were animated in Claymation, and it was done by master animator Will Vinton of California Raisins fame.

I looked for this commercial on YouTube whenever I thought about it, but for some reason I never found it until now. The turtles look awesome in claymation form, and I wish we could have had a whole series (or at least a special) done in this style. I’d love to see Krang, Bebop, and Rocksteady in stop-motion.

If you want to learn more about Pizza Crunchabungas (why wouldn’t you?) you should read Matt’s definitive article at XE from a few years ago, and also check out Tokka’s video and painted model photos on Flickr.

I don’t watch a lot of new TV. Adventure Time, Community, and The Office are the only shows I bother staying up to date with, which usually means digitally acquiring episodes or buying them for silly prices on Amazon Instant because we have no actual TV channels at my house. But with a summer full of (hopefully) awesome comic book movies ahead, I’ve gotten the itch to get back into some animated superhero shows.

So, a new Spider-man cartoon based on the Ultimate line of comics, with a heavy dose of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Coulson? What? Stan Lee plays a janitor at his high school? This sounds like a pretty awesome Spider-man show.

Then I watched the first two episodes.
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Wow…just wow. Director Kyle Roberts used the NECA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, hand-drawn backgrounds, and a lot of talent to recreate the 80s TMNT cartoon intro in stop motion. The animation is smooth and the whole thing is very impressive, maybe minus the cover of the theme song. This looks a lot better than the TMNT stop motion I posted a few years ago.

Also make sure to check out their making of video. As awesome as this is, I wonder if they wished they would have waited for the new TMNT Classics action figures. That would have looked amazing.

Via Topless Robot