Action 52 Owns is a Fan Remake project. This started as a collaborated effort back on April 2010 to remake all the games from Action 52 for the NES, and make them better, appealing, or at the very least playable. There are 23 out of 52 games recreated so far (including beta and alpha releases), with a couple of them going off to being their own games. The main event, the Cheetahmen, will be taken by a developer of the project head's choice. Though, because only half the games are finished so far, it may be a while before that will ever happen. If ever.
You can download select games here
. The original forum topic of the project is here.
Games with their own pages:
Action 52 Owns includes examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: The player characters from Non-Human have a pretty generous Life Meter compared to being a One-Hit-Point Wonder in the original. Plus, they get powerful secondary weapons and a much better fire rate compared to the original game, especially after enough upgrades.
- Adaptation Expansion: Given how insubstantial the original games are, every remake of them is going to have this to some degree. Meong is the most extreme case, changing it from a featureless tile puzzle into something of a dungeon crawler with a Gentleman Thief protagonist.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: In Mash Man, the grape masher machine used to replace Mash Man goes rogue, so Mash Man goes back to the town to destroy it.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Dr. Murdon (the villain of Non-Human) has green skin, probably because he's based off the large green heads from the original.
- Asteroids Monster: The zombies in Non-Human's hard mode can split into multiple smaller horrors.
- Attack Its Weak Point: In Non-Human, you need to attack Gustav enough so that he coughs up his innards, then shoot those innards to deal proper damage to him.
- Attack of the Killer Whatever:
- Alfredo and the Fettuccine has enemies in the form of killer cookies, drumsticks, and pasta. The bosses are giant kitchen utensils.
- The Final Boss of Time Warp Tickers is a giant hourglass.
- Barbershop Quartets Are Funny: Their remake of Fuzz Power features a quartet of literal barbers as major characters. They even sing the game's intro and ending!
- Big Damn Heroes: The secret ending of Mash Man has him saved from being hanged thanks to the Cheetahmen coming to his rescue!
- Blackout Basement:
- Every level in Illuminator, forcing you to use your flashlight to see what's going on and defeat enemies by charging it up to a certain point before turning it on. You can also collect night lights, Christmas lights, lamps and strobe lights to plug in and help you see what's going on and spot enemies.
- Certain areas of Non-Human are dark. Fire your weapons to light the vicinity around you.
- Body Horror: The intro of Non-Human shows the humans graphically turning into mutant zombies after exposure to Dr Murdon's mutagen. In harder difficulties, said zombies will transform into even more grotesque creatures (and sometimes, multiple) if you take too long to kill them. The Final Boss also transforms from a green human into a caterpillar-like thing in the hard mode.
- Breakout Game: A flash version of STREEMERZ was posted on Kongregate.com. It got so popular, it got an NES version (which can be emulated, of course), and it has additional content as well.
- Non-Human was suppose to be a basic remake. Then the developer (Tales of Game's) got too creative with the game and decided to make it stand on it's own. It was included in the Tales of Game's Vidcon pack for the Barkley 2: Curse of Cuchulainn Kickstarter.
- Bug War: City Of Doom has you fight alien bugs while scaling to the top of a skyscraper.
- Bull Seeing Red: This is how your character kills the villain in Sombreros. Due to his diplomatic immunity, you're incapable of hurting him. You can, however, shoot his hat off, then throw the red sombrero on his head and cause a bull to pulverize him.
- Buried Alive: Happens to you in Sombreros. You have to suck your sombrero back to you while blowing smoke at ants that are out to eat your head.
- Call-Back: Some games will reference their source material.
- Non-Human and STREEMERZ, for example, plays the same game music from the original in the title screen.
- In the Alfredo and the Fettuccine remake, the final boss is the original Alfredo.
- Cast from Hit Points: The Electroz robot from Non-Human's final build. It shares its life bar with its energy bar, so attacking will make it lose health, but ammo pickups will give it back health.
- Checkpoint Starvation: Meong's "Origin" levels don't give any passwords in-between them, requiring them to be beaten in a single sitting.
- Close-Range Combatant: The Spiderbot in Non-Human.
- Darker and Edgier:
- Illuminator went from slaying vampires with the lights out most of the time to a survival-horror about using your flash light to combat dark abominations.
- Space Dreams is about a baby having a dream of a pacifier in a shoot-em-up setting, that slowly descends to a nightmare inducing setting.
- Star Evil certainly seems to be more depressing than we remember.
- Mash Man to a lesser degree. His toes represents hit-points, that appeared to get ripped right off just for taking a hit. Plus the ending involves him being hanged.
- Even Non-Human (already quite dark) gets turned up here. Enemies die by exploding into Ludicrous Gibs, and then there's the Body Horror zombies.
- STREEMERZ only goes about halfway, and in a very tongue-in-cheek manner, turning the game into an Homage to Bionic Commando, with the player part of some kind of elite military squad, going up against a Hitler Expy who wants to "kill the Earth," but his minions still consist mainly of pie-throwing clowns, and the main character is constantly throwing out intentionally lame one-liners, creating a very strange and silly juxtaposition.
- Deadly Disc: Two large sawblades are used by Gut Grinder, the second form of Non-Human's Final Boss.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Subverted, depending on the game where despite having infinite lives, you are still inconvenienced in someway.
- Star Evil for example: You have to collect letters to advance to a boss. Dying makes you lose two letters, and you will have to catch them, or otherwise wait til a specific enemy comes back with that letter. The boss' health also regenerates fully if you die during a boss fight.
- Games like STREEMERZ, Non-Human and Alfredo and the Fettuccine does play this straight. Anytime you die, you simply respawn to the last check point (though the latter does force you to start a boss fight over).
- City Of Doom plays this even straighter- you respawn on the spot with no weapon ammo lost.
- Defeat by Modesty: Every time the hero of Fuzz Power takes a hit, he loses some of his hair. Once he is naked, he falls down and loses a life.
- Degraded Boss: A number of the Elite Mooks in Non-Human are weakened versions of the minibosses.
- Did Not Get the Girl: The hero in Jigsaw, most likely because he killed her.
- Direct Continuous Levels: Non-Human's level scheme is pretty much one long, horizontal plane that gradually proceeds from one area to another as the player progresses through the bosses.
- Do Not Run with a Gun: You cannot move while firing in City Of Doom.
- Downer Ending:
- Mash Man gets cast away from his village, until he learns about the rampaging machine. He saves the town, but gets hanged anyway since he destroyed a helpful machine...
- Star Evil ends with Carmilla (the pilot) making a Heroic Sacrifice by destroying Star Evil. Not that she had much of a choice otherwise.
- Of course, if you're evil, Carmilla joins Star Evil to become the Star of Death and eradicates Earth.
- In Jigsaw, you are treated to a small cutscene showing a silhouette of the girl you were trying to save suspended from a rope, with nails sticking out of her body, dripping with blood. Beside her is another silhouette of your character holding a hammer which is also dripping with blood. Then you return to the title screen.
- The ending of City Of Doom. The giant alien bug hive is destroyed. Yay? Well, the explosion threw your character off the building, and the credits show him falling endlessly, and it ends there.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In Mash Man, beating the game ends with Mash Man being hanged by the villagers for destroying the juice machine (the very one that was killing others and destroying the village in which the Mash Man saved them from). However, if you beat the game by not killing any of the handful of moving creatures in the second area, The CheetahMen will come to Mash Man's rescue.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Non-Human has Adventure and Challenge mode, where the game is shorter than Extreme Mode. When the Final Boss is beaten, the words "Wow good job" appear on screen, then the game ends. Extreme Mode however allows you to do a New Game Plus. The old easy mode told you to "go play on hard mode, it's cooler."
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: In Silver Sword, each enemy is weak to either fire, silver or ice. Hitting them with their weakness deals 10 damage. Hitting them with the incorrect attack deals 1 damage. The main challenge comes when you have to adjust your distance, as your sword's element changes depending on how far it travels.
- Elite Mook:
- The Final Boss of Illuminator is basically a superpowered vampire, taking a ton more hits to kill than a normal one.
- In Non-Human, the Degraded Bosses (Geophyte and Gunksmasterjasper) act as these. They only appear in the hard mode, however.
- The tank bug enemies in City Of Doom. Lots of health, spams shots in multiple directions, and only found in the final level. Nothing a Flamethrower won't solve, however.
- Expy: Done intentionally on some games.
- Fallen Hero: The protagonist of Star Evil slowly descents to this to the end, if the fangs are any indication. You have the option to dive it further by swearing at your enemies.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Bug-Torcher 5000 in City Of Doom. It kills Mooks very easily and also destroys their projectiles.
- Flesh Versus Steel: Non-Human has the heroes' metallic, tech-wielding mechs versus Dr. Murdon's organic mutants.
- Flunky Boss: The True Final Boss of Non-Human.
- Fragile Speedster: Sir Schwartz in Silver Sword has fewer hit points than Sir Argent, but he moves faster and can fire at a faster rate.
- Fun with Acronyms: Parodied. STREEMERZ apparently stands for Super STREngth EMERgency Squad Zeta.
- Giant Mook: The large orange head-things and the eyeball spitters in Non-Human.
- Glass Cannon: The Spiderbot in Non-Human. It has low health, but it's very fast and hurts a lot especially at close range. And then you get the attack rate upgrade...
- Gorn: Mash Man has a rather graphic health bar (as mentioned in Darker and Edgier,) and Somberoes features some pretty gory deaths for two of the bosses. Enemies in Non Human tend to die in rather squicky fashion, exploding into Ludicrous Gibs- you can even turn up the number of gibs they explode into!
- Being an Homage to Bionic Commando, STREEMERZ wouldn't be complete without the Hitler Expy's exploding head.
- Guide Dang It!: At one point during Meong's final level, a large door is blocking your path. The solution is to push a statue to press a button in a section that is otherwise a decoy, something that you didn't have to do in any level before.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Happens to the second boss of Sombreros, after he gets pulled apart by two donkeys. He returns later as a ghost, and appears as a boss who can split himself into two halves, each of which can attack separately.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Carmilla of Star Evil.
- Hitbox Dissonance: Happens from time to time in Meong.
- Homage:
- Lollipop's opening (according to a video) seems quite similar to how Super Castlevania IV starts.
- Sombreros has a game play mechanic that seems to work just like the Dead Eye mechanic in the Red Dead games.
- A couple of games play just like NES games, like Meong and STREEMERZ. STREEMERZ even got an NES port.
- STREEMERZ turns into an homage to Bionic Commando, as befitting the grappling hook mechanic of the original game.
- Non Human's graphics are pretty reminiscent of Super Metroid. The Final Boss is even fought in a similar manner to Crocomire- you need to shoot into his open mouth to push him back into a meat grinder, while he tries to back you into a Bottomless Pit.
- Hulk Speak: The characters in Chill Out.
- Huge Holographic Head: Remember the giant green heads in the NES Non-Human? The remake justifies those by making them appear on computer screens at the bottom of the level.
- Humongous Mecha: The Final Boss of Fuzz Power is a giant barber robot that's piloted by the player character's monkey friend.
- Intentional Engrish for Funny: Any remakes that pay homage to the poor English in the manuals has this, especially STREEMERZ.
- Job-Stealing Robot: The main premise of Mash Man.
- Karma Meter: Star Evil has this, though the only real way to go to the evil side is by swearing a lot. See Downer Ending above.
- Kid Hero: The main character of Illuminator is a child who incinerates undead with a flashlight.
- Level Ate: The entirety of Alfredo and the Fettucini's.
- Lighter and Softer: Fuzz Power. Full force.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Enemies in Non-Human die like this. There's a setting that allows you to turn this up further!
- Mad Scientist: Dr. Murdon from Non-Human. He knows that the player character is out to get him, so what does he do? Turn all the innocent inhabitants of the nearby village into the titular, horrifically-mutated monsters!
- Made of Explodium: Chili pepper field in Sombreros.
- Make My Monster Grow: Dr. Murdon does this to some of the regular zombies, turning them into bosses.
- Malevolent Architecture: The dungeon in Meong, in spades. Eventually, the protagonist realizes from the riddles that the entire dungeon is actually a living creature.
- Malevolent Mugshot:
- Satan Hosein's base in Storm Over the Desert. Full stop.
- Also seen on the computer screens that light up in Non-Human at the bottom of the screen, in a reference to the original game.
- Man Versus Machine: The main plot of Mash Man, who gets replaced by a grape-stomping machine that goes berserk, of course.
- Marathon Level: Meong's final level is much longer than any other in the game.
- Metaphorgotten: When the Final Boss of Sombreros declares that even if he dies, the second boss of the game will continue his work, the protagonist shows off the second boss' sombrero and counters. "He had to split." When the Final Boss then says that the first boss will do it instead, he shows off the first boss' sombrero and says "He had to get shot a bunch of times."
- Metroidvania: Alfredo and the Fettuccine plays very much like this, with Alfredo finding skills to unlock new areas.
- Mexican Standoff: Happens a few times in Sombreros.
- Mind Screw:
- Alfredo and the Fettucini's has a pretty mundane, if goofy story at first until you suddenly escape from the game and obtain the Debug power that renders you invincible, allowing you bypass a section that should've been impossible to get to and battle the Big Bad: Alfredo from the original Action 52 game, who's pissed that somebody's remaking his game and is trying to stop it.
- Time Warp Tickers is still incredibly weird.
- Mini-Mecha:
- The player characters of Non-Human.
- The player character of Time Warp Tickers is one of these shaped like a pair of fingers...and is piloted by a cat.
- Mission Control: Star Evil has Commander Commodore being moral support to Carmilla.
- More Dakka:
- Bubblegirl Rozy fires out a rapid stream of bubbles by default, with even more possible with the various powerups. One of them causes her to recoil.
- Your bot's main weapon in Non-Human can be upgraded to become this. The Protobot takes this further- it can fire out all its special weapons at one go.
- Multiple Endings: Games like Mash Man and Star Evil feature this.
- Mutagenic Goo: Dr. Murdon from Non-Human uses this to turn humans into the titular monsters. In-game, this damages your mech and causes zombies to mutate into stronger mutants if it touches them.
- Necessary Drawback: The Protobot from Non-Human has very high firepower and can in fact collect more than one weapon and fire all of them out at once. Its traction is like that of a unicycle on waxed floor, giving it very poor mobility.
- The Protobot was
originally intended to be a Crutch Character, starting out very strong but literally degrading its parts over time, ending up with something near-useless.
- The Protobot was
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: One of the alternate robots in Non-Human's final build is a Ninja Spider Tank.
-
Nintendo Hard: Sombreros and Star Evil and Streemerz are good examples. Non-Human on hard, as well. - No Celebrities Were Harmed: It's hinted that Master Y in STREEMERZ is secretly Derek Yu.
- Nostalgia Level: The end section of Non-Human features the level layout from the original NES game. Complete with green heads below and even similar enemy placement!
- Oculothorax: Many of your enemies in Non-Human are one-eyed head monstrosities.
- One-Hit Kill: Gustav from Non-Human will eat you up if you're in front of him when he opens his mouth- his innards will drag you inside.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Some games have this. To balance this out, they also tend to have infinite lives. That's not to say there are no consequences for all the games if you die. See Death Is a Slap on the Wrist above.
- Inverted in Non-Human. The player characters now have health bars.
- One-Winged Angel: Dr. Murdon of Non-Human turns into a giant caterpillar-thing after being defeated in the harder difficulties.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The zombies in Non-Human are actually humans mutated into large grotesque humanoids, sometimes with extra arms. On harder difficulties, they also have the ability to transform or split into one or more mooks!
- Overly-Long Tongue: The mouth enemies in Non-Human use it to whip your character.
- Puzzle Boss: Many of the bosses:
- The final boss of Non-Human has to be shot in the stomach so that he will bend down, after which you will have to shoot his mouth to push it backwards into a meat-grinder machine, and then activate the switch to damage him. You have to do this about 6-7 times to beat it.
- The second boss of Sombreros has a metal vest, and will fall down and get up at full health if you try to beat him the conventional way. In order to defeat him, you have to make him fall down on each of the nooses tied to a donkey, and once you do so, shoot both donkeys to make them rip him into half.
- The final boss of Sombreros has you killing his minions, but his diplomatic immunity makes him immune to you shots. You have to shoot off his white hat, then go to the red hat and throw it onto his head. This makes a bull come and pulverize him.
- The stomping machine boss of Mash Man is aided by berserk robots, to beat it you have to hit one of the small robots, and make the boss jump on top of the electrocuted wreckage.
- The boss of Fuzz Power cannot be hurt normally, you have to wait for it to shoot out hairballs and bombs from its hat. Roll into the hairballs to hit it back at the boss and damage it.
- The mechanical bull in Rocket Jockey attacks you from behind, making you unable to attack it directly. You have to force it to line up with an asteroid so that it crashes into him and does damage.
- Puzzle Game: Meong.
- Recurring Riff: Rocket Jockey and Sombreros have the main theme notes played in most of their songs. The first area of Non-Human has a remixed version of the game's theme.
- Retraux: Some of the remakes deliberately emulate old-school game music and graphics. An obvious example is the City of Doom remake, which looks exactly like an old Game Boy game.
- Rise from Your Grave: The checkpoints from Silver Sword are graves, and when you die, you do indeed rise from the nearest one.
- RPG Elements: Non-Human has them in the form of earning points by shooting enemies and getting items, and using these points to get an upgrade.
- Samus Is a Girl: Star Evil stars Carmilla, who is implied to be female.
- Save the Princess: Silver Sword has this for the plot. The baby princess has been kidnapped by the mutants in the forest and its up to you to save her.
- Schmuck Bait: Near one of the hardest optional segments (leading to a money bag) in STREEMERZ, Streemerz Command declares that it's not worth it and you shouldn't bother with it. If the player decides to go through with it anyway, they find that the bag only has $15 in it, and Joe agrees that it wasn't really worth it.
- Sequential Boss: Dr. Murdon in Non-Human. In Adventure mode, you only fight one form. Each subsequent difficulty adds a new form.
- Shielded Core Boss: Gustav from Non-Human. He's normally invulnerable to damage, but attacking him enough makes him cough up his innards. Attack those to deal damage before he swallows them back in.
- Shout-Out:
- Bubblegirl Rozy looks like it could have been made by Studio Pixel.
- Ditto for Fuzz Power.
- Non-Human has a Super Metroid feel to it, with a similar interface. There is an enemy that attacks like the mini-Kraids, and the final boss is reminiscent of Crocomire (it advances towards you, and you shoot into his mouth to push it backwards).
- After getting halfway through one of the hardest optional segments in STREEMERZ, Joe exclaims "Veni Vidi Vici!"
- Spell My Name With An S: Bubblegirl Rozy doesn't help in regard to this trope.
- Spent Shells Shower: Sentinel XF 8 from Non-Human has one as it fires its regular weapon.
- Survival Horror: Illuminator only gives you a flashlight to fight off enemies in a pitch dark house. It's not rare to get swarmed by the undead or getting pinned in a corner with no battery left.
- Sword Beam:
- Your weapon of choice in Silver Sword is firing swords from your sword. It even changes properties as it travels, first being a fire sword, then turning into a silver sword, and then an ice sword.
- The Spiderbot from Non-Human also uses these. However, they do more damage if used at close range.
- Temporary Platform: A lot of these in Meong.
- Took a Level in Badass: A lot of games, especially Non-Human. Not only does the setting look awesome, but the game play has improved on a vast scale, and the music definitely carries it along more than well.
- Turns Red: The vampires in Illuminator will chase you if you hit them, requiring a second hit soon after the first to kill (unless you hit them point blank with a fully-charged flashlight)
- If a ghost is set on fire from another enemy, it'll also rush the player for a second or two before it dies.
- Trick Boss: Many bosses of Non-Human start out as a regular zombie Mook...then Dr. Murdon sprays more mutagen on them and they transform into a grotesque creature.
- Ungrateful Bastards: The villagers in Mash Man decide to hang Mash Man after he destroyed their rampaging machine. Even after he saved their lives!
- Updated Re-release: The developers of Non-Human later added much more to the game, including cutscenes and more characters. That's what you get when you're involved with Tales of Game's. This version was available in the Tales of Game's Vidcon pack, which, at the moment, is not available.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Non-Human lets you know that you are at the final level when you see the original's level layout, including that familiar face...
- Victory Is Boring: Exaggerated to ridiculous extremes in Alfredo. Winning the game traps your character in a blank screen with nothing to do, exactly the fate the Big Bad of the game was fighting to avoid.
- Video Game 3D Leap: Dedant has 3-D graphics.
- Video Game Caring Potential: A creature politely and insultingly asked Mash Man to not step on her children. She'll be much nicer towards him if he comes back without blood on his feet. Nice enough to call the Cheetahmen to his rescue.
- Wackyland: The entirety of Time Warp Tickers. This time, it takes place in some sort of checkerboard dimension with some sort of abyss in the background.
- The Walls Have Eyes: In Time Warp Tickers, you have to kick disembodied eyes into switches. You also damage the Final Boss by kicking them into it.
- Was Once a Man: All the enemies in Non-Human were once humans who lived in the village by Dr. Murdon's hideout.
- Wave-Motion Gun: The third stage of Star Evil gives one of these.
- When Trees Attack: Geophyte in Non-Human.
- Weakened by the Light: The enemies in Illuminator.
- Word Salad Title: Gunksmasterjasper from Non-Human.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Mash Man used to be mashing berries for his home town, until they could afford a machine to do the mashing for them. They did not hesitate to shoo out Mash Man, even to the point of insulting him and putting nails on the ground to harm him!
